WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A federal government watchdog has sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alleging that it is wrongfully withholding records it is entitled to review under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) seeks records pertaining to meetings and communications with EPA appointees’ former employers and other special interest groups whose policy agendas have allegedly progressed during the Biden Administration.
“There are several high-level appointees who did work for these large, special interest groups many of whom had been involved in a significant amount of litigation and other matters against the agency in years past,” said Michael Chamberlain, PPT's director.
“The people who had those organizations as their former employers would be recused from and not be able to work on specific particular matters that involved those former employers and for us to establish whether that may or may not have occurred, these documents are essential.”
Federal ethics laws and the Biden "ethics pledge" prohibit appointees from participating in certain activities they may have engaged in during prior employment, as well as most communications with former employers.
“Through the course of some other FOIA documents that we received, we discovered one top science official at the EPA who was allowed to maintain his employment relationship with an instrumentality of the Chinese government while he was working for the EPA and the EPA allowed that to happen,” Chamberlain told Legal Newsline. “So, we do see some behaviors and actions that have raised questions and should perk up the radar of the American people. That's one of the reasons why we continue to press on these requests that we've submitted so that we can have the transparency.”
Although the EPA granted PPT’s fee waiver request on at least one FOIA query, the request remains pending for more than 160 days, which is beyond the statutory period for federal agencies to make a determination with respect to a FOIA request, according to the complaint.
“We're at a time where the trust of the American public in their government is at an all-time low and agencies withholding documents, not providing transparency and high-level leadership acting in an area of possible and potential conflicts of interest feed into that lack of trust,” Chamberlain added.
“If the federal government ever wishes to restore the trust of the American public in the government, then providing transparency, ensuring that everyone follows the same rules, and that they comply with the high standards that the American public expects of them are essential to restoring that trust.”
Examples of employers that PPT lists in the lawsuit include the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Hub Project, the Sierra Club, US Climate Alliance, Center for American Progress, Georgetown Climate Center, Earthjustice, Union of Concerned Scientists, NextGen, Democracy Forward, and the US Water Alliance.