A senior Environmental Protection Agency official enjoyed a close relationship with leaders from green groups, new email correspondence obtained by Congress and given to FoxNews.com suggests.
Michael Goo, an administrator in the EPA’s Office of Policy, regularly emailed and socialized with employees at green groups, even discussing an apparently annual summer party dubbed “Goofest.” Fox News reports:
The parties, it would appear, were off the hook.
Among the attendees to at least one of them was League of Conservation Voters official Tiernan Sittenfield, according to the emails. Goo emailed Sittenfield afterward to ask whether she had indeed attended, which she apparently had.
Goo, in his early 50s, replied: “How many shots of tequila had I had by then? Did you do a shot off the ice luge?”
An invitation to Sittenfield and others with the Natural Resources Defense Council for the 2013 party, Goo’s last before leaving the agency, also includes testimonials: “Even better than killing Bin Laden. I'm just jealous I don't have an ObamaFest — Barack, 2012” and “Michael! Put your clothes back on! — Everyone, Every Year.”
The emails also raise reasonable concerns about whether Goo’s cozy relationship with green groups influenced agency policy.
Before working at the EPA, Goo worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council. And this latest batch of correspondence, coupled with earlier releases, shows Goo talked with environmental groups about everything from emissions standards under the Clean Air Act to Keystone XL to the regulation of coal-fired power plants.
The emails may not even show the full picture; Goo, who has since moved on to the Department of Energy, “used text messages and personal email during his time at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to communicate with third party groups attempting to influence the Administration’s agenda,” the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology wrote in in a May letter to the DOE chief.
The letter continues, emphasis theirs:
In one e-mail sent from a personal e-mail account to a lobbyist, [Goo] writes “ok I will call number on text message.” Another email sent from the Sierra Club to Mr. Goo’s private e-mail states, “[a]ttached is a memo I didn’t want to send in public.” Mr. Goo was complicit in the lack of transparency by complying with the Sierra Club’s request because he failed to disclose the e-mail for two years. Indeed, personal e-mails were not captured by EPA e-mail servers until Mr. Goo forwarded e-mails to his official government account in August 2013.
Under the Obama administration, the EPA has pursued some of the costliest regulations in history. Especially given concerns about environmental groups’ undue influence, the lack of transparency is deeply disturbing. Taxpayers deserve, at minimum, to know how special interests may be affecting agency policy.