Oversight Hearing Committee on Natural Resources U.S
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THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR’S FAILURE TO COOPERATE WITH CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT REQUESTS OVERSIGHT HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION Thursday, September 26, 2019 Serial No. 116–23 Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov or Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 37–901 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020 COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES RAU´ L M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Chair DEBRA A. HAALAND, NM, Vice Chair GREGORIO KILILI CAMACHO SABLAN, CNMI, Vice Chair, Insular Affairs ROB BISHOP, UT, Ranking Republican Member Grace F. Napolitano, CA Don Young, AK Jim Costa, CA Louie Gohmert, TX Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, CNMI Doug Lamborn, CO Jared Huffman, CA Robert J. Wittman, VA Alan S. Lowenthal, CA Tom McClintock, CA Ruben Gallego, AZ Paul A. Gosar, AZ TJ Cox, CA Paul Cook, CA Joe Neguse, CO Bruce Westerman, AR Mike Levin, CA Garret Graves, LA Debra A. Haaland, NM Jody B. Hice, GA Jefferson Van Drew, NJ Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, AS Joe Cunningham, SC Daniel Webster, FL Nydia M. Vela´zquez, NY Liz Cheney, WY Diana DeGette, CO Mike Johnson, LA Wm. Lacy Clay, MO Jenniffer Gonza´lez-Colo´n, PR Debbie Dingell, MI John R. Curtis, UT Anthony G. Brown, MD Kevin Hern, OK A. Donald McEachin, VA Russ Fulcher, ID Darren Soto, FL Ed Case, HI Steven Horsford, NV Michael F. Q. San Nicolas, GU Matt Cartwright, PA Paul Tonko, NY Vacancy David Watkins, Chief of Staff Sarah Lim, Chief Counsel Parish Braden, Republican Staff Director http://naturalresources.house.gov (II) CONTENTS Page Hearing held on Thursday, September 26, 2019 ................................................... 1 Statement of Members: Bishop, Hon. Rob, a Representative in Congress from the State of Utah ... 4 Grijalva, Hon. Rau´ l M., a Representative in Congress from the State of Arizona ...................................................................................................... 1 Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 Statement of Witnesses: Jorjani, Daniel, Solicitor, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC ........................................................................................... 5 Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 7 Questions submitted for the record ......................................................... 8 Additional Materials Submitted for the Record: List of documents submitted for the record retained in the Committee’s official files .................................................................................................... 44 Submissions for the Record by Representative Grijalva Internal DOI E-mail Delaying Correspondence with Chair Grijalva dated March 14, 2019 ............................................................................ 38 Follow-up Internal DOI E-mail Delaying Correspondence with Chair Grijalva dated March 21, 2019 ............................................................. 38 Submission for the Record by Representative Haaland Unnecessarily Redacted Phone Records .................................................. 42 Submission for the Record by Representative Lowenthal Unresponsive and Heavily Redacted DOI Document Production ......... 39 Submission for the Record by Representative Tonko Unresponsive and Heavily Redacted DOI Document Production ......... 41 (III) OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR’S FAILURE TO COOPER- ATE WITH CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT REQUESTS Thursday, September 26, 2019 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources Washington, DC The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:04 p.m., in room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Rau´ l M. Grijalva [Chairman of the Committee] presiding. Present: Representatives Grijalva, Sablan, Huffman, Lowenthal, Gallego, Cox, Haaland, Van Drew, Cunningham, Vela´zquez, Soto, Cartwright, Tonko; Bishop, Gohmert, McClintock, Westerman, Hice, Radewagen, Webster, Gonza´lez-Colo´n, and Hern. The CHAIRMAN. The Committee on Natural Resources will come to order. The Committee is meeting today to hear testimony on the ‘‘Department of the Interior’s Failure to Cooperate with Congres- sional Oversight Requests.’’ Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements are lim- ited to the Chairman and the Ranking Minority Member. There- fore, I ask unanimous consent that all other Members’ opening statements be made part of the hearing record, if they are sub- mitted to the Clerk by 5 p.m. today. Hearing no objection, so ordered. For an opening statement, let me recognize myself. STATEMENT OF THE HON. RAU´ L M. GRIJALVA, A REPRESENT- ATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA The CHAIRMAN. Congressional oversight of the executive branch is an integral part of our democracy’s system of checks and bal- ances. As representatives of the American people, Congress must help ensure that the current administration is acting in the best interests of the people, in concurrence with existing laws, and in a way that is free from corruption, fraud, or waste. Let me quote, ‘‘In regards to oversight, it is not only Congress’ right, but our responsibility to hold the executive branch account- able for its actions and decisions. In turn, we expect the Adminis- tration to be honest and transparent.’’ That quote comes from the former Full Committee Chairman, Chairman Doc Hastings, on September 10, 2014. I bring that up because, as his picture also adorns the wall here, that has been a consistent demand regardless of who the Majority is—the oversight function and its importance. And I think Chairman Hastings said it much better than I could. But, unfortunately, that has not stopped the Trump administra- tion from delaying, obstructing, and sometimes just ignoring our (1) 2 efforts to conduct oversight. The Trump administration has de- clared open war on Congress’ constitutional authority to conduct oversight. And the Department of the Interior is no exception. To date, this Committee has made over 25 formal requests for information or documents from Interior. To date, we have only re- ceived complete or nearly complete responses to three of them. Fourteen of those requests—well over half—have received no sub- stantive response at all. Interior likes to talk about the numbers of documents and pages they have sent us. But they are padding the numbers. In one case, they gave us a 12,000-page print-out of a single Excel table. [Slide.] The CHAIRMAN. There is the visual up there. It was unusable, print-outs of large spreadsheets usually are—12,000 pages of that. And it was sitting on Interior’s website. Rather than taking 2 months to print and scan 12,000 pages, they could have just e- mailed us the link. In response to our request about the former Secretary’s review of our national monuments, they sent us 100 pages of unintelligible symbols. [Slide.] The CHAIRMAN. We have gotten documents with redactions from Interior, while they sent the same documents to the public through FOIA without those redactions. When we asked them about it, staff told us that the redacted information wasn’t related to our request. Not only was that not true, but Interior does not go through each individual document to redact content that isn’t responsive. The 100 pages of symbols make that pretty clear. Before Secretary Bernhardt came to testify before this Committee in May, we tried to make things easy and asked him to prioritize four very narrow document requests. One of those re- quests asked for a single document by file name. We couldn’t even get that one. Their efforts seem to be particularly targeted toward me. E-mails obtained by the Committee this past spring showed that the Interior employees were instructed to withhold any communica- tions directed to me for about 2 weeks. Another e-mail said that any documents I requested were to be reviewed by two high- ranking political appointees. That was directed just at me. No other Member of the House or this Committee was singled out the same way. Despite asking about these instructions multiple times, still no answer. And it is just not Congress. Interior has resisted oversight by both the Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office since the beginning of this administration. In fact, GAO has called Interior the least responsive department in the entire Federal Government. When he testified before this Committee, Secretary Bernhardt proposed that we meet to discuss a reasonable timetable for pro- ducing documents we requested. At that meeting, DOI staff declared they would not be committing to any timetables out of concern that we might hold them to that agreement. They refused to tell us who their witness would be for this hearing until yester- day, 1 to 2 weeks has usually been the norm. 3 These actions paint a picture of a department acting in bad faith. Interior’s refusal to cooperate means the Committee cannot do the oversight envisioned in our Constitution. We need information from the Administration to assist us with legislation, oversight, and to keep the Department accountable to the American people. The American people deserve a government that works together. And we need something better than this situation now. I hope today’s hearing helps us move past this logjam to find a path forward. [The prepared statement of Mr. Grijalva follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE