U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s Request Follows Environmental Integrity Project’s Investigation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s Travel to Oklahoma
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Tuesday sent a letter to the EPA Office of Inspector General demanding an investigation of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s expensive flights to and within his home state of Oklahoma, including a single trip that cost $14,434.
The request by Sen. Whitehouse, D-RI, follows the EPA Office of Inspector General’s recent announcement of an audit of Pruitt’s travel. The audit was triggered by an Environmental Integrity Project investigation of public records that found Pruitt spent almost half the days in his first three months in office on trips that included stops in his home.
“Administrator Pruitt’s extensive travel to Oklahoma, and expensive travel within Oklahoma, suggests disproportionate attention to his home state,” Whitehouse wrote in his September 26 letter, according to The Washington Post.
Sen. Whitehouse urged EPA’s internal watchdog office to probe — among other things – a July 27 flight that Pruitt and six staff members took on a Department of Interior plane from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to that state’s tiny community of Guymon at a cost of $14,434, The Washington Post reported. By car, it’s about a five hour drive from Tulsa to Guymon, OK, which would cost about $33 per vehicle.
The purpose of the trip, according to EPA, was to meet with landowners whose farms have been affected by water quality regulations that protect streams and wetlands.
“As part of your review, I further request you examine whether this trip, and the size and composition of his entourage, is consistent with the travel expenditures of prior EPA administrators,” Senator Whitehouse wrote.
Pruitt has taken at least four noncommercial and military flights since mid-February, costing taxpayers more than $58,000 to fly him to various parts of the country, including a June 7 flight on a military jet from Cincinnati to John F. Kennedy airport in New York that cost $36,068.50, according to The Washington Post, which cited EPA documents.
The Environmental Integrity Project on July 24 inspired the ongoing EPA audit by releasing public records that showed Pruitt travelling on 48 out of 92 days in his first three months in office (March, April and May), with about 90 percent of those travel days in Oklahoma or heading to or from Pruitt’s home state. The cost to taxpayers just for Pruitt’s plane trips alone for those trips was more than $12,000, according to EPA records.
“Our investigation suggests that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s travel on the taxpayer’s dime – frequently back to his home in Oklahoma — has been highly questionable, especially at a time when he’s imposing draconian budget cuts on EPA,” said Eric Schaeffer, Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “Mr. Pruitt has also reportedly spent almost $25,000 building a sound-proof phone booth in his office, and almost $833,000 on an expanded security detail (three times larger than his predecessor’s) during just his first three months. As Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen recently wrote: ‘We could guard Beyoncé for less than what it costs to protect the EPA chief.'”
For more details and public records on Pruitt’s travel this spring, click here.
The Environmental Integrity Project is a 15-year-old nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, based in Washington D.C., dedicated to enforcing environmental laws and holding polluters and governments accountable to protect public health.
Media contact: Tom Pelton, Environmental Integrity Project, tpelton@environmentalintegrity.org or (202) 888-2703
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