Western Governors Meet To Talk Invasive Species, Water Management

Top politicians are in Vail, Colorado, this week for the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association. The governors of 11 Western states will meet Wednesday with Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. They spoke Monday with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt about everything from Medicaid to crumbling infrastructure at national parks. “We have proposed as part of our budget submission a proposal to use a revenue from activities on public lands to fund a funding source that would allow us to enhance that infrastructure,” said Bernhardt. “We just need to have the support of the American people to move forward because the infrastructure is crumbling, our roads are crumbling and it's time to address that problem.” Bernhardt’s predecessor, Ryan Zinke, had planned to move the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to this part of the country. Bernhardt said he's in the process of reevaluating whether some could be better done out West, and if some are necessary at all. "I expect fully that we'll move forward pretty soon in doing that and that it will involve a substantial element of the BLM folks in D.C. being repositioned,” said Bernhardt. Denver was proposed as one new location for the Bureau of Land Management headquarters. As the Mountain West News Bureau has reported, it's unclear if Congress will grant the funding necessary to make that move happen...MORE

Interior Department-released calendars of secretary nominee differ from his public descriptions

Although Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in a letter to the House Natural Resources Committee in February that he didn't keep calendars and the records of his daily schedule others kept for him were public, the Department recently published to its website hundreds of pages of documents that reveal new details about some meetings that were left off of previous versions of his calendars. The House Natural Resources Committee requested "all calendars and schedules" of Bernhardt's on Feb. 7, after saying the versions posted on the Interior Department's website were missing important details and excluding meeting descriptions or topics for more than 100 hours of "official government time," according to the committee's letter. Bernhardt responded to the committee by stating that he had "no legal obligation to personally maintain a calendar." He said "numerous people" who create calendar entries for him have made those entries public. "To the extent Agency records are created through that process, they are appropriately maintained to fully comply with the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act," he said in the letter. Now, days before his confirmation vote to be the next Interior Secretary, the Interior Department released 439 pages of documents spanning from Sept. 2017 to Nov. 2018 with more information about Bernhardt's daily schedule than previously released by the department. Getting a complete picture of what the former Deputy, now Acting, and, if confirmed, the next Secretary of the Interior Department has been doing since he started in 2017 has been an ongoing battle for outside watchdog groups and Congress...MORE

Dems demand details on acting Interior Secretary Bernhardt's meetings

Congressional Democrats are demanding to know who acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has met with on the job, seeking to fill holes in what they say are vague calendars. Like his predecessor, Ryan Zinke, Bernhardt's calendar has described his appointments in vague terms, such as "external meeting" or "call," but leaving out other parties. The letter, sent Thursday from House Natural Resources chairman Raul Grijalva, suggests the highly limited disclosures make it difficult to determine whether or not Bernhardt has indeed steered clear of meetings he is prohibited from attending under ethics rules. More than 150 entries from August 2017 through September 2018 "failed to include either a description of the meeting topic or the non-DOI attendees," the letter says, including 98 entries described as "External Meeting." Since his confirmation as deputy secretary in July 2017, Bernhardt has spearheaded some of the department's most controversial work, including an expansion of oil drilling projects on public lands. On Monday, President Donald Trump announced he would nominate Bernhardt for the secretary job, which also requires Senate confirmation. Bernhardt has carried with him, according to the Washington Post, a credit card-sized list of the multiple companies and issues he represented as a lobbyist and is barred from personally working on....MORE

Trump to nominate Bernhardt as Interior secretary

President Donald Trump will nominate David Bernhardt to be the new Interior secretary. The announcement in a tweet from the president Monday ends a nearly two-month-long search for a permanent replacement for Ryan Zinke, who in early December announced his resignation amid multiple scandals and ethics investigations. Bernhardt, who was confirmed as Zinke's deputy in July 2017, has been acting Interior chief since the beginning of the year. "David has done a fantastic job from the day he arrived, and we look forward to having his nomination officially confirmed!" Trump tweeted. Bernhardt welcomed the nomination in a tweet of his own. "It’s a humbling privilege to be nominated to lead a Department whose mission I love, to accomplish the balanced, common sense vision of our President," Bernhardt wrote...MORE

Enviros not happy with Bernhardt's nomination

“Bernhardt got this nomination as a reward for months of work cramming America’s natural heritage into a wood chipper,” Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “He’s already done more damage to our environment than anyone else in Interior Department history. Confirming him as Interior secretary would be a boon to polluters and a colossal disaster for our public lands and endangered species.”

