A lobbyist tried to enlist a top Environmental Protection Agency official to help his environmental group raise money for advocacy campaigns supporting major EPA regulations, internal emails show.
Conrad Schneider, the top lobbyist for the left-wing Clean Air Task Force, was in frequent contact with Michael Goo, EPA’s top policy official, in the run-up to the agency’s landmark 2013 power plant emissions regulations, the emails show.
In late 2012, Schneider tried to take their collaboration a step further. He suggested that CATF’s financiers call Goo personally so that he could attest to the nonprofit’s behind-the-scenes work with EPA in crafting and marketing the regulation. The idea, Schneider said, was to demonstrate CATF’s effectiveness to its funders.
"We can tell foundation program officers that we are engaged in discussions with highly-placed officials in the Obama Administration regarding viable pathways on 111(d)," wrote Schneider, referring to EPA emissions restrictions on existing power plants.
Schenider and Goo had just concluded a phone call where they had strategized about ways to get CATF in the door with high-ranking federal officials, including White House staff, according to the email, which summarized their phone conversation.
Schneider told Goo that his group needed "substantial incremental funding to maintain the engagement with EPA and coal generators both in terms of support for staff time but also consultants" and studies on the impacts of power plant regulations.
"I can tell foundation program officers to call you: (a) for your take on prospects for moving a 111(d) rule; and (b) to vouch for CATF’s value-added" in advancing 111(d) and other EPA power plant regulations.
The email was sent in December 2012. The next year, CATF brought in nearly $4 million in donations from foundations, or about two-thirds of all contributions to the group that year, IRS filings show.
Schneider’s suggestions, written under the heading "How you can help with CATF funders," reveal a new twist in behind-the-scenes discussions responsible for key regulatory decisions leading up to EPA’s release of its eventual 111(d) rule.
It is not clear whether Goo ever acted on Schneider’s suggestions by helping CATF raise money; the emails released did not contain a response from Goo to Schneider’s request. Neither of them responded to requests for comment on the exchange.
Under federal law, it is illegal for a government employee to use "his official title, position or any authority associated with his public office to further [a] fundraising effort" for a nonprofit group.
The email summarizing the exchange between Goo and Schneider was one of a number of internal EPA communications revealed by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute through a Freedom of Information Act request. It was shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon.
Many of those communications took place through Goo’s personal email account, hosted on Yahoo.com. E&E legal fellow Chris Horner said he had to file additional FOIA requests for Goo’s emails after he became aware of the personal account.
"Dozens of emails leave no doubt that moving select correspondence about EPA-related business to non-official email accounts was an understood, deliberate and widespread practice in the Obama EPA," E&E wrote in a previous report.
Horner said it is possible that Goo responded to Schneider’s fundraising idea through other channels, given Goo’s use of a personal email account and EPA’s withholding of emails that would otherwise be considered responsive to previous FOIA requests.
"Nothing in the [FOIA] productions received to date reflect that he would confirm something like this in writing," Horner said in an email. "So that absence of evidence is most certainly not evidence of absence."
Previous FOIA requests have revealed extensive collaboration between Goo and Schneider in crafting EPA power plant regulations. Internal emails showed CATF editing internal 111(d) documents in what E&E described as "a series of abuses and a long-running violation of procedural due process requirements which serve as a brake on the unfettered power of agency rulemaking."