The Environmental Protection Agency and Democratic Sen. Tom Carper sparred Tuesday over whether the EPA awarded its fair share of climate change grants to states after reports suggested the agency had been cutting its grant program.
The fight began after Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Tuesday as a follow-up to one he sent in the summer, informing Pruitt that an analysis done by Carper’s staff suggests Pruitt is not awarding the grants, despite congressional appropriations to do so.
“It appears from the analysis conducted by my staff that EPA is either not awarding the money Congress appropriated, or it is not reporting this data to the publicly searchable database as required by law, or both,” Carper wrote, asking Pruitt to respond to questions over the status of the grants.
The EPA hit back with a statement that suggested Carper was looking to get media coverage in releasing the letter, rather than an actual legitimate response to his questions.
“We find it unfortunate that Senator Carper would place his letter in the news rather than wait for a legitimate response to his question,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Although EPA is continuing to analyze the information on grant funding Senator Carper provided in his letter sent this morning, it appears the data that the senator is reviewing is from an outdated source.”
Carper pointed out that his letter is a follow-up to one he sent in August, asking Pruitt to explain why a political appointee in his Office of Public Affairs had been given the authority to decide on grant proposals. The situation “became even more troubling in light of reports that EPA cut or delayed several grants – many of which were related to climate change,” the Delaware lawmaker wrote Tuesday.
Carper’s staff report showed that states took a massive hit in receiving grants in 2017 compared to the final year of the Obama administration.
The report showed that at least 49 of 50 states saw grants decline, based on “reported EPA funding in 2017” compared to a similar period in 2016. Carper said grants equaled $1.1 billion in the first three quarters of 2017, one-third of the $3.5 billion awarded in the previous year.
EPA explained that the agency has not declined to post the grants to its database, but that the Treasury Department is now responsible for making the disclosures, which it plans to do later this year, according to Wilcox. The data was transferred to Treasury in the final quarter of 2017, but the database is currently “incomplete.”
The EPA grant data that is being compiled for public record spans the period from Jan. 20, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2017, he said.
“In fact, all EPA grants data for the period through September 30, 2017, has been [sent to Treasury] timely and in accordance with [public data disclosure laws], and 99.84 percent of all grant actions requested by the program offices have been obligated or awarded,” Wilcox said.
Carper is requesting that data be sent to his office by Feb. 21, with an explanation on “whether EPA chose not to spend the grant money allotted to it by Congress, or not to report that data completely as mandated by Congress, or some combination of both?”
