Subpoena Power for Interior Documents Granted to House Democrat
The House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday gave its chairman, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the right to issue subpoenas, something Grijalva says he needs because of the Trump administration’s refusal to turn over information.
Grijalva is expected to subpoena information requested by the committee that the Interior Department has failed to provide, including documents related to moving the Bureau of Land Management headquarters from Washington to Colorado.
The resolution passed 21-15 along party lines with an amendment that prevents Grijalva from issuing a subpoena until seven days after consulting with committee Republicans. Grijalva said he would begin issuing subpoenas in seven days.
The resolution gives him the power to issues subpoenas for information from the Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce departments and the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget.
Subpoenas are essential for the committee to conduct oversight of the Interior Department after dealing with “more than a year of stonewalling and smokescreens” from the Trump administration and Interior department witnesses who have appeared before the committee, Grijalva said.
The committee doesn’t automatically grant itself subpoena power at the beginning of each congressional session.
It last issued subpoenas in 2016 under Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) as chairman related to the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster in Colorado.
The committee can’t craft legislation pertaining to shrunken national monuments and the relocation of the Bureau of Land Management headquarters “without testimony or documentation that the administration is withholding,” Grijalva said.
He said administration witnesses appearing before the committee have had a “cavalier” attitude toward answering the committee’s questions, and the administration hasn’t responded to questions about legislation the committee is considering.
“We’re not here as potted plants to be cared for and watered when the administration decides it’s time,” Grijalva said. “We’re here as an independent body with co-equal status. The discussion about subpoena power is about us asserting that co-equal status. This committee is essentially ignored.”
Resistance and ‘Wingdings’
Interior for months resisted responding to the committee’s requests for documents, but recently said it has delivered thousands of pages to committee staff.
The Interior press secretary yesterday tweeted that the department had delivered 42,714 documents to the committee so far in 2020.
At a September committee hearing, Interior Department Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani called Interior’s responsiveness to Congress’ requests for information “robust,” by that time producing more than 100,000 pages.
But Grijalva accused the department of padding its numbers. Interior submitted a printed 12,000-page spreadsheet that was already available online, and hundreds of pages full of “unintelligible symbols,” he said.
Jorjani said many of those pages were filled with “wingdings,” or nonsense characters, in an effort to provide Congress with complete documents. “I commit to doing better,” he said in September.
At another September committee hearing, acting BLM Director William Perry Pendley refused to answer some questions about the plan to move the BLM’s national headquarters from Washington to Grand Junction, Colo.
At that hearing, Pendley said he “can’t get into the specifics” of why Grand Junction, which is 250 miles from the nearest state capital and major airport, was the Interior Department’s choice for the new BLM headquarters.
Grijalva said Wednesday that all such incidents of ill-prepared witnesses, inadequate information provided to the committee, and ignored requests for information “begin to accumulate.”
“We’ve reached the accumulation point,” he said.
Republicans Object
Republicans said Democrats both in the committee and in their control of the House are abusing their power.
“I find it very frightening what we’re doing today,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) said at the hearing. “You don’t throw out good process with the bathwater. You just don’t.”
Bishop criticized the committee for exercising “blanket authority” to force agencies and private individuals to meet “overly broad” requests for information.
“The fact that we’re doing this change is unusual,” Bishop said, calling the effort “abhorrent.”
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said the amendment invites abuse, but “the worst part about it is that I know how prompt these agencies are with congressional staff.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) countered: “The reason we’re doing this after 14 months of desperate attempts to not go there, to try to work cooperatively with this administration, is we have never seen a president like this or administration like this when it comes to blanket stonewalling.”
Drinking Water Grants
The committee also advanced several bills at the hearing Wednesday.
Among them was H.R. 5347, sponsored by Rep. T.J. Cox (D-Calif.), which would establish a federal grant program through the Interior Department to support disadvantaged communities unable to fully overhaul drinking water systems found to be contaminated.
Cox said half of California’s failing drinking water systems are in the San Joaquin Valley, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, part of the Interior Department, is well positioned to provide drinking water systems grants because it is the region’s top water supplier.
Republicans on the committee opposed the bill because they said it duplicates existing federal drinking water programs.
The bill “enacts shiny new programs,” that are already being accomplished by the Environmental Protection Agency, said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) at the hearing.
But Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) said many communities in California and throughout the country still don’t meet clean drinking water standards, and they need support.
“I view this legislation as a work in progress,” and the EPA program falls short, Costa said. “We need to get Interior to work with EPA to address these shortcomings.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Bobby Magill at bmagill@bloombergenvironment.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory Henderson at ghenderson@bloombergenvironment.com; Renee Schoof at rschoof@bloombergenvironment.com
By: Bobby Magill
Source: Bloomberg Government
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