EPA administrator Scott Pruitt takes secrecy to utterly ridiculous lengths, with a cone of silence in his office, three separate security systems inside the EPA offices, and a private army of at least 30 security guards whose salaries alone top $2 million. Among Pruitt’s paranoid quirks is ordering that no minutes be kept of his meetings and banning the use of recording devices on an entire floor of the EPA. Which might help to explain this catastrophe.
The Environmental Protection Agency says an internal task force appointed to revamp how the nation’s most polluted sites are cleaned up generated no record of its deliberations.
That’s right. An eight-month effort to deal with the worst environmental sites in the nation has produced … nothing. Except that’s not quite true. It only took a couple of weeks for that task force to produce a set of recommendations.
The task force in June issued a nearly three-dozen page report containing 42 detailed recommendations, all of which Pruitt immediately adopted.
It’s just when it comes to backing up those recommendations with any sort of documentation that the task force responds with a shrug. After receiving a FOIA request for documents used in developing those “immediately adopted” recommendations, the EPA had this to say:
… a lawyer for EPA has written PEER to say that the task force had no agenda for its meetings, kept no minutes and used no reference materials.
Congratulations to Pruitt’s team for admitting they pulled this plan right out of their collective asses.
The folks at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said it a little more nicely.
“Pruitt’s plan for cleaning up toxic sites was apparently immaculately conceived, without the usual trappings of human parentage,” said Jeff Ruch, the executive direction of PEER. “It stretches credulity that 107 EPA staff members with no agenda or reference materials somehow wrote an intricate plan in 30 days.”
But it’s the same thing. Scott Pruitt, certified loon, has altered the rules for how to handle the nation’s most damaged, most dangerous environmental sites based on nothing but … nothing.
The task force was led by Albert “Kell” Kelly, whom Pruitt hired at EPA as a senior adviser. Kelly was previously the chairman of Tulsa-based SpiritBank, where he worked as an executive for 34 years.
Kelly’s entire qualification for running a task force on one of the most critical issues confronting the EPA?
Beverage also said Kelly is considered close to the EPA chief.
"They are good friends and have been for a long time," Beverage said.
Seriously. That’s it. Kelly is the rich son of a rich banking family whose experience with environmental disasters is all on the “how to create them” side. His task force was installed in late May, handed Pruitt their “analysis” a couple of weeks later, and doesn’t have so much as an Arby’s receipt to show for their effort.
Despite Kelly's expertise in finance, his career hasn't touched on environmental policy, let alone grappling with Superfund, one of EPA's most complex programs.
Oh, and about Kelly’s “expertise in finance”?
The Associated Press reported in August that Kelly was barred by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from working for any U.S. financial institution after officials determined he violated laws or regulations, leading to a financial loss for his bank.
Perfect. #$%*ing perfect.
The entire Trump team is a disaster, but Scott Pruitt is in a class all his own.