Accountable Government

Deregulating Transparency— DOT and the Airlines v. Public

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Government Openness, Secrecy

USA Today recently reported that—in the Administration’s effort to reduce regulations and their costs—the Transportation Department has abandoned two proposals from the Obama administration that aimed to provide air travelers with more information about fees on bags and other services before they buy tickets.

According to DOT Secretary Elaine Chao, “The department is committed to protecting consumers from hidden fees and to ensuring transparency. However, we do not believe that departmental action is necessary to meet this objective at this time. … Although we believe there would be benefits of collecting and publishing the proposed aviation data, the department also takes seriously industry concerns about the potential burden of this rule.”

The burdens on industry, that is.  According to USA Today, “most airlines said the costs providing the information would be burdensome and the information wouldn’t increase the transparency of pricing. Airlines also worried that the disclosures could require reporting of propriety information.”

In other words, as in most Republican administrations, asserted burdens outweigh public benefits from transparency and the ability to make informed choices.

Trump nominates person with no statistical experience to head Bureau of Justice Statistics, further threatening credibility of DOJ information

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Government Openness

As reported in The Crime Report, the assault on the credibility of the Bureau of Justice Statistics continues:

President Trump has announced his intention to appoint a director of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) who has no apparent experience in the field. … The only statistical experience cited by the White House in Anderson’s background was co-creating the Anderson and Hester Computer Rankings, which boast of computing college football’s “most accurate strength of schedule ratings,” taking into account the quality of teams’ opponents.

The Bureau was established in 1979 “to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.”

Until 2012, the BJS directorship required Senate confirmation— when Congress changed the law and made the job a presidential appointment. According to Washington Bureau Chief, Ted Gest:

BJS directors under President Obama, James Lynch of the University of Maryland and William Sabol, now of Georgia State University, both were long-time criminologists and recognized experts in crime and justice statistics.

In May, under the auspices of the American Statistical Association, four former BJS directors wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging that “serious consideration” to head BJS, which operates in Sessions’ Department of Justice, “to individuals who have strong leadership, management, and scientific skills; experience with federal statistical agencies; familiarity with BJS and its products; visibility in the nation’s statistical community; ability to interact productively with Congress and senior DOJ staff; and acceptance of the National Academies’ Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency.”

The letter was signed by Lynch, Sabol, Jeffrey Sedgwick, who served as BJS director in the last three years of the George W. Bush administration and now directs the Justice Research and Statistics Association, and Lawrence Greenfeld, who headed BJS in the first five years of the Bush administration.

Anderson does not appear to have any of those qualifications.

The same four recent BJS directors wrote in May to leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees arguing that the requirement for Senate confirmation for the BJS director should “be restored and that the director’s status be changed from serving at the will of the president to serving a fixed term of at least four years, staggered from the presidential election.”

The ex-directors said in their letter: “It is imperative that policy discussions about the often-contentious issues regarding crime and justice be informed by statistical data trusted by the public to be objective, valid, and reliable…”

“To ensure BJS data are viewed as objective and of highest quality, BJS must be seen as an independent statistical agency wherein data collection, analysis, and dissemination are under the sole control of the BJS.”

 

Zinke Evading Public Scrutiny — and Public Comment — to Build a Road Through a National Wildlife Refuge

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Secrecy, Uncategorized

On July 12, 2017 and August 2, 2017, Defenders of Wildlife filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for all records related to the Trump administration’s consideration of a potentially illegal land exchange to remove wilderness wetlands in Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska from federal public ownership for the construction of a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Defenders of Wildlife received more than 600 documents including evidence that the Interior Department is pursuing the land trade with King Cove Corporation — and doing so as much under the radar and without public comment as possible.

In order to pursue the road, the Interior Department is preparing to set aside a decades-old ban on development in federally protected wilderness areas. As Juliet Eilperin notes in her Washington Post article, the documents obtained by Defenders of Wildlife, primarily internal agency emails, reveal how much discussion is intentionally taking place out of public view as federal, state, local and tribal officials work to approve a land exchange.

