The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Power, 8/4/2008

Another day, another call to probe lobbying on global warming at the Environmental Protection Agency. Only now, the calls are coming from Republicans, and the targets are senior EPA officials who favored letting California regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.

In a letter today, two senior Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked the panel’s chairman, Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), to investigate whether top EPA staffers either violated federal rules that restrict regulators from lobbying, or “misused their positions to surreptitiously influence” EPA’s decision on whether to allow California to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicles.

Republicans Tom Davis of Virginia and Darrell Issa of California focus their complaint on talking points prepared last year by EPA staffers for former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly. The staffers were responding to a request by Mr. Reilly for help in lobbying EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to grant California’s request to regulate automotive greenhouse-gas emissions. The list said Mr. Johnson had no justification for denying California the right to regulate greenhouse gases, and that the EPA’s credibility would be “irreparably damaged” by a decision to deny California’s request.

As Environmental Capital readers know, Mr. Johnson wound up denying California’s request, arguing the state lacks the kind of “compelling and extraordinary” conditions that legally would let it act independently of the federal government. Democratic investigators in the Senate obtained access to the list in February, and leaked its contents to journalists, in an effort to show Mr. Johnson as out of step with his own staff.

But now, the Bush administration’s supporters are trying to turn the tables. The Republican’s letter argues the EPA staffers “do not appear to have maintained their independence or objectivity and may have improperly used federal resources to advance their own preconceptions.” It names Margo Oge – director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality – and Christopher Grundler, her deputy. Senate investigators have said the list of talking points was written by Mr. Grundler for Ms. Oge. Mr. Reilly — who had been urging Mr. Johnson last year to side with California — confirmed in February that he asked Ms. Oge last year “how people at [EPA] were framing this issue” and that he later received the talking points. Ms. Oge and Mr. Grundler referred questions to an EPA spokesperson, who said “we will continue to work with the committee during [its] review” of the agency’s decision.

Mr. Waxman said through a spokesman: “Although the Committee has found no evidence that EPA career staff lobbied members of Congress with respect to [California’s request], I will give careful consideration to the minority’s request.”