A Condo Deal Like Pruitt's Would Get EPA Staff in Trouble
A Condo Deal Like Pruitt's Would Get Other EPA Staff in Trouble
(Bloomberg) -- On paper, there are plenty of things that can get an employee fired from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Sleeping on duty. Bringing alcohol to work. Even "unhygienic practices which annoy or jeopardize the health of others."
The agency’s guidelines for infractions contain no specific entry for renting a Capitol Hill bedroom from a lobbyist for $50 a night. But they do state that "use of official authority or information for private gain" and engaging in private business activities that "create the appearance of a conflict of interest" are each firing offenses.
Whether or not Scott Pruitt keeps his job as administrator is up to President Donald Trump, who has been supportive of his EPA administrator. But experts in government ethics, along with the union that represents EPA staff, say any other EPA employee would likely face some kind of punishment.
Pruitt leased a room last year from the wife of a lobbyist whose firm represents clients with business before the EPA. Pruitt paid $50 a night, but only for days he used the condo, and was permitted to let members of his family use the condo too. The agency’s ethics chief says the rent was fair, while leaving open the possibility that Pruitt violated rules requiring him to remain impartial.
"I do think there is an illegal gift issue here," said Larry Noble, former president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws and now general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington advocacy group.
Noble said that if an EPA employee were involved in a matter affecting the same person who was subsidizing that employee’s rent, that employee "should be subject to discipline." What type of discipline, Noble added, "would depend on the facts."
Kevin Minoli, the EPA’s principal deputy general counsel and its designated ethics official, reviewed the arrangement and concluded it didn’t violate laws barring federal officials from accepting gifts because it was "market value." But in a follow-up memo on April 4, Minoli stressed that his initial assessment was focused on the lease agreement itself -- not whether its terms were followed or if there were violations of other ethics laws, including a requirement that government employees act impartially.
“A federal employee must comply with the standards of ethical conduct, including those related to impartiality, at all times," Minoli wrote in the follow-up memo.
Minoli disputed on Friday the assertion that ordinary EPA staff would be punished for the same rental arrangement. "Employees would not be violating any conflicts of interest requirements as the tenant in a hypothetical similar situation," Minoli said in an email.
On Tuesday, Minoli said he had referred the matter to the EPA’s inspector general. The IG’s office hasn’t decided whether to take up the case but confirmed to Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware that it would be reviewing his allegations that outgoing policy adviser Samantha Dravis did not work for much of November 2017 through January 2018 but was still compensated as a full-time employee.
The EPA’s inspector general is already investigating other matters related to Pruitt or security at the agency, including an audit of the administrator’s travel, an examination of the system used to pay the agency’s criminal enforcement officers and an inquiry into how he used a provision under the Safe Drinking Water Act to hire employees.
Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for government ethics, said an EPA staffer who did the same thing as Pruitt would likely face consequences.
Even though Pruitt’s landlord wasn’t lobbying the EPA, the fact that his landlord’s husband had business before the agency means the arrangement "still wouldn’t pass the smell test," McGehee said by email.
John O’Grady, who represents more than 1,000 EPA employees for the American Federation of Government Employees, was more direct. A government employee caught renting a room from a lobbyist at that price "would probably be on their way out the door."
O’Grady pointed to the 1990 case of a Department of Transportation employee who accepted a discounted rate at a hotel run by somebody who worked for the same airport he was charged with inspecting -- a conflict of interest that the department decided was a firing offense. (The employee appealed, and his penalty was softened to a demotion.)
Other agencies, including the Interior Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of the Navy, have likewise fired or suspended employees for a real or perceived conflict of interest, according to rulings reviewed by Bloomberg.
Health-Care Lobbyist
Pruitt rented the bedroom from health-care lobbyist Vicki Hart, whose husband J. Steven Hart is the chairman of Williams & Jensen. Although Steven Hart said he didn’t personally lobby the EPA in 2017 or this year, some of his corporate clients had pending matters with the agency. And other Williams & Jensen employees have disclosed lobbying the EPA since Pruitt took over the agency last year.
Whether Pruitt’s rent constituted a gift is in dispute. Minoli wrote in a March 30 memo that Pruitt’s rental terms were not below market value. In a subsequent memo, dated April 4, he wrote that his decision was based on a review of other rooms in the same area.
The Office of Government Ethics, an independent federal agency, has taken issue with Minoli’s findings. In a letter dated April 6, the office said the available information "calls into question" Minoli’s conclusion that Pruitt "paid market value" for the room he used.
McGehee, the ethics advocate, said it’s unreasonable to expect an EPA official to pass judgment on the actions of his boss. She said the case should have been automatically referred to the Office of Government Ethics, which is separate from the EPA.
If somebody in Minoli’s position "takes a tough line against a political higher up, he/she knows their chances for career advancement have just been significantly diminished," McGehee said in an email. "The result can be a sort of self-censorship."
Other experts raised questions of their own about the EPA ethics office’s conclusions.
Even if Pruitt’s rent wasn’t below market rates, and so didn’t by itself constitute a gift, Minoli’s April 4 memo raised the possibility Pruitt could still have run afoul of federal rules on impartiality. Minoli stressed that he hadn’t addressed that question.
Brenda Mallory, who was Minoli’s predecessor at EPA, said in an interview that Pruitt’s rental arrangement "looks very bad." But she said it was hard to conclude whether Pruitt had violated the rules requiring officials to remain impartial, without first having more information about the nature of his ties with the owners of the apartment.
Even if Pruitt hadn’t necessarily run afoul of ethics rules, Mallory added, that doesn’t mean he did nothing wrong. "The Pruitt situation is emblematic of bad judgment," she said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Flavelle in Washington at cflavelle@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman
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