By Tom DiChristopher
- Two groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency and Administrator Scott Pruitt (click here) on Thursday for allegedly violating federal records laws.
- The groups claim the EPA has systematically refused to document "essential activities" and discouraged employees from keeping records.
- Pruitt denied at least one of the allegations contained in the groups' complaint during a Senate hearing last month.
A watchdog group and a nonprofit that represents public sector employees are suing the Environmental Protection Agency and its polarizing administrator for allegedly violating federal records laws.
Administrator Scott Pruitt and senior officials at the EPA have sought to prevent internal conversations from being documented as required by law, the groups claim in a complaint filed on Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. They say the EPA has systematically refused to document "essential activities" under Pruitt, and higher-ups are creating a culture in which career employees are discouraged from creating written records.
These actions prevent Americans from obtaining records of EPA processes and decision-making through the Freedom of Information Act, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility....
"Recordkeeping requirements" are defined as all statements in statutes, regulations, and agency directives or authoritative issuances, that provide general and specific requirements for Federal agency personnel on particular records to be created and maintained by the agency (36 CFR 1220.14)....
What is a record?
Records are defined in various statutes, including the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act. The definition that follows is from the Federal Records Act that governs agencies' records management responsibilities.
Records include all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine-readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the Government or because of the informational value of the data in them (44 U.S.C. 3301).
