The amount of taxpayer money that the Department of Energy (DOE) spent on sending its secretary and staff to Scotland for a climate change summit last year is being withheld, according to a new lawsuit.
Protect the Public's Trust (PPT) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last week alleging wrongful withholding of non-exempt responsive records.
“They don't appear to be willing to provide the documents that would allow us to determine how much they spent on the conference and how many taxpayer resources they devoted to planning and attending the conference,” said PPT Director Michael Chamberlain.
Immediately after Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other DOE staff traveled to and from the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last year, PPT submitted its FOIA request.
“Without getting the records about where people may have stayed or how they traveled or any of the other records related to their attendance, there's no way to know how luxurious the trip was,” Chamberlain told Legal Newsline.
Initially, the agency estimated that it would be providing records by the end of April.
“At this time, I am working on completing responsiveness review and deduping of documents," the DOE's email stated. "We are working on providing a 1st partial of documents by the end of April and provide a rolling partial the following month in May to complete the response to this request.”
However, 200 days have passed and the Department has not made a determination as to whether it will comply.
“We don't know how many staffers that the Department of Energy sent,” Chamberlain said. “We do know that Secretary Granholm attended, but we aren't able to get the records that would reveal how many other DOE staff attended.”
The DOE’s reaction to the FOIA request contradicts Attorney General Merrick Garland’s declaration that transparency in government operations is a priority of this Administration.
“We're not sure the motivation behind why they're not releasing the information,” Chamberlain added. “We just know that they're not, and we believe that our litigation is the only way that we're going to be able to get those records.”