EPA Watchdog Suggests $ 124,000 for Pruitt's "Excessive" Travel Expenses

The Environmental Protection Agency should consider recovering nearly $ 124,000 in inappropriate travel expenses from former EPA chief Scott Pruitt, the agency's inspector general said Thursday.

The findings, published nearly a year after Pruitt's resignation after a controversy over his spending, his travels and his links with lobbyists and outside groups, highlight the fiscal impact of his penchant for travel and upscale accommodation. The investigators concluded that 40 trips that Pruitt had made or scheduled for a 10-month period, from March 1 to December 31, 2017, cost taxpayers $ 985,037.

Most of this spending was done by Pruitt's 24-hour security service, which charged $ 428,896 for travel expenses. The agency has spent an additional $ 339,894 in staff traveling with the former administrator. The "contested amount" identified by the Inspector General's office for potential recovery is the $ 123,941 taxpayer spent on driving Pruitt and a first class or business class security officer rather than bus .

The report also highlights how Pruitt's official travel was related to trips to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he kept a home while he was a member of President Trump's cabinet. He noted that out of the 40 investigators' trips reviewed, 16 included "trips or stops in Oklahoma" – where Pruitt was maintaining a residence.

The EPA watchdog details a litany of other issues related to how Pruitt and his entourage were reacting to "excessive costs" using taxpayer money: exceptions for commuting Business first and class were approved for Pruitt and its security details "without sufficient justification" and "Approved by a person who initially did not have the authority to grant this approval". In addition, accommodation costs exceeding 150% of the daily allowance guidelines "have not been approved and / or duly substantiated", reports of international stays were "inaccurate and incomplete."

"Measures are needed to strengthen EPA's travel controls and prevent fraud, waste and abuse," writes the inspector general's office.

[For Pruitt, after EPA, the high life]

The EPA said in response to the report that the agency had a long-standing policy of allowing travel outside of the coach's classroom. His Advocate General's Office had issued an opinion indicating that the acting controller "had the power to grant first class exceptions. Therefore, when evaluating the delegation, the EPA considers that the trips were authorized by an appropriate officer, which makes the recovery of costs inappropriate. "

Pruitt can not be reached immediately for a comment.

It seems unlikely that the EPA will actually recoup the additional funds it has spent to fly Pruitt and one of its first class or business class security officers, however, given Pruitt's departure and the fact that half of this money was paid for his plane ticket.

There is a precedent that a member of the Trump Administration Cabinet would have reimbursed taxpayers for at least part of the costs deemed inappropriate: Secretary of Social and Social Services Tom Price announced the day before his resignation that He had written a personal check to the US Treasury. US $ 51,887.31 to compensate for charter and military flights in 2017. However, the agency's IG later requested at least US $ 341,000 to recover from Price after investigating its use. private and military aircraft.

Investigators conclude that Pruitt's use of chartered and military flights during his stay at the EPA "was justified and approved in accordance with regulations." in New York at a price of 36 068 dollars to be able to take a flight to Italy for an international meeting of the ministers of the environment.

The vast majority of Pruitt's travel expenses – 82% – came from his plane ticket, the report reveals. In the 10 months analyzed by the investigators, $ 878,336 came from travel by Pruitt and $ 106,701 from six trips that were eventually canceled. The report did not examine flights in 2018, although Pruitt mainly used a coach after La Poste detailed its many first-class trips in February of the same year.

In a memo obtained in 2017 by The Washington Post as a result of a public registration request, Pruitt's security officer wrote that the controversial administrator was more often recognized in public. and that the guards had noticed "sometimes stealing from the passengers, which occurs while the administrator is sitting in the coach with [his personal security detail] not easily accessible due to uncontrolled full flights. "

As a result, Pasquale "Nino" Perrotta wrote: "We believe that the continued use of coach seats for the administrator would put his life in danger, and so we respectfully request that he either placed in a working room or first class. "The argument of the officials that Pruitt was facing greater security threats than his predecessors, served as a basis for the EPA head to fly regularly in first class.

Last year, a Post survey revealed that the former administrator also exceeded the overnight rate and other government expenses by more than 150 percent for 17 of his trips, largely because he chose consistently stay in boutique hotels. The Inspector General's office found a similar pattern, concluding that Pruitt's costs exceeded the government's daily rates by more than 150% in 10 of the 34 trips reviewed.

In other cases, the report indicated instances where the agency did not have a detailed accounting of expenditures or justification for certain Pruitt trips, such as those with stopovers in Tulsa.

The new findings effectively put an end to the investigation of the agency's supervisory body on Pruitt, which now works as a consultant to coal companies.

In November, the Inspector General closed two investigations into his conduct without reaching a conclusion, as he had resigned from his position as a trustee before he could be questioned. These investigations focused on the personal use of Pruitt staff and a condo lease agreement with a lobbyist.

According to its semi-annual report to Congress, the bureau did not determine whether Pruitt had violated federal law, stating in each case that "the result of the investigation was not conclusive".