A framed, painted portrait of former Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy is missing from the EPA’s hall of administrators.
McCarthy was EPA administrator during President Barack Obama’s second term in office after Lisa Jackson, Obama’s first EPA head, left in February 2013.
Jackson’s painting was finished in 2012 before she finished her term as administrator and can be seen among the paintings of other agency heads hanging on the walls on either side of a hallway inside EPA headquarters. But where is McCarthy?
When asked about the painting, an EPA spokesman said, “Gina McCarthy’s portrait hasn’t yet been completed.”
Another administration official compared receipt of such Cabinet-level artwork to the unveiling of George W. Bush’s painting for the White House collection, which didn’t come until 2012, three years after his two-term tour of the Oval Office had concluded.
A source close to the previous administration confirmed that the portrait was still being made and had not be shipped to the EPA. There is no timeline for its completion.
But such long waits aren’t typical for Cabinet-level secretaries. Many were commissioned and completed before agency heads, like Jackson, had left office during the Obama administration’s first term. Her portrait and others even grabbed headlines in 2012 when it was found out that tens of thousands of dollars were being spent on oil paintings of Cabinet-level secretaries. Jackson’s portrait had a price tag of $40,000.
Congress did place a temporary ban on portraits in a 2014 spending bill, but no permanent ban was enacted after the temporary prohibition ended. Proponents of the ban wanted officials to raise the funds themselves to have the painting done rather than use taxpayer dollars.
McCarthy ushered in a number of regulations that President Trump is in the process of repealing, including the centerpiece of the Obama presidency’s climate agenda, the Clean Power Plan.
Trump’s EPA under Scott Pruitt is also in the process of reconsidering McCarthy’s decision to move forward on new fuel economy standards for cars through 2025, as well as the controversial Waters of the U.S. rule that expanded the scope of EPA’s jurisdiction over everything from ditches to watering holes and rivers.
Over the last two weeks, McCarthy has been speaking out publicly, expressing her displeasure with Trump’s proposed rollback of the regulations she spearheaded during her four years.
“It’s not easy for me to watch, but I’m not despairing in any way,” said Gina McCarthy in an interview with High Country News published earlier this month. She is taking refuge in the idea that states will pick up the slack, especially on climate change.
“When the U.S. government in Washington has fallen asleep, the rest of the country tends to wake up big time,” McCarthy said. She hasn’t spoken much to the media since she departed the EPA in January.
“I don’t like it,” she said on Friday at a Harvard University climate forum when asked about the rollback of her decision on fuel economy rules. “That was a very simple answer to the question.”
• This article has been updated to include statements from the EPA and a source close to the Obama administration about the status of the painting.
