Safety agency will move ahead with a ‘quorum of one’
The new chairwoman of a federal agency that investigates major industrial accidents has an unusual problem: she’s the only person on its five-member board, and President Donald Trump wants it shut down.
Dr. Katherine Lemos said she plans to continue the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s work after securing a legal opinion that she can operate as a “quorum of one.”
In her first interview since taking office, Lemos vowed to get the roughly 35-person agency with a checkered past “off the problem child list,” while promising to be tough on the chemical and petroleum industries it oversees.
“I’m not afraid of making recommendations that some people will be less pleased with,” said Lemos, a Republican.
But the resignation on May 1 of former interim chair Kristen
Kulinowski left Lemos as the board’s only member. That adds to a list of agencies as varied as the Federal Election Commission and the Merit Systems Protection Board whose work has been impeded by unfilled vacancies.
Typically, government commissions and boards need a majority of members present to conduct business. Lemos, citing a legal opinion from the agency’s general counsel, contends she can proceed on her own. She intends to announce her plan to do so at the agency’s next board meeting in September.
Rig blowout
The Chemical Safety Board became operational in 1998 and investigated BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blowout and a chemical spill that tainted drinking water for hundreds of thousands of West Virginian residents in 2014. But it’s battled years of staff defections and allegations of dysfunction.
A 2014 congressional probe said the safety board had an “abusive and hostile work environment” that had spurred several staff members to resign. It’s also been rapped for moving too slowly on its investigations.
Among its 13 still-open investigations is a June 2019 explosion and massive fire at Philadelphia Energy Solutions Inc. believed to have been caused by a corroded pipe that released a flammable vapor cloud. It’s also looking into a 2018 fire at a Husky Energy Inc. refinery in Superior, Wis., that injured multiple people.
‘State of turmoil’
Then-chairman Rafael MoureEraso stepped down in 2015 at the request of the Obama White House and congressional lawmakers from both parties, who cited concerns about retaliation against whistleblowers and a
“state of turmoil” on the board.
In each of his annual budgets Trump has proposed eliminating the agency, currently funded at $12 million — a move a spokesman for the United Steelworkers union last year called “remarkably stupid.” The administration has said the CSB’s work duplicated that of other agencies, and that the board’s focus on regulation had “frustrated both regulators and industry.”
Still, Lemos, who has worked in safety-focused roles at the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration, and most recently in Northrop Grumman’s aerospace sector, promises to press on. Despite the president’s desire to kill the agency, Lemos said she’s received nothing but support from the White House Presidential Personnel Office.
“The administration put me in here for a reason, and they gave me the mandate to make this a strong agency,” she said.
Lemos has had bipartisan support. Her nomination was