EXCLUSIVE — A watchdog group is suing President Joe Biden‘s Labor Department over its alleged failure to release records that could show whether senior government officials have “conflicts of interest.”
Through the Freedom of Information Act, Protect the Public’s Trust requested in January that the Labor Department turn over documents related to political appointees receiving waivers to skirt federal ethics laws. Now, the watchdog is suing the agency, which has not provided records and taken longer than the 250-day statutory period to make a FOIA determination, according to an Oct. 10 complaint obtained by the Washington Examiner.
It is unclear whether the Labor Department has given officials waivers, as the Office of Government Ethics, which posts them, does not list such records on its website. OGE did not respond to a request for comment.
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“The American public deserves to be aware of the potential conflicts of interest that exist among officials making the policy decisions that affect their daily lives, things such as inflation, energy, healthcare,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain told the Washington Examiner. “The majority of the waivers to ethics restrictions that Protect the Public’s Trust has uncovered have been obtained in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and often only after we’ve been forced to go to court to get them.”
Appointees occasionally are given waivers from certain ethics laws and regulations, such as the Biden ethics pledge, which has a “revolving door ban” on former lobbyists participating “in any particular matter” they were registered under within two years of joining the government. PPT is seeking a variety of waivers, including impartiality determinations, which refer to when an agency determines an official should not participate in matters that could benefit them, their family members, or their former employers financially or personally.
For instance, Marianne Engelman-Lado is the deputy general counsel for environmental initiatives at Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA’s ethics office in June 2021 gave her a waiver that authorized her to participate in matters involving the Natural Resources Defense Council, a green energy nonprofit group that she legally represented in the past.
But there are also federal officials who worked for unions and received waivers. One is Andrea Delgado, chief of staff of the Natural Resources and Environment office at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was a lobbyist for the United Farm Workers Foundation.
This may indicate some officials at the Labor Department, some of whom worked previously for unions, could have been given waivers, according to Chamberlain.
“The release of these documents is in the public interest because they will help the public understand which high-level Department officials have potential conflicts of interest, how the Department is addressing those conflicts, and whether officials are following the rules,” PPT’s lawsuit states.
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PPT released a report in August finding the Biden administration was seemingly on track to surpass the Trump administration in waivers given out. The Trump administration gave appointees 73 waivers, but Biden has already given out at least 68, according to a running tracker compiled by the watchdog, which has filed FOIA requests for waivers to more than a dozen federal agencies.
As a whole, PPT is seeking to obtain all “memoranda or documents” that the Labor Department’s designated ethics official has produced or received related to political appointees.
The Labor Department did not respond to a request for comment.