Center for Western Priorities' Executive Director Jennifer Rokala called Bernhardt's nomination "an affront to America's parks and public lands." "As an oil and gas lobbyist, Bernhardt pushed to open vast swaths of public lands for drilling and mining," she said in a statement. "As deputy secretary, he was behind some of the worst policy decisions of Secretary Zinke's sad tenure, including stripping protections for imperiled wildlife. Bernhardt even used the government shutdown to approve drilling permits for companies linked to his former clients."

“Trump has once again nominated a corrupt industry hack to lead a critical federal agency,” said Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager for Friends of the Earth. “Instead of another puppet for corporate polluters, Americans want real leaders who will protect our public lands, natural resources and cultural heritage.”

“Bernhardt might as well be an ideological clone of Ryan Zinke,” said Ana Unruh Cohen of the Natural Resources Defense Council. She called Bernhardt “another industry shill who will continue to sell our precious natural resources to the highest bidders for exploitation.”

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article225514570.html#storylink=cpy

 “David Bernhardt is the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands,” said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, adding that he “has been dismantling basic protections for lands that belong to all of us and the vulnerable species, like the sage grouse, that depend on them.”

 "The ethical questions surrounding David Bernhardt and his commitment to pandering to oil, coal, and gas executives make former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke look like a tree-hugging environmentalist in comparison," Greenpeace USA climate campaigner Vicky Wyatt said in a statement.

The New Acting Interior Secretary Is An Agency Insider And Ex-Oil Lobbyist

So far the president has not nominated anyone as a permanent replacement. The acting secretary is Zinke's deputy David Bernhardt, a lawyer and former lobbyist for the oil industry with longtime experience at the agency. "He's thought by many to be the power behind the throne," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of the watchdog group Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility. Bernhardt is a polarizing figure, loved by the industry and assailed by environmental protection groups. From 2001 to 2009 he held a number of positions at the Department of the Interior, including solicitor. When Zinke named him as his deputy, he cited his extensive agency experience, "his esteemed legal career, and down-right love of our land and resources." Like many previous secretaries, Bernhardt also hails from the West — he's a native of Rifle, Colo. In addition to his track record in Washington governance and politics, Bernhardt also has experience in the fossil fuel industry. He worked for a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm where E&E News reported that his clients included Cobalt International Energy and the Independent Petroleum Association of America. Environmentalists argue it raises ethical questions for someone who worked on behalf of oil and gas companies to then be in charge of managing those resources. Kathleen Sgamma, president of the industry group Western Energy Alliance, said naysayers are being hypocritical. "It's always interesting to hear the enviros say that kind of thing, because they have no problem with them occupying positions when the tide is turned," she said. Case in point: the previous interior secretary, Sally Jewell, was the former head of outdoor recreation behemoth REI...MORE

As Rumors Mount Zinke's Days Are Numbered, Warnings About 'Man Behind the Curtain' Who Could Take Over Interior

While President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have both maintained that, at least for now, Zinke will remain in his post despite ongoing ethics probes, as rumors continue to mount that his days in the administration are numbered, so do concerns about his second-in-command, David Bernhardt. As the Interior Department's deputy secretary, Bernhardt would likely take the helm if Zinke resigns or is fired. Bernhardt worked his way up to serve as solicitor of the department during the George W. Bush administration. After that, as the Washington Post reported Monday, he worked as a lobbyist for polluting industries—which means that now, he has "so many potential conflicts of interest he has to carry a small card listing them all." Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.)—a critic of the department's approach to California water issues, from which Bernhart had to recuse himself for a year—and others have called him "a walking conflict of interest." "He is the guy behind the curtain who's manipulating everything, which he can do with his wealth of knowledge and experience," Jim Lyons, who served as deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management under the Obama administration, told the Post. As Jeff Turrentine of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) warned last week, Bernhardt's "long Washington résumé suggests that he would happily continue to carry out the Trump administration's war on public lands and federal waters—albeit with greater legal sophistication and fewer unforced ethical errors than his predecessor."...MORE