The Trump Administration has been slow to announce appointments to key positions within U.S. EPA. Administrator Scott Pruitt is in many ways is operating on a island within the Agency. As reported in the New York Times, the Administration has not nominated any of the dozen key EPA senior positions:
At the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, the administrator, was confirmed by the Senate last month, and he has hired a chief of staff and a few others. But the White House has yet to nominate anyone to fill another dozen key jobs requiring Senate confirmation, like the assistant administrators who oversee clean air and water regulation
At the same time Administrator Pruitt is restricting decision making authority throughout the ten Regional Offices. As first noted on the blog Law and the Environment, the following memorandum was recently sent to Regional Offices:
Because the Presidentially-appointed Assistant Administrators and Regional Administrators have yet to assume their duties, for the next 30 days, the Administrator wishes to retain approval authority for Agency actions having significant regulatory and enforcement effect. The Administrator will rely on the Acting RA’s and AA’s to identify and send upward any proposed decisions or final agency actions for the Administrator’s review which, in the judgement of the Acting RA’s and AA’s would limit the flexibility of the States, limit energy resource use, impose significant costs on industry or commerce, or otherwise likely result in significant public attention on the proposed decisions or final agency actions (emphasis added)
The underlined language provides a broad description of the types of actions the Administrator expects to be sent for his review and approval. This will certainly cause a slow down on decision making at the Agency.
These developments could have both good and bad implications for businesses. It is likely the rulemaking and enforcement will be slowed. However, for businesses working through permitting, compliance issues and settlement of enforcement actions, these developments could have the negative effective of slowing the pace of reaching a final resolution or obtaining a necessary permit.