Pruitt kicks out professors, researchers under federal grant money rule

By Ben Wolfgang

Charles Werth was nearing the end of his first three-year term as an adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency, and had hopes of being kept on for another stint under President Trump. But the University of Texas professor also recently used federal grant money to study drinking water treatment. That, he said, seemed to be enough to sink his chances at another term on the Scientific Advisory Board, after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said anyone taking agency money couldn’t also be advising. “I knew Pruitt had wanted more industrial representation on the board, and my first three-year term was ending,” Mr. Werth told the Washington Times. EPA officials said “they were re-upping me, nominating me for a second three-year term. But I knew there were signs it wouldn’t go through.” Mr. Werth is one of dozens of professors and researchers who were either kicked off EPA panels or who didn’t get new terms under Mr. Pruitt, and many of them are victims of the new grant money rule. In many cases, their work for the EPA had little or nothing to do with the research they were conducting at their universities, but the Trump administration’s blanket ban bars anyone who’s using federal grants, regardless of how the money is spent. For some members, they got virtually no warning, learning of their dismissal just as Mr. Pruitt announced the sweeping change Oct. 31. Mr. Pruitt and his supporters say the move will help prevent any conflicts of interest on the committees, which review agency-produced science and act as something of a top-level peer-review system before the federal government proposes new regulations, adjusts existing ones, or scraps rules. “Whatever science comes out of EPA shouldn’t be political science,” the administrator said late last month. “From this day forward, EPA advisory committee members will be financially independent from the agency.”...more