Trump
administration tells EPA to freeze all grants, contracts
By Brady Dennis and
Juliet Eilperin January 24 at 6:15 PM
The Trump
administration has instructed officials at the Environmental
Protection Agency to freeze its grants and contracts, a move that
could affect everything from state-led climate research to localized
efforts to improve air and water quality to environmental justice
projects aimed at helping poor communities.
An email went out to
employees in the agency’s Office of Acquisition Management within
hours of President Trump’s swearing-in on Friday.
“New EPA
administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be
temporarily suspended, effective immediately,” read the email,
which was shared with The Washington Post. “Until we receive
further clarification, which we hope to have soon, please construe
this to include task orders and work assignments.”
According to its
website, each year the EPA awards more than $4 billion in funding for
grants and other assistance agreements. For now, it appears, that
funding is on hold, casting a cloud of uncertainty over one of the
agency’s core functions, as well as over the scientists, state and
local officials, universities and Native American tribes that often
benefit from the grants.
“EPA staff have
been reviewing grants and contracts information with the incoming
transition team,” an agency spokesperson said in an email Tuesday.
“Pursuant to that review, the agency is continuing to award the
environmental program grants and state revolving loan fund grants to
the states and tribes; and we are working to quickly address issues
related to other categories of grants.” The agency said the goal is
to complete the grants and contracts review by the close of business
Friday.
It is unclear
whether the move by the incoming administration was related to
President Trump’s order Monday that federal agencies halt hiring in
all areas on the executive branch except for the military, national
security and public safety, which also curbed contracting as a way of
compensating for the freeze. “Contracting outside the Government to
circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted,”
the memorandum states.
[Trump’s
regulatory freeze halts four Obama rules aimed at promoting greater
energy efficiency]
Administration
officials inserted the language in an apparent attempt to curb the
growth in federal contracts that arose during previous freezes
imposed under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. But the
total halt in contracts and grants for a single agency appeared to go
beyond that specific provision, which applied solely to contracting
activities in response to the halt in hiring.
Myron Ebell, who
oversaw the EPA transition for the new administration, told
ProPublica on Monday that the freezing of grants and contracts was
not unprecedented.
“They’re trying
to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to
have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants,
hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Ebell,
director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, an industry-backed group that has long sought
to slash the authority of the EPA.
“This may be a
little wider than some previous administrations, but it’s very
similar to what others have done,” he told the publication.
But not in recent
history has such a blanket freeze taken place, and one employee told
ProPublica he did not recall anything like it in nearly a decade with
the agency.
The move is likely
to increase anxieties inside an already tense agency. Ebell and other
transition officials have made little secret about their goal of
greatly reducing the EPA’s footprint and regulatory reach. Trump
has repeatedly criticized the EPA for what he calls a string of
onerous, expensive regulations that are hampering businesses. And his
nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt,
has repeatedly sued the EPA over the years, challenging its legal
authority to regulate everything from mercury pollution to various
wetlands and waterways to carbon emissions from power plants.
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