Interior Department chief of staff Todd Willens has reportedly canceled Interior’s sponsorship of congressional oversight trips, NBC News reported, amounting to a potentially illegal move. The decision comes after an alleged confrontation between an Interior staff member and an aide to the House Appropriations Committee.
“We’ve seen this Administration go to great lengths to avoid oversight and scrutiny, but this represents a new low,” said Jayson O’Neill, Deputy Director for Western Values Project. “Either Bernhardt and his underlings aren’t competent enough to manage congressional field visits or they’re just trying to stonewall necessary congressional oversight functions. Now more than ever Congress needs to vigorously perform oversight to ensure our public servants are protecting our public lands.”
The decision to halt all of Interior’s sponsorship of House oversight trips is potentially illegal, according to a law that says some funds Congress appropriates to federal agencies must be made available to scrutinize just exactly how appropriated money is being used.
This isn’t the first attempt by Secretary Bernhardt’s Interior to undermine Congressional oversight and outside scrutiny:
Just yesterday, William Pendley, Acting BLM Director and anti-public lands zealot, failed to give a clear rationale concerning Bernhardt’s plan to relocate the BLM in front of the House Natural Resources Committee. Instead, he spent much of the hearing defending his call to sell all public lands and his disparaging remarks towards Native Americans.
Willens is a long-time D.C. operative who has, throughout his career, continually utilized the lobbyist revolving door. Willens has his own history with congressional staff trips: he was among a group of congressional staffers who visited the Mariana Islands on a trip paid by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.