Waxman: Feds Campaigned Against California’s Global Warming Efforts

By David Whitney, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Sep. 24–WASHINGTON — The White House backed a Transportation Department campaign to lobby Congress and state governors against California’s application for a waiver allowing it to combat global warming through limits on car and truck emissions tougher than federal standards, the chairman of Oversight and Government Reform Committee charged Monday.

In a letter to James L. Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Rep, Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, called the lobbying an “inappropriate use of taxpayer money” and asked him to “repudiate” the campaign.

Waxman said the campaign “sends an unmistakable message: the administration is trying to stack the deck against California’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.”

Kristen Hellmer, spokeswoman for the Council on Environmental Quality, defended the lobbying as nothing more than “outreach.”

“Outreach by federal officials to state government counterparts and members of Congress on issues of major national policy is an appropriate and routine component of policy development,” she said in a prepared statement.

Under the federal Clean Air Act, California was authorized to seek waivers for more stringent pollution standards because of its unique pollution problems. But once a waiver is granted, other states are free to adopt them. About a dozen states have are awaiting the California waiver so that they can follow its lead.

California filed its application, needed to enforce a 2002 state law requiring automakers to cut emissions from cars and trucks by 30 percent by 2016, in December 2005. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson recently told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that he anticipates a decision by the end of the year.

The administration lobbying was discovered just as the EPA was about close the public comment period on the California waiver in June. Waxman learned that a special assistant to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters had left a voice mail on the telephone of a congressman that urged the submission of comments to the EPA opposing the waiver.

Waxman launched an investigation. Waxman said he received internal documents and e-mails and conducted interviews showing the lobbying campaign had been initiated by senior administration officials and “coordinated with the motor vehicle industry.”

Among the documents was an e-mail from Transportation Under Secretary Jeff Shane in May saying Peters wanted a plan “facilitating a pushback from governors,” especially Democrats, and others to California waiver petition.

“She has heard that such objections could have an important effect on the way Congress looks at the issue,” Shane wrote.

Peters told her staff to call members of Congress, and said she would make calls herself, Waxman said. According to another e-mail, dated May 25, the Transportation secretary received word from Marty Hall, chief of staff at the Council on Environmental Quality, giving the okay for Peters to make calls.

Waxman said that when interviewed by his investigators, Hall had memory problems.

“At least 20 times during the interview, he responded to questions about his knowledge of the lobbying campaign with variations of ‘I don’t recall,’” Waxman said. But Waxman said investigators learned from others that at least three senators, 24 House members from Ohio and Michigan, and seven governors were contacted.

“We were hoping to solicit comments against the California waiver,” Simon Gros, deputy chief of staff at the Transportation Department, said when he was interviewed Sept. 21.

The lobbying was aided by the auto industry, which testified against the waiver before the EPA in June. The Auto Alliance provided a list of plants organized by congressional district, which then was used to create a “target list” of House members to contact, Waxman said.

Not everyone was comfortable in making the calls, including Heidah Shahmoradi, whose voice mail launched the House investigation.

She e-mailed Gros on June 7 saying “we are a bit concerned about the conversation on this task” because “it appears to sound more like lobbying.” She was told that the message they were to deliver had been cleared by the Transportation Department’s top lawyer.

Waxman also said there appeared to be coordination with the EPA, which he said would be “especially problematic because EPA is charged with making an independent and objective decision on the California application.”

But the Council on Environmental Quality sees no such problem, Hellmer said.

“The EPA administrator will be making an independent and objective decision based on the merits of California’s petition and the record of public input before the agency,” she said.

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