E&E News - Panel Votes to Allow Subpoenas on Interior Policies, 'Conflicts of Interest'

News Article

By Scott Streater

The House Natural Resources Committee voted today to authorize Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to issue subpoenas to continue an investigation of the Obama administration's enforcement of wildlife protection and endangered species programs as well as revisions to a controversial stream protection rule.

The committee voted 26-14 along party lines to approve a motion granting Hastings subpoena authority to compel additional documents and testimony from administration officials on those issues, as well as the administration's decision last year to sequester payments of Secure Rural Schools funds, and to investigate what the motion describes as "apparent conflicts of interest by current and former Department of the Interior employees."

Today's decision continues the ongoing feud between the committee and the administration on all four issues.

Hastings said during today's hearing that the committee has an oversight responsibility to "hold the White House and the executive branch departments and agencies accountable, and to ask fair and proper questions about their actions and decisions."

Yet, he added: "On all of these investigations, we've faced a lack of cooperation from the Obama administration. Requests for information go unanswered or delayed for months. Documents are withheld in their entirety or heavily redacted, and there's a refusal to make witnesses available for questioning."

Today's vote comes a day after Interior Secretary Sally Jewell sent a letter to Hastings accusing his committee of prying beyond his constitutional limits and wasting taxpayers' dollars (E&E Daily, Jan. 16).

Jewell noted in her letter that the Interior Department last year received at least 27 letters from the committee related to document requests on 14 topics. The agency "conservatively estimates" it spent more than 19,000 staff hours and nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer money responding to those requests.

"Given the scope of the committee's requests, this investment of time and resources impacts vital department functions such as approving oil and gas leases, approving infrastructure projects, working with states to develop greater sage-grouse conservation plans and much more," Jewell wrote.

Committee Democrats echoed Jewell's sentiments, and ranking member Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) chastised Hastings for implying that the Obama administration was orchestrating some kind of scheme to thwart the committee members and keep them in the dark.

DeFazio said Interior has provided the committee with 40,000 pages of documents, "Yet that's not enough. What are we investigating?"

He added: "There's this idea that somehow, deep down inside, there's this political conspiracy because this is such a masterful administration. They can hide things, and they can manipulate things and do things to the determent of the American people. Well guess what, I am here to tell you that this administration, in the opinion of this member of Congress, is not politically masterful at anything."

DeFazio said the committee should instead be working on a host of other significant issues, such as finding the roughly $450 million needed to fund the payments in lieu of taxes (PILT) program that was not included in the 2014 omnibus appropriations bill.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), said he agreed. "Those are emergency issues and should be on the top of the agenda ... rather than doing supernatural chasing of ghosts in terms of subpoenas."

But Hastings said the committee has been more than willing to work with the Obama administration.

"We've been extremely patient over the last year, and I've given the new Interior secretary a chance to get up to speed," he said during an opening statement. "The secretary has expressed a willingness to work with me directly to resolve some of our oversight requests, and I'm certainly willing to do so. Yet requests for specific documents remain incomplete. Requests to speak to specific officials have not been met. Many months have passed and the department has yet to provide full transparent documents that we have asked for."

He added, "It's very disappointing and frustrating that it appears the only way to get full, transparent answers out of this administration may be to issue subpoenas."

Controversial issues

The latest subpoenas will focus on the four specific areas in the approved motion.

One of the biggest is the committee's ongoing investigation over the decision to sequester SRS funds, which are designed to compensate counties affected by the decline in federal timber sales in the 1990s.

Hastings last fall issued subpoenas to the Office of Management and Budget and the Agriculture Department seeking documents related to their decision to sequester nearly $18 million in SRS funds after Congress failed to avert the across-the-board sequester cuts in March (Greenwire, Sept. 5, 2013).

He did so after he received no reply to letters he sent to OMB and USDA seeking documents and correspondences involving the SRS decision.

Hastings can also file subpoenas involving the development of a stream protection rule designed to protect waterways from coal extraction activities that could pollute them.

The rule, which is being developed by the Office of Surface Mining, would replace a 2008 rule promulgated under President George W. Bush. The Obama administration and environmentalists want to scrap and replace the 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule, calling it weaker than the 1983 version adopted under Republican President Reagan.

But the proposed rule is very controversial with elected leaders in coal-heavy states, many of whom fear the rule will harm the industry, and OSM has conceded it could cost thousands of jobs.

The exact number of jobs that could be lost was the focus of an Interior Department Office of Inspector General investigation released last month that found OSM changed the method of estimating job losses after leaked documents showed the rule could cost 7,000 jobs. The IG report stopped short of accusing the agency of improperly downplaying the economic impacts of the rulemaking (E&ENews PM, Dec. 20, 2013).

Hastings can also now subpoena officials and documents related to the Obama administration's enforcement of federal laws designed to protect eagles and other sensitive species, including the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Endangered Species Act.

It's unclear what the apparent conflicts of interest are that Hastings and the committee want to investigate.

A Natural Resources Committee aide this week provided a March 13 letter from Hastings to then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar citing concerns over how many cases of alleged ethics violations the agency had referred to the Interior inspector general.

The letter cites news reports about what the committee suggests are perceived conflicts of interest involving Salazar's former counsel Steve Black and former Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey (E&ENews PM, Jan. 15).

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