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News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Of foxes, henhouses, and unbreathable air
The excellent Newsday series, "Erasing the Rules," continues today with a focus on EPA.
There have been some exceptions to the pattern, such as the EPA's adoption earlier this year of tough new emissions standards for diesel engines. But critics and many analysts say the common thread that ties together almost all of the administration's other environmental initiatives is to cushion the impact of regulations on business.
"Across the board in the environment and resource agencies, you have an array of individuals who represented big business in private practice and are now representing big business in public service," said John Walke, a former career EPA lawyer who is now director of clean air issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an activist group.
The Bush administration counters that it is actually good to have business types in the agency, because they know how regulations affect industry. Newsday quotes John Spinello, former EPA associate deputy general counsel, as adding, "The people who are served by government agencies deserve a well-rounded workforce that includes a diversity of perspectives outside the government," presumably meaning both environmental and industry voices. But about that diversity:
The Newsday analysis, however, shows that Bush's appointees to senior environment-related jobs actually have less diverse backgrounds than the people Clinton picked during his first three years in office. Bush's choices were more likely to be lobbyists or executives in their previous job, while Clinton's were distributed more evenly among the worlds of business, academia and advocacy.
Specifically, Bush appointed 22 lobbyists, lawyers, consultants or business executives to top environmental policymaking jobs in federal agencies and the White House, while Clinton named 14. And while Bush named six academics and just one employee of a non-profit group, Clinton named 10 from academia and seven from non-profits.
The remaining top appointees -- 26 by Bush and 27 by Clinton -- came from other government jobs, generally staff positions in Congress or in state governments. . . .
"The Clinton people were less predictable. With this administration, it seems like everybody at the political level here has either a close attachment with industry or with an ultra-conservative think-tank or legal organization," said one longtime EPA attorney, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from supervisors.
Read more about it -- more details about the industry ties in the ranks of EPA and the consequences of their anti-environmental decisionmaking -- before the link expires: Dan Fagin, "A facelift at the EPA: The Bush administration has committed itself to reshaping the EPA by staffing key regulatory posts with industry lobbyists and lawyers," Newsday, Oct. 12, 2004.
Posted by Robert Shull
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