EPA is trying to complete an agencywide restructuring effort while also weakening marquee regulations in October and November. Now it might have to do that in the midst of a government shutdown.
The political crisis that threatens to shutter much of the federal bureaucracy at midnight comes as Administrator Lee Zeldin is racing to unravel high-profile rules on things like climate science, vehicle pollution, power plants, oil and gas wells, and carbon emissions reporting.
The extent to which a shutdown could delay or derail his ambitious anti-regulatory campaign depends on how long the agency would be closed and whether EPA has enough funding to pay its workers.
What’s clear is that Zeldin has given the agency an accelerated timeline to radically change how it operates while simultaneously upending years of federal climate policy that stemmed from the 2009 endangerment finding, the scientific determination that warming pollution endangers people.
Planning for a shutdown that is perhaps hours away, while also rewriting rules with a staff that has been shrunken through orders from the White House could complicate Zeldin’s aggressive deregulatory campaign, former agency officials said.
“A shutdown can’t help,” said Vicki Arroyo, who led EPA’s policy office during the Biden administration.
Zeldin announced last week that a long-anticipated agency reorganization would begin in October and end in November.
Plans shared with POLITICO’s E&E News showed that Zeldin plans to scrap two offices that had done climate work — the Office of Air Quality and Planning Standards and the Office of Atmospheric Protection [OAP]. The OAR would have four teams under a newly created “Office of Air Programs Support” that will be overseen by air chief Aaron Szabo.
Not all of the work previously done by OAP is expected to continue. EPA has stopped maintaining its Greenhouse Gas Inventory, for example, and has proposed doing the same for a carbon reporting program for major emitters. That rule is one of several regulations that is expected to be finalized later this year.
Some of the agency’s climate work will continue to be done by the same staff — often working on new teams headed by different managers, who sometimes replaced officials who were fired by the Trump administration or quit.
“My team is being scattered across offices and divisions,” one former senior career official told E&E News.
The new Office of Clean Air Programs within the Office of Air and Radiation will include five newly minted subdivisions, according to internal slides shared with E&E News. Those include the “Impacts and Ambient Standards Division,” the “Chemicals, Coatings and Products Division,” the “Regulatory Assistance Division,” and the “Natural Resources Division.”
Those and other new offices within OAR have been charged with completing virtually all of President Donald Trump’s most important regulatory repeals by November, so they can be published in December.
The Office of Transportation and Air Quality will play a leading role in weakening vehicle climate rules and the endangerment finding, while the Office of Clean Air Programs’ new power plant division could oversee efforts to undo Biden-era carbon standards for utilities. The Natural Resources Division will lead revisions to oil and gas methane standards, which is expected to be proposed in November, the regulatory agenda says.
One EPA staff member said the agency had set a Nov. 1 deadline to complete the air office’s overhaul.
The agency is also set to repeal greenhouse gas reporting rules and propose a rule upending aircraft climate standards by December.
Legislation to fund the federal government is currently set to expire at midnight on Tuesday. If that happens, EPA may not have to furlough staff immediately if it has enough cash to pay salaries. The agency has not said how long it would be able to fund its operations during a shutdown.
If the agency is shuttered, some staff would be excluded or exempted from furlough and be required to work without pay. Those details are expected to be included in an agency shutdown plan that had not been released as of Monday. The most recent plan was announced in March — before the previous government funding crisis and before EPA had lost a reported 4,000 staff to reductions and early retirement.
EPA referred questions to the White House. The Office of Management and Budget didn’t respond to a request for comment.
One former OAR manager who was granted anonymity to speak about internal discussions said EPA’s political leadership had broad discretion to decide which staff members should be deemed “essential” — a designation that would require them to work through the shutdown.
While that hasn’t in the past included staffers who work on regulations, that could change if the Trump administration decides that finalizing the endangerment finding repeal, for example, is a priority.
Still, the Trump administration has said it expects a shutdown to result in permanent reductions to the federal workforce.
White House budget director Russ Vought has directed agencies to prepare to lay off staff if Congress fails to pass a stopgap funding bill and avert a shutdown. Zeldin said on a conservative podcast last week that EPA could whittle its workforce down to 12,500 people by next year, down from 16,000 now.
That could mean the agency has fewer staff to work on the reorganization and the rules purge.
Joe Goffman, who held top EPA posts in the Biden and Obama administrations, said government shutdowns often lead to regulatory delays. But that’s because previous administrations assumed they had limited discretion to grow the number of agency employees deemed eligible to work through a closure.
“I don’t recall a single instance in the three presidential terms I served in where we got anywhere near deeming a rule-writing team as essential,” said Goffman. “Now, do I have faith that this administration will be as scrupulous and following its statutory obligations? I don’t.”
“If they follow the law and past practices virtually everyone doing the work will be furloughed for as long as the government is shut down,” he said.
A current EPA official said the agency had readied lists of “exempted” and “excluded” personnel who would work through a shutdown.
Arroyo said a closure may not slow EPA’s deregulatory campaign because the Trump administration already appears to be minimizing the role played by career staff in rulemakings.
“Rescinding the endangerment finding and all was largely not being generated by the expert staff at EPA,” she said.
