Report points out EPA moves to push out scientists

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency skirted some of its usual procedures and ethics rules when it overhauled key agency advisory boards, slashing the numbers of academic scientists on the panels and appointing more industry figures, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

Senate Democrats had asked for the GAO probe. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and one of those requesting the review by the government watchdog, said the administration’s trimming of scientists on EPA scientific panels has slowed the agency’s regulatory decisions overall and rigged the advisory boards “to favor its polluter backers.”

The EPA disputed one of the key findings in Monday’s GAO report, denying that the agency’s senior political appointees privately picked new members for the boards in a way that shut out recommendations by career EPA staffers.

And the agency said it is dealing with the other main GAO criticism, that EPA ethics staffers skimped on proper review of financial disclosures by some of the new panel appointees. The disclosures are required to guard against conflicts of interests. The agency has doubled the size of its career ethics attorney staff to make sure all agency appointees comply with the disclosure rules, spokesman Michael Abboud said.

President Donald Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, remade many of the panels advising the agency. Pruitt’s moves included barring scientists from serving on the advisory boards if they had received EPA research grants. Pruitt resigned amid ethics scandals last summer.