Washington, DC – In her first year as Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton has done more to disrupt efficiency, discredit the department and depress employee morale than any modern Interior Secretary, says Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national organization representing employees within Interior agencies.
“As the Department of Interior’s leader, Gale Norton has been a walking disaster area,” commented PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Graded by administrative competence, apart from the environmental consequences of her actions, she is the worst Secretary since Teapot Dome – and, incredibly, instead of getting better, she is actually getting worse.”
On the eve of the first anniversary of Gale Norton’s confirmation, the employee group points to:
- *Disruption of both public access and employee productivity flowing from the closure of Interior web sites and employee e-mail for the past two months, with no date for re-connection; http://www.billingsgazette.com/archive.php?section=local&display=rednews/2002/01/19/build/local/02-network.inc
- *Embarrassment from being cited for contempt of court hearings in the long-running tribal trust fund case after trying to intimidate agency employees to sign off on documents inappropriately; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11034-2002Jan7.html http://www1.msnbc.com/local/knbn/m124169.asp
- *Falsification of her own agency’s science in reporting to Congress on the biological effects of oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18216-2001Oct18.html http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1002,7246%257E200861,00.html
- * Destruction of morale from a post-Thanksgiving all-employee e-mail pledging to contract out five percent of all employee jobs in the short-term and up to half within five years; http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E241955,00.html
- * Frustration of her own top professionals by blocking the Fish & Wildlife Service from filing prepared comments on a major relaxation of wetlands protections and then claiming it was Congress’s fault; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12299-2002Jan20.html
- * Confusion from threatening to pull out from, and then agreeing grudgingly to enforce, the land use restrictions resulting from a settlement to a desert protection lawsuit her own agency had signed; http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20010517/t000041483.html (archived) http://uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/fri/index.html (archived)
- * Refusal to adopt a non-retaliation policy to protect agency scientists, following the abrupt termination of a mapmaker, attracting both national and international publicity and featured in a Doonesbury series. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4169290,00.html http://www.defenders.org/den/dl00036. #SEVEN
“Scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers and other staff within Interior are dispirited and dismayed by the Secretary’s performance,” Ruch concluded. “If Gale Norton is trying to stimulate early retirement of her professional staff, she is doing a bang-up job.”