Congress directed Interior in 2009 to study whether it served the public interest to construct a road through the refuge. Four years later, the department produced an environmental-impact statement that concluded that the project should not be pursued because many species would be harmed, as the road’s construction, use and maintenance would disturb and fragment their habitat. In spring 2017, Fish and Wildlife Service officials produced an updated analysis of the two routes Alaska is contemplating through the refuge. It concluded that both would have “major” impacts on brants, tundra swans, emperor geese, bears, fish and, potentially, caribou.

“Both routes are equally destructive to the refuge’s purposes,” one official wrote in an April 28 email.

The documents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service make clear that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has elevated the issue to one of the agency’s top priorities, and his appointees have taken deliberate steps to conceal the plan from the public.

At one point, a refuge official relayed his conversation with a department attorney about questions Zinke raised over public review of agency action related to Alaska’s survey of a possible road through Izembek:

He indicated the Secretary would like to see folks on the ground doing the survey in the next couple of days,” the official emailed colleagues. “He did not seem to [sic] excited about the direction that it was going out for public comment.”

In a separate exchange three days later, a senior Interior Department attorney in Alaska emailed another high-ranking official there to clarify that the land swap proposed by the town’s tribal corporation should be kept under wraps.

“I’m not sure if you were provided a copy of the letter from King Cove Corporation to Secretary Zinke requesting a land exchange so here it is,” the lawyer wrote. “I understand it [sic] King Cove is not going to make this request public but rather let the Department roll it out when it is ready.”

 

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Trying to See Into, If Not Through, the Swamp

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Secrecy

A recent investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times reveals that, at key regulatory federal agencies, members of the deregulation teams, have deep industry ties and are reviewing regulations their previous employers sought to weaken or kill. As ProPublica notes, “Appointees include lawyers who represented businesses in cases against government regulators, staff members of political groups raising so-called dark money and employees of industry-funded organizations opposed to environmental rules. At least four were registered to lobby the agencies they now work for and at least two may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone..  As ProPublica points out, however, “a full vetting of industry connections has been difficult because some agencies have declined to provide information about the appointees — in many cases, not even their names.”  It is not just to the media who have been stonewalled…

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) is among a group of Congress members who wrote to Mick Mulvaney (OMB Director) and Neomi Rao (Administrator of OIRA) in August expressing grave concerns about the secrecy of the Regulatory Reform Task Forces, calling on the administration to release the names of all deregulation team members as well as documents relating to their potential conflicts of interest, and requesting information about the nature of their meetings. They have received no response to date.

The result of the information revealed by ProPublica and the New York Times, combined with the non-response from OMB, has led Cicilline and a group of other House Democrats to introduce a bill — the Determining if Regulatory Actions are in the Interest of the Nation or the Swamp (DRAIN the Swamp) Act — to require federal officials —before they implement significant changes in U.S. regulations—to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and project how much they would personally benefit from any particular regulatory changes. They would also be required to identify any conflicts of interest for President Trump or senior members of his administration when changing major rules. The bill is co-sponsored by leading House Democrats, including Reps. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ), Gerald Connolly (D-VA), and Lloyd Doggett (D-TX). As of this posting, it does not yet have a bill number.  To date, it has no Republican co-sponsors.

 

The toxic swamp of special interests leadership at Interior; where do their loyalties lie?

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government

The Western Values Project has created a thoughtful and well-documented site — the Department of Influence  —  to document the revolving door between special interest lobbyists and political appointees at the Department of the Interior. Such information is particularly pertinent at a time when the Secretary of the Interior has stated — in a speech to an oil industry group — that almost one-third of career bureaucrats at his department are “not loyal to the flag,” and not in lockstep with him and President Trump. “I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag,” Zinke said. “We do have good people, but the direction has to be clear and you’ve got to hold people accountable.”

Readers are reminded that the “swamp” of campaign — and Administration — fame is, in their minds, the career civil servants who take this oath of office

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. [emphasis added]

Disturbingly (if not surprisingly), the link at the Office of Personnel for this oath leads to a page with this information:

You have reached a collection of archived material.The content available is no longer being updated and may no longer be applicable as a result of changes in law, regulation and/or administration. If you wish to see the latest content, please visit the current version of the site.

The current version of the site does not take you, however, to any information about, or affirmation of, the Oath other than a Affidavits form that includes the Oath and Affidavits As to striking against the federal government and one As to the purchase and sale of office.

