Ex-EPA aides: Old queries had priority

WASHINGTON — Three former aides to Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt confirmed to congressional investigators that the EPA delayed producing emails and other government documents sought by members of the public through open- records requests by choosing to first respond to old petitions made during the Barack Obama administration.

The “first in, first out” tactic for requests made through the Freedom of Information Act is seen as yet another example of the EPA restricting what records make their way into the public eye since Pruitt has taken office. That public- records policy was described in a letter sent Monday to Pruitt by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, which requested documents from the administrator.

The committee’s investigation into Pruitt is one of at least a dozen federal inquiries the EPA chief is facing over his spending and management decisions at the agency.

His tenure, which has been marked by Pruitt’s attempts to unravel environmental rules put in place by the previous administration, has also drawn the scrutiny of journalists, environmentalists and other members of the public who have filed thousands of records requests with the EPA.

Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff, told the committee’s staff that, facing that torrent of requests, Pruitt instructed his staff “not to respond to FOIA requests regarding your tenure until requests from the Obama Administration had been completed,” according to the letter addressed to Pruitt.

Two other former Pruitt aides, Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp, confirmed the policy, according to the letter.

In response to a request for comment about the letter, the EPA noted that it has been flooded with requests since the start of Pruitt’s tenure even as it sits on a backlog of requests from the days of the Obama administration.

“Since the beginning of this administration, EPA has seen a dramatic increase in FOIA requests as compared to the last administration, including a nearly 200% increase in the Administrator’s office alone, and the Agency is working to release them in a timely manner,” EPA spokesman Kelsi Daniell said. “When Administrator Pruitt arrived at EPA he inherited a backlog of FOIA requests, some dating back to 2008, and over the last year and a half, EPA has worked tirelessly to clear this backlog.”

Daniell added that the agency will respond to details of the letter “through the proper channels.”

According to Cummings, both Justice Department guidelines and the EPA’s Freedom of Information Act regulations call for the agency to complete simpler requests ahead of more complex ones, instead of just tackling them in the order they are received.

Greenwalt, at one time Pruitt’s senior counsel, objected to the “first in, first out” policy. A better way to handle the flood of requests, the letter says she told the committee, was to “evaluate them as they come in, recognizing that some FOIAs are larger than others and more time-consuming and more complicated than others.”

Both Greenwalt and Hupp left their jobs at the EPA last week.

Beyond the “first in, first out” policy, Pruitt’s political appointees also sought to tighten the reins over public-records requests by reviewing them personally.

Jonathan Newton, an attorney-adviser at the agency, told Freedom of Information Act coordinators in a June 2017 email that pending releases should be sent for review to three political appointees at least “48 hours before the release.” The three aides tasked with scrutinizing the responses were Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson; Liz Bowman, then his top communications officer; and another EPA spokesman at the time, Amy Graham.

A month later, Jackson issued a memo to the heads of six EPA offices to “implement a pilot project” centralizing the completion of many information requests in the Office of General Counsel.

Some requesters, like the Sierra Club, have had to sue the EPA to get documents released. A cache of emails released to the environmental group helped fuel the scrutiny of Pruitt.