Jewell: Interior spent $1.5 million on Hastings’s document demands

Politico Pro
By Andrew Restuccia
January 15, 2014

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings on Wednesday that his panel’s numerous document requests are burdening the department and cost taxpayers $1.5 million in 2013.

In a letter to Hastings following a Tuesday conversation with the Washington Republican, Jewell said the department “conservatively estimates” that in 2013 it spent 19,000 staff hours and $1.5 million of “taxpayer resources” responding to the committee’s document requests. The committee sent Interior at least 27 letters in 2013 related to document requests on 14 separate topics, Jewell said.

“As I said last night, I hope that we can work together on genuine reforms that will improve the operation of the department,” Jewell wrote. “However, the document requests that we received from your committee in 2013 appear overly broad to address your legitimate oversight interests and have significantly impacted the department’s ability to accomplish its core mission for the American people.”

The Interior functions that have suffered under the burden include “approving oil and gas leases, approving infrastructure projects, working with states to develop greater sage-grouse conservation plans and much more,” she added.

Jewell’s letter comes one day before the committee is set to vote on a motion authorizing Hastings to issue subpoenas for documents and to require administration officials to appear before the panel on several issues, including Interior’s rewrite of a coal regulation known as the 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule.

The subpoenas will also deal with topics including “apparent conflicts of interest by current and former Department of the Interior employees in connection with their responsibilities for administration of public lands generally,” implementation and enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, and the Secure Rural Schools program, according to the motion.

Hastings has spent years investigating Interior’s rewrite of the George W. Bush administration’s stream buffer zone rule. Hastings has complained that the rewrite could cost jobs and hurt coal country, and has raised questions about the way Interior is reworking the rule. He has also said the department has not been responsive enough to document requests.

Interior has not yet unveiled a proposed rule, and administration officials have long argued that Hastings’s probe is premature.

In her letter, Jewell said the department sometimes provides the committee with redacted documents “to protect information related to ongoing deliberations about the possible rulemaking.” She added, “Once the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has published a draft proposed rule, we will be better able to accommodate the committee’s requests without compromising this process.”

Hastings spokeswoman Mallory Micetich said she could not respond directly to the letter because the committee had just received it. But in an email, she said, “I can say generally that it is Chairman Hastings’s view that there is no burden in ensuring a transparent and open government that is accountable to the American people for its decisions and actions.”

Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, the top Democrat on the panel, criticized Hastings for his investigations.

“Rather than pass legislation to help rural communities, fisheries and the drought-plagued West, the majority is entirely focused on scoring more anti-Obama political points with far-fetched political conspiracies. And to top it off, they are wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to do it,” he said in a statement.