This afternoon, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that nobody who receives an EPA grant should be allowed to provide scientific advice to the agency. Yep—those scientists, the ones that the EPA thinks do the most promising research related to public health and the environment? Their advice isn’t welcome anymore. We’ve written a lot about how this represents a major step in the political takeover of science advice at EPA.
Except! The ban doesn’t apply to states or tribes who receive government funding. Why would that be? Pruitt believes that anyone who gets millions of dollars from the government must have an agenda to impose regulations on the American people. Why wouldn’t this apply to states and tribes? Let’s go deep in the heart of Texas.
According to its own data, the Texas Council on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) received $58,273,661.63 from the EPA in 2016. Michael Honeycutt is the lead toxicologist at TCEQ, a state agency that often acts as more of an advocate for the refineries that do business in the state than the environment it is charged with protecting. The American Chemistry Council and the Texas Oil and Gas Association love Dr. Honeycutt so much that they labored unsuccessfully to get him appointed to the board in 2016.
In a press conference earlier this afternoon, Scott Pruitt suggested that the millions that university scientists had received in grant funding should make them ineligible to provide science advice to the agency. And then, in virtually the next breath, he turned around and appointed Dr. Honeycutt to chair the board. Not just a participant. THE CHAIR.
So, then, millions of dollars of government funding is A-OK.
Just as long as you’re giving the administrator the information he wants.
No wonder the American Association for the Advancement of Science was livid, noting that, “policymaking cannot thrive when policymakers use politics as a pretext to attack scientific objectivity.”