Tag: Environmental Protection Agency

EPA Chief Moves to Improve the Agency’s Onerous Permitting Process Through Civil Service Reforms

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Scott Pruitt

By Natalia Castro   The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been plagued with inefficiency for years. The Partnership for Public Service has ranked the EPA 22 out of 23 ineffective leadership for a mid-sized agency for the last two years in a row. The Resource for the Future, an environmental, energy, and natural resource research institution, found that the average EPA permit process takes 420 days to complete. But now, under Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA is committed to fixing itself. Pruitt is taking the necessary steps to increase accountability and set clear guidelines for action. The EPA has already established over 400 metrics across all EPA programs and regional office that track monthly goals, created standardized methods of communicating monthly targets, integrated monthly business reviews for all senior leaders to review their office’s performance, and initiated new employee training. Pruitt is also looking to hold the career employees at the agency accountable. The newly created Office of Continuous Improvement (OCI) will ensure the policies that work in some areas of the department are implemented across the agency, and hopefully, act as a model for other agencies. In a May 14, 2018 press briefing, EPA Chief Operating Officer Henry Darwin explains, the purpose of the…

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EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Fends Off Democrat Critics, Makes Case for Deregulation in Testy Hearings

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EPA Chief Scott Priutt

by Kevin Mooney   EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt offered up a vigorous defense of his record amid negative media coverage of his travel, security, and living expenses Thursday in testifying before two House subcommittees. “Much of what has been targeted toward me and my team has been half-truths or at best stories so twisted they do not represent reality,” Pruitt said in opening remarks to the Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on the environment. The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, who also testified before an Appropriations Committee panel, said attacks on him and his staff are part of a larger agenda to derail President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut burdensome regulations on individuals and businesses. “I simply will not let that happen,” he said. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Although both hearings had been scheduled to address the EPA’s budget, committee members spent the bulk of their time questioning Pruitt about allegations concerning his public expenditures and management decisions. Beforehand, EPA officials distributed a 23-page document disputing what the agency describes as “false claims” circulated in the news media concerning Pruitt’s international travel, security…

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SOURCES: Most Of What EPA’s Leaker Told Dems About Scott Pruitt Is ‘False’

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EPA Chief Scott Priutt

by Michael Bastasch   A former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official likely behind negative media stories about Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t have all his facts straight, according sources familiar with EPA’s inner-workings. Former Trump campaign official Kevin Chmielewski, who’s also former EPA deputy chief of staff operations, gave congressional Democrats a list of accusations against Pruitt, detailing the administrator’s alleged “wasteful spending” and “disregard for ethical and legal requirements.” Chmielewski is the likely source for media reports surrounding Pruitt’s spending habits and alleged ethical lapses. Chmielewski was removed from his position at EPA for challenging Pruitt, but that hasn’t been confirmed, reports said. But many of Chmielewski’s claims have been called into question by two sources familiar with Pruitt’s security detail. One source told The Daily Caller News Foundation of Chmielewski’s that “more than 60 percent is false, the other 40 percent is information he distorted.” In one instance Chmielewski alleged “a $30,000 contract with private Italian security personnel entered into by Mr. [Pasquele] Nino Perrotta,” ahead of Pruitt’s attendance of a G7 summit in Italy. However, two sources familiar with Pruitt’s security said that never happened, adding Perrotta, the special agent in charge of Pruitt’s security detail, would have had no authority…

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Trump Backs Regulation-Slashing Scott Pruitt at EPA as Angry Liberals Circle

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President Donald Trump maintains his confidence in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has killed hundreds of excessive bureaucratic regulations, according to multiple reports Tuesday. Pruitt incurred ire in the liberal mainstream media most recently over reports of high travel and security expenses funded with taxpayer dollars, the $50-per-night he spent staying in a lobbyist’s wife’s condo for a few months in 2017 and the news that he procured raises for two of his staffers against White House protocol.

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GOP Group FOIAs Emails Of Anti-Trump EPA Employees and Now They’re Mad

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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees who publicly criticized the Trump administration are crying foul after a Republican group filed a public information request against them, according to a Sunday report from The New York Times. A Republican campaign group made public information requests for the emails of three agency employees who communicated with congressional Democrats critical of the EPA. The targeted employees believe the EPA is orchestrating a type of fishing expedition against its critics.

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Watchdogs Turn Up More Evidence Obama’s EPA Broke Federal Law

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Tennessee Star

Former President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency used a social media platform to secretly promote the agency’s policies in violation of federal law, according to a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C. Judicial Watch obtained 900 pages of documents Monday showing the EPA used social media to lobby support for the Waters of the United States rule. The agency used Thunderclap, a platform that shares messages across Facebook and Twitter, to recruit outside groups to generate support for various environmental policies. …

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Why EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Is President Trump’s Best Cabinet Secretary

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EPA Chief Scott Priutt

by CHQ Staff   We’ve told CHQ readers about EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s role in President Trump’s successful efforts to roll back the regulatory state, but his efforts so far pale in comparison to Pruitt’s announcement yesterday that he was ending the EPA’s practice of “sue and settle.” Sue and settle was the practice, carried out under Republican as well as Democratic administrations, of allowing special interest groups to sue the EPA to enforce their view of the law or regulation, and then settling without fighting the case or defending the plain words of the statute or regulation. The result would be a “consent decree” issued by an unelected judge that would make law based on the whims and financial self-interest of radical environmental groups. To implement this new policy, Pruitt issued an Agency-wide directive to end “sue and settle” practices within the Agency, providing an unprecedented level of public participation and transparency in EPA consent decrees and settlement agreements. “The days of regulation through litigation are over,” said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. “We will no longer go behind closed doors and use consent decrees and settlement agreements to resolve lawsuits filed against the Agency by special interest groups where…

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House Republicans Lay Out Their Plan to Rein in the EPA

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

House Republicans released their proposal to balance the federal budget in 10 years, which included their plans to rein in the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency. Republicans plan three broad reforms for the EPA: reduce its funding, cut global warming programs, and eliminate the agency’s policy office. “The Environmental Protection Agency has long overreached…

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