A trio of Democrats on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee have written to Scott Pruitt with a simple question—why is he seeking to build a new EPA office in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
It is our understanding that beginning in January 2017 you began directing EPA staff to explore establishing an EPA office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, your hometown. Last year, media reports, based on your travel schedule, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed that you frequently traveled to Oklahoma on the weekends. You apparently directed staff to examine opening an EPA office in your hometown of Tulsa, although EPA’s Region 6 office, which includes authority over Oklahoma, is in Dallas, Texas.
But Pruitt apparently didn’t stop with telling EPA staffers to look into opening a very special EPA office site exactly where it was most convenient to him. He had some particular requirements for that office. Working through Ryan Jackson, who was formerly worked as a Senate staffer for Oklahoma Senator and snowball maker James Inhofe before taking on his current role as EPA Chief of Staff, the Tulsa plan included many of those elements that have marked Pruitt’s time in D.C. as such a role model of excess and paranoia.
In an email, Mr. Jackson directed EPA staff to identify proposed new office space in Tulsa that included a conference room, secure parking, would be able to accommodate 24/7 security and included a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) for secure communications.
Pruitt isn’t just looking for office space in Tulsa. He wants to create a second mini-fortress, complete with his squad of personal guards and another brand-new cone of silence. The plan to build Pruitt his own custom office fits what he said on one of his $14,000 flights around his home state was expressly to talk about closing other offices.
What exactly was Pruitt up to on these trips? On one of them, his only public meeting in Oklahoma, he and six staffers took an Interior Department plane from Tulsa to Guymon, a town in Oklahoma’s panhandle, at a cost of $14,400. …
One of the things Pruitt reportedly talked about in his meetings with farmers in late July was closing the EPA’s 10 regional offices and reassigning staff to work in state capitals.
The Democrats sending the letter to Pruitt had a sensible, and very direct, comment on these plans.
Establishing a new EPA office in your hometown may be personally convenient for you, but it seems ethically questionable, professionally unnecessary, and financially unjustified.
The House Democrats have demanded that Pruitt turn over communications related to this project. A demand which will almost certainly not be supported by House Republicans who spent their time with Pruitt last week patting him on the head for the speed with which he’s undoing four decades of laws intended to protect American air, water and soil.
The Democrats who signed onto the letter were the committee’s ranking member, Eddie Bernice Johnson, along with members Suzanne Bonamici and Donald Beyer.