The debate over science in the current administration has taken a new twist with proposed relocation of research offices at USDA.
Former agency heads and environmentalists are blasting a new executive order issued late Friday evening as a stealthy means to remove scientific oversight from agency rulemaking.
Previous heads of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Interior Department say President Trump’s directive last week for all agencies to cut at least a third of their advisory committees by September would weaken the science-based regulations process that the administration has pushed back against since Trump took office.
“The decision is disappointing to anyone who cares about evidence-based policy making, scientific review or the truth,” said Carol Browner, the sole EPA administrator under former President Clinton, in an email to The Hill on Monday.
“Engaging a range of outside advisors has served EPA well,” she said. “While probably predictable, the decision is no less alarming. The American people expect more from agencies, especially those charged with protecting our health, like the EPA.”
Trump’s executive order directs all federal agencies to cut by at least one-third the number of boards and advisory committees that weigh in on government regulations and other agency decisions. That means 462 committees are potentially on the chopping block when excluding agencies that are mandated by law.
At EPA and Interior, advisory committees provide scientific and technical expertise from people who are considered to be at the top of their field.
“The things you are worried about are that complex decisions deserve to have the best experts and scientists convening,” said Gina McCarthy, EPA chief under former President Obama, in a phone interview Monday. “While the agencies have terrific people, they don’t necessarily have the breadth of expertise they need.”
She said Trump’s move “is just another way of diminishing the need for the federal government to consider science and expert opinions on issues most critical to the American public.”
“This unprecedented attack on science-based regulations designed to protect the environment and public health represents the gravest threat to the effectiveness of the EPA — and to the federal government’s overall ability to do the same — in the nation’s history,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who was EPA chief under President George W. Bush, at a congressional hearing last week shortly before Trump’s executive order.
Elizabeth Klein, a former associate deputy secretary at Interior during the Obama administration, pointed to Interior’s resource advisory committees as a way to bring in local voices, as well as industry leaders, to discuss how best to manage public lands.
She said the committees ensure the department is “not just asking its most favorite stakeholders what they should do.” The whole point of having committees, she added is to create “a transparent way to get this kind of input.”
“Particularly from this administration that says it wants to put decisionmaking back out away from Washington, getting rid of advisory committees that are made up of those folks is contrary to what they want to do,” Klein said.
Trump’s executive order says agency chiefs can consider the following factors when determining which advisory boards to terminate: operations costs, inactive and completed committees, and those where the subject matter has “become obsolete.”
Members of the scientific community who have criticized what they call the administration’s assault on science since Trump was inaugurated took issue with the premise of the new executive order.
“It’s interesting that this order comes now, after the administration spent two years undercutting and neglecting the advisory network that it’s had at its disposal,” said Genna Reed, lead science and policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And now they are trying to use that neglect as a data point for a justification to remove these advisory boards for not being useful.”
The Hill, Rebecca Peitsch and Miranda Green, 6/17/19