EPA’s Secret Emails on Drafting Clean Power Plan







Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only government official to use private email to get around the public watchdogs observing how government works, or is supposed to work. So was Michael Goo, the Environmental Protection Agency’s former Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy which developed the controversial Clean Power Plan. Using his private email, rather than his official EPA email, Mr. Goo secretary shared draft options with lobbyists and high-level staffers at the Sierra Club and the Clean Air task Force who in turn, like Natural Resource Defense Council staff, told him how to alter the policy that was ultimately implemented in the Rule, according to The Energy and Environment Legal Institute in a report released this week.

It is the Clean Power Plan that was challenged by Oklahoma and other states who called it ‘overreach’ and charged it would punish consumers with higher utility bills. The report by E and E laid out for the first time a pattern of ex parte communications by EPA officials gathered from Freedom of Information Act requests, piecing together emails obtained by E and E Legal, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a law student in his litigation with EPA.

“Washington being Washington, amid all the legal and technical problems challengers to the Clean Power Plan raised, in the end no other challenger was willing to press the argument that a rule should be vacaed over backdoor dealings between lobbyists and an out of control agency,” stated E and E Legal in a news release on Monday explaining how it entered the Green House Gas case. The Watchdog group said it asked the D.C. Circuit courts on Friday night for permission to file a brief, supplemental argument that the Clean Power Plan needs to be sent back to EPA for an honest restart. It also presented FOIA’d emails reflecting what the Wall Street Journal called EPA’s Secret Staff.

Through these communications and by heavily incorporating their edits and input into EPA’s own deliberative drafts, Goo made CATF (Clean Air Task Force) and these other groups effectively part of EPA’s work group developing the Clean Power Plan, stated E and E Legal. Those communications were not entered into the records until the summer of 2013 as Goo was leaving office.

“Such secrecy is inconsistent with fundamental principles of due process, fair notice, and accountable government,” stated E and E Legal. “Protecting secret access isn’t just bad government, it puts off a reckoning for lawless governance. When an agency hides secret regulatory dealing as E and E Legal has uncovered, the law requires that rule to be struck.”