Bromwich: Revolving door ‘is going to stop with me’

Michael Bromwich, the top Interior Department offshore drilling official who will step down at the end of the month, isn’t sure what his next move will be.

But Bromwich, who was brought on last year to overhaul Interior’s long-troubled offshore branch after the BP oil spill, is adamant that he won’t take a spin through Washington’s revolving door.

Bromwich told reporters Monday that he’ll have a self-imposed “lifetime ban” on “direct dealings” with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the successor agencies to the former Minerals Management Service (MMS).

“That doesn’t mean I can’t work on the issues. But I will never be in this room dealing with a future director of one of these agencies,” Bromwich told reporters Monday at Interior Department headquarters, where he gave wide-ranging remarks ahead of his departure.

“There has been too much of the revolving door in the past, too much effort to influence the agency's policy and regulatory judgments by former top executives and senior people in this agency and it has got to stop, and it is going to stop with me,” Bromwich added.

He didn’t mention specific examples.

Randall Luthi, the current president of the National Ocean Industries Association, headed the Minerals Management Service during the George W. Bush administration and, as The Associated Press notes here, he replaced Clinton-era MMS chief Tom Fry as the head of the offshore energy trade group.

The former MMS was home to a number of ethics controversies in the past, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bromwich have expanded ethics rules for regulators.

For instance, a policy issued in August of 2010 requires offshore inspectors and others to recuse themselves when companies they’re overseeing employ family members and friends.

Bromwich, while swearing off “direct” dealings with the drilling agencies, said he hopes to continue work on offshore drilling issues, noting “They are in fact very interesting and vital issues.”

He oversaw the transformation of MMS into the current drilling oversight agencies, and will step down at the end of this month as interim head of BSEE. Bromwich will remain an adviser to Salazar until the end of the year.

Bromwich was the Justice Department inspector general in the 1990s, and more recently a partner with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson before joining Interior in 2010 after the BP oil spill began. His work at the law firm included investigation of the Houston Police Department’s crime lab.

Bromwich, who presided over the strengthening of offshore drilling safety rules during his tenure at Interior, said Monday that he’s not sure what his next move is.

“There are parts of my former life, particularly those that relate to law enforcement, that I love and would like to spend some time doing,” Bromwich told reporters.

“How all that shakes out, in terms of whether I go to a law firm or whether I open up my own firm of some sort and figure out a way to stay involved in some of these issues, I don’t know at this point,” he said.