Energy Contacts Disclosed, Consumer Groups Left Out, Data Show:
washingtonpost.com
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business interests and many campaign contributors while developing President Bush's energy policy, and he held no meetings with conservation or consumer groups, documents released last night show.
The information was released by the Energy Department just a few hours before a court-ordered deadline, and after 11 months of resistance by the administration to lawsuits by public interest groups seeking to determine who influenced the writing of the administration's energy plan.
A first review of the 11,000 pages of documents bolsters the contention of Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups that the Bush administration relied almost exclusively on the advice of executives from utilities and producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy while a White House task force drafted recommendations that would vastly increase energy production.
Of the corporations that met with Abraham, all but a few were large contributors of unregulated soft money to the Republican Party during the 2000 election cycle. A dozen of the companies that had meetings with Abraham contributed $1.2 million to the GOP, mainly for Bush's election. Ten of the 12 gave more soft money to Republicans than Democrats.
Large portions had been deleted from the documents released last night by the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agriculture Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Most attachments were missing and in many cases documents were withheld except for the subject line. Thousands of other documents were withheld entirely, and the groups that won release of the documents through lawsuits said they may return to court.
Abraham's meetings, between Feb. 14 and April 26 of last year, included groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Top executives of Westinghouse Electric Corp., Duke Power, Entergy, Exelon Corp., UtiliCorp United (now Aquila Inc.), American Coal Co. and others sat down with Abraham.
Environmental groups said their efforts to meet with the energy task force were rebuffed. The Energy Department has said that environmental groups did not respond to its request for input, and the administration has said it held at least one substantive discussion with 10 environmental groups in late March, prior to the May release of the energy policy.
Because of the deletions and omissions, there is little information about what the donors and business interests were seeking in their high-level meetings. The documents released include hundreds of unsolicited suggestions from citizens, companies and lawmakers, most of whom received form responses promising the ideas would receive "close and careful attention."
... "Finally there is some evidence of who was actually shaping the energy policy," said Sharon Buccino, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which won the court order on Feb. 27 requiring the Energy Department's information release.
Buccino said the group plans to challenge many of the omissions in court. The Energy Department released a chart suggesting Vice President Cheney's task force had adopted nine NRDC recommendations, which Buccino called "an outright lie." Another 15,000 pages were withheld for privacy, security and other reasons, Energy officials said.
Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, the watchdog group that won the court order requiring the OMB, EPA and Agriculture releases, said the White House appeared to be "playing games" with the release. He said he expects to "go back to court to seek testimony as to why we don't have the substantive e-mails."
Trent Duffy, OMB's spokesman, would not explain the deletions beyond saying, "The items that were part of the deliberative process were redacted."
... Bush's energy plan encourages increased production of fossil fuels, including relaxed regulations and subsidies for the coal and nuclear industries, oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and construction of 1,300 to 1,900 power plants over the next 20 years. |