Neither the Oath nor these affidavits require an affirmation of loyalty to “the flag,” to the head of the employee’s agency, to any outside interests, or — most importantly — to the President.

What Happens When Agencies Don’t — or Won’t — Create Records?

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Secrecy

The first important thing to know is the Federal Records Act imposes obligations on agency heads to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures and essential transactions of the agency.” Moreover, the federal agencies have an affirmative obligation to retain all recorded information—”regardless of form or characteristics”— that was “made or received by a Federal agency under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business” and serves as “evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the United States Government….” 44 U.S.C. § 3301 (2012).  A thoroughly-researched memo by the Sierra Club Environmental Law Program details the record retention policies at the Environmental Protection Administration, the Department of Interior, and the Department of Energy.

The New York Times reported1 earlier this month on reports and indications of secrecy at the EPA—including employees sometimes being told not to take notes at meetings.  More troubling for accountability, Administrator Pruitt’s aides recently asked career employees to make major changes in a rule regulating water quality in the United States (Waters of the United States or WOTUS)—without any records of the changes they were being ordered to make.  Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has noted that “That same rule was initially backed up by an analysis of “the economic benefits of preventing water pollution,” but once Mr. Pruitt decided to reverse the rule EPA “‘economists were verbally told to produce a new study that changed the wetlands benefit[.]’”* 

As the above memo notes, EPA’s records policy covers “all records made or received by EPA employees under federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business, and preserved or appropriate for preservation as evidence of EPA functions, organization and activities or because of the value of the information they contain.”2 Records must be retained if they contain information related to how EPA carries out its mission, such as communicating EPA requirements, or documenting the agency’s
decision-making process.3 

In a letter to the Archivist of the United States, CREW points out that Mr. Pruitt and EPA “are evading public scrutiny of their decisions by failing to create records in the first place.  Not only are these actions bad from a public policy perspective, but also they appear to violate the FRA requirements to both document and preserve records reflecting essential EPA decisions and policies and how they are made.  Adequate documentation is one of the two main pillars of the FRA; EPA’s failure to create this documentation undermines the goals of the FRA and deprives the public of access to records that document how the agency is fulfilling its statutory mission.”

The letter requests that the Archivist exercise his authority and responsibility under the Federal Records Act to evaluate actions of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt that appear to violate the Federal Records Act, and make recommendations to EPA for their correction and “full compliance with the FRA and inform both the President and Congress of these violations.”

* There is a pattern in this Administration; see White House Blocks Report Showing Societal Benefits of Refugees in the US

1Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton, Scott Pruitt is Carrying Out His E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say, New York Times, Aug. 11, 2017 ;  2  EPA Information Policy, Records Management Policy (dated 7/07/2005),  at 1 – from SCELP Memo;  3  Id at 3.

White House Blocks Report Showing Societal Benefits of Refugees in the US

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Government Openness, Secrecy

When the President released his second travel ban, it was accompanied by a Presidential Memorandum in which he called on the secretary of state to consult with the secretaries of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security and his White House budget director and — “[t]o further ensure transparency for the American people regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of our immigration programs in serving the national interest” — submit within 180 days “a report detailing the estimated long-term costs of the United States Refugee Admissions Program at the federal, state, and local levels, along with recommendations about how to curtail those costs.” As noted by the New York Times, the budget Trump released in May argued that refugees and other immigrants were a fiscal drain. “Under the refugee program, the federal government brings tens of thousands of entrants into the United States, on top of existing legal immigration flows, who are instantly eligible for time-limited cash benefits and numerous noncash federal benefits, including food assistance through SNAP, medical care and education, as well as a host of state and local benefits.” It would be less costly, it argued, if there were fewer refugees, since “each refugee admitted into the United States comes at the expense of helping a potentially greater number out of country.”  The White House apparently thought it was perfectly clear that the President was not interested in hearing about any benefits brought by refugees….

