EPA rebuffed attempts to make public its initial downsizing and reorganization plan submitted for White House review.
Following a Freedom of Information Act request for the “Phase 1” plan, the agency identified 106 pages of relevant records but withheld all of them under an exemption intended to shield internal deliberations from disclosure, according to a response received Thursday by POLITICO’s E&E News.
“The records in question do not communicate a policy on which the EPA has settled, nor is the EPA treating them as its final view on the matter,” wrote Brian Hope, acting director of the agency’s Office of the Executive Secretariat, which processes records requests for Administrator Lee Zeldin’s office.
As thousands of EPA employees tensely await potentially severe cutbacks via a “reduction in force,” the reply offers further evidence of the secrecy surrounding Trump administration efforts to shrink the federal government.
