Hold on Interior Department Nomination

Floor Speech

HOLD ON INTERIOR DEPARTMENT NOMINATION -- (Senate - May 01, 2007)

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I have placed a hold on the nomination of R. Lyle Laverty to be Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks at the U.S. Interior Department. Consistent with my policy of publicly announcing whenever I place a hold on a nomination, I want to notify my colleagues of my objection to allowing Mr. Laverty's nomination to be considered under a unanimous-consent agreement. and to take a few minutes to explain to my colleagues why I am doing so.

The Interior Department has suffered no shortage of scandals in recent years. To name just two of the most egregious: Its former No. 2 official, a Deputy Interior Secretary who previously had been a coal industry lobbyist, pleaded guilty earlier this year to felony obstruction of justice for lying about his relationship with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And we discovered that the Minerals Management Service, an agency within the Interior Department, has known for years about flawed drilling leases that allow companies to pay no royalties on valuable oil and gas they take from Federal land in the Gulf of Mexico, but the MMS did nothing until news reports brought the facts to the public last year. Indeed, the MMS has silenced auditors on its staff who tried to blow the whistle on companies not paying their fair share.

``Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Interior Department,'' the Interior Department's inspector general has warned us.

Last year, when Dirk Kempthorne was nominated to be Secretary of the Interior and he appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for confirmation, I secured from him a pledge. He told me that he would reform that troubled department and introduce a higher ethical standard. The scandals would stop coming.

However, in late March, the inspector general once again released a scathingly critical report warning us about bad things happening at the Interior Department. This time the subject was Julie MacDonald, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Mr. Laverty would be the immediate supervisor of the position Ms. MacDonald held.

In detail, the inspector general told us two things about Ms. MacDonald. One, she violated Federal rules by leaking internal Fish and Wildlife Service records to business groups actively challenging the Government's environmental rulemaking process. In the process, she has been undermining her own agency's cases in court. Two, without any formal education in the natural sciences, she has bullied and threatened FWS scientists and forced changes in their reports to suit her own political and personal agendas. FWS attorneys no longer will sign off on reports if they know the reports passed through her hands because they no longer are certain of the accuracy.

This sort of conduct is simply unacceptable. If you agree to work in the Interior Department, your loyalty should be with the Interior Department and protecting this country's natural treasures. Ms. MacDonald's loyalty lay elsewhere.

The inspector general sent his report on Ms. MacDonald to the Interior Department for administrative action more than a month ago. The Interior Department had no public comment. Only after I announced that I would place a hold on Mr. Laverty's nomination did Ms. MacDonald resign. That removes her from the equation, but not the atmosphere that allowed her to operate as she did for so long.

In case I wasn't perfectly clear last year at his confirmation hearing, I want to be sure that Secretary Kempthorne knows that I am serious. The Interior Department has been a source of shame to this government for too long. It is failing in its mission to protect the public land and balance the needs of the American people with wisdom and integrity. It has stumbled from one misstep to another, from one scandal to another, and I have to question who is in charge over there.

I want to hear from Secretary Kempthorne what action he plans to take to be certain that we won't see this sort of problem again. I want to hear from Mr. Laverty what he would do, if he is confirmed to the post of Assistant Secretary, to end the politicization of the Fish and Wildlife Service. We cannot continue to have government scientists whose work is manipulated and conclusions are rewritten by political appointees. We cannot continue to have federal officials working secretly with groups challenging their own agencies.

Until I receive these assurances, I will object to any unanimous consent agreement to allow Mr. Laverty's nomination to come to a vote in the Senate.

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