The internal (State, HHS, DHS) study, completed in late July but never publicly released, was obtained by The New York Times. The draft found that refugees “contributed an estimated $269.1 billion in revenues to all levels of government” between 2005 and 2014 through the payment of federal, state and local taxes. “Overall, this report estimated that the net fiscal impact of refugees was positive over the 10-year period, at $63 billion.” This report was spiked but, the Times notes, it was not clear who in the administration decided to keep the benefits-of-refugees information out of the final report. An internal email (shown to the Times), dated Sept. 5 and sent among officials from government agencies involved in refugee issues, said that “senior leadership is questioning the assumptions used to produce the report.” Continue reading →

Walking Across the Line? Sidelining the Courts’ Review of Agency Actions

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government

Language restricting judicial review has been included by conservative legislators in 28 House and Senate bills this Congress (at least 13 of which explicitly involve environmental issues).

As reported in E&E Daily, bills to reform the judicial system or restrict judicial review of agency actions are hardly a new phenomenon in Congress: several of the bills proposing changes in the broader legal system passed the House mostly along party lines during the Obama administration but stalled in the Senate and never made it to the president’s desk.

Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has led the effort on the House side. According to Reilly, since the beginning of 2017 his committee has approved at least 10 pieces of litigation under a judicial reform agenda, including bills that would:

  • impose mandatory sanctions on attorneys who file “baseless” lawsuits;
  • set restrictions on groups of people who can file class-action lawsuits;
  • bar settlement dollars from going to third parties;
  • move certain cases against corporations from state to federal courts; and
  • “counter” ‘sue and settle’  — through which, GOP critics say, special interests sue friendly agencies in order to force them to issue new regulations.

In January, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a companion bill to the House’s sue-and-settle legislation.

Read here for more specifics about the bills.

“Deconstructing” the Administrative State – Part Two

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Government Openness

In a post explaining what conservatives mean by the ‘deconstructing’ phrase — and why they are so excited by the Trump administration’s personnel choices — Jonah Goldberg wrote on National Review (in February 2017):

Deconstructing the administrative state is a kind of nightingale’s song for many intellectual conservatives, particularly my friends in the Claremont Institute’s orbit. It’s been great fun watching mainstream journalists, who are not fluent in these things, talk about the administrative state as if they understand what Bannon means. The “administrative state” is the term of art for the permanent bureaucracy, which has come untethered from constitutional moorings (please read Phillip Hamburger’s Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, or Charles Murray’s By the People..). Most of the law being created in this country is now created on autopilot, written by unelected mandarins in the bowels of the government. It is the direct result of Congress’s decades-long surrender of its powers to the executive branch. The CIA is not the “deep state” — the FDA, OSHA, FCC, EPA, and countless other agencies are.

Goldberg goes on to note that “… any attempt to simply move the unlawful arbitrary power of the administrative state to the political operation of the West Wing will not be a triumph for liberty, it will simply amount to replacing one form of arbitrary power with another.”

Which, for me, raises the question if the power of the unelected corporate mandarins now taking over the Executive Branch is less “abitrary”?  Or less driven by “favored groups” and not imposing “heavy economic, political, and social costs on” the unfavored public?

Patrice McDermott

 

The Administrative Procedure Act — Part of the Swamp or Moat?

Patrice McDermott Accountable Government, Government Openness

Earlier this month on Who.What.Why, Christine Capozziello outlined several lawsuits that have been brought against federal agencies on the basis of violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).  Before your eyes completely glaze over, please note that the Freedom of Information Act amended the APA.

Capozziello asks, “What do the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and Environmental Protection Agency have in common? They’ve all faced lawsuits for putting the brakes on Obama-era regulations.” Each of the agencies is being sued on the grounds that argues that the delay violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

In April, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued the Department of Energy; a total of six Obama-era energy efficiency standards were delayed and Schneiderman argued that the APA had been violated.

The same month, the Department of Labor came under fire for delaying a long-awaited rule that would significantly decrease the permissible exposure limit to silica dust for construction workers.

In early July, a federal court cancelled the EPA’s attempt to delay implementation for new regulations on methane emissions. In the same week, the attorneys general from 18 states and Washington D.C. sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for delaying borrower defense rules that were scheduled to take effect on July 1. In the same week, a federal court cancelled the EPA’s attempt to delay implementation for new regulations on methane emissions.

Those who wish to see the “Administrative State” dismantled likely see the delays as a needed push-back against the economic, political, and social costs on individuals and businesses by favored groups [see July 10 post]. Others see the regulations as the moat protecting those with less — or no — power against powerful individuals and businesses.