EPA watchdog plans to investigate Scott Pruitt’s $25,000 phone booth

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general will investigate how it decided to spend more than $25,000 installing a secure, soundproof communications booth in the office of Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested the inquiry earlier this fall, asking the EPA watchdog to examine any potential waste, fraud or abuse related to the project. The small booth was purchased from the Richmondbased company Acoustical Solutions.

Typically, the type of soundproof booth like the one installed at the agency’s headquarters is used to conduct hearing tests. But the EPA sought out a far more expensive, customized version that Pruitt could use to communicate privately with top government officials. The agency appears to also have spent an additional $7,978 removing closed-circuit television equipment to make room for the booth in an area off Pruitt’s third-floor office, according to a government contracting database.

In response to Pallone’s letter, EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins wrote that his office would investigate whether the funds spent on the project “comply with appropriations law.”

“That is within the authority of the IG to review, and we will do so,” Elkins wrote, while also cautioning that such an inquiry might not happen quickly. “As you know, we have numerous other pending matters, and are not sure when we can begin this engagement.”

EPA officials initially said that Pruitt needed a secure communications area in his office so he could have private calls with the White House and other administration officials. Pruitt himself has repeated the claim, describing the soundproof booth as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF.

“It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job,” Pruitt told lawmakers during a hearing on Capitol Hill last week.

But no previous EPA administrators had such a setup, and the agency has long maintained a SCIF on a separate floor from the administrator’s office, where officials with proper clearances can go to share information classified as secret. The agency has not specified what aspects of that facility might be outdated, or whether the unit inside Pruitt’s office would meet the physical and technical specifications generally required for a SCIF.

The inquiry is not the only one Pruitt is facing from his agency’s inspector general.

In August, the watchdog announced that it had opened an inquiry into Pruitt’s frequent travel back to Oklahoma, where he formerly served as state attorney general. It said at the time that the investigation was triggered by “congressional requests and a hotline complaint, all of which expressed concerns about Administrator Pruitt’s travel — primarily his frequent travel to and from his home state of Oklahoma at taxpayer expense.”