Top EPA official used personal email address

Newly released documents show that the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency has used a personal email address for internal communication, fanning GOP claims that the agency’s work is not transparent.

Internal documents EPA released on Feb. 15 through Freedom of Information Act litigation show that in 2010, Robert Perciasepe, who was then EPA’s deputy administrator, used the account “ This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ” in a message to three other officials.

The 2010 message from Perciasepe, who is now the agency’s acting administrator, was pedestrian — he was passing along, without comment, a New York Times clip about EPA’s review of the controversial gas-drilling method called hydraulic fracturing.

But Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who has criticized other officials’ use of either secondary federal or personal accounts, pounced on the disclosure, calling it part of an effort to “dodge the agency's mandatory recordkeeping policy.”

“EPA owes us all some answers about their absolute disregard for transparency, especially from their acting administrator or any potential nominee to be administrator,” Vitter, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement.

The Perciasepe email is contained in records (available here) released to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, about just-departed EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s use of a secondary government email account under the name Richard Windsor.

Perciasepe’s message forwarding the Times clip was sent to the Richard Windsor address as well as two other officials under their real names.

Vitter and a top House Republican have also criticized use of a personal email account by James Martin, the departing administrator of EPA’s Region 8, which oversees Colorado and several other Western states.

EPA has strongly refuted claims that Jackson, who left EPA last week, used the “Richard Windsor” account to shield business from public view.

Use of a second, internal government email account by EPA administrators goes back more than a decade, and records for public and internal accounts are subject to public records requests, according to the EPA.



“The email address for the public account is posted on EPA's website and is used by hundreds of thousands of Americans to send messages to the Administrator. The internal account is an everyday, working email account of the Administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials,” the agency said in a recent statement about Jackson’s secondary federal account.

With respect to Martin, who is stepping down, Vitter and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) have criticized his use of a personal account to set up a meeting with an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.

The two Republicans, in a January letter to Martin, alleged the communication may have been a violation of the Federal Records Act, and suggested it wasn’t isolated.

But an EPA spokeswoman told Greenwire in late January that Martin did not use the account to conduct official business.

EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson said Tuesday that Martin is resigning effective Feb. 22 for “personal reasons.”

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