In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Trump’s southeast regional EPA administrator indicted on Alabama ethics charges. (Mother Jones and AL.com)
Do Republican presidents have a custom of hiring ethically-challenged polluter lawyers as EPA officials?
There are two (2) recent examples as Region 4 EPA Administrator this century.
Now, under indictment in Alabama, EPA Regional Administrator ONIS GLENN's law client in this latest case of an unseemly EPA RA was DRUMMOND COAL COMPANY.
ONIS GLENN is charged with crimes arising from his allegedly attempting to block cleanup of a badly polluted African-American neighborhood.
Footnote: When crooked Alabama coalman GARY NEIL DRUMMOND walked the Earth, I had lunch with him and ABC News 20/20 investigative reporter and field producer Charles C. Thompson, II, investigating coalfield crimes in Alabama and Tennessee. At the tender age of 22, I recall asking DRUMMOND about a potential crime, of which he was aware, and his failure to report it, which could be a federal crime. "Oh, grow up, Ed," DRUMMOND says. His response in Duke Ziebert's Restaurant in Washington, D.C. reverberates in my ears after all these years.
Corruption in corporations is pandemic, and infects our governments.
Corruption in EPA allows pollution to go undetected and undeterred. Exhibit A: EPA's refusal and failure to prosecute St. Augustine City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS and his cronies for intentional dumping of.a landfill in a lake, and intentional sewage pollution of our saltwater marsh.
Enough.
From Mother Jones:
One of Trump’s Top EPA Officials Was Just Indicted on State Ethics Charges
Onis Glenn is accused of taking part in an effort to block the cleanup of a polluted Alabama neighborhood.
The Alabama Ethics Commission announced Tuesday morning that a grand jury had indicted Onis “Trey” Glenn, the EPA official, and Willie Scott Phillips, his former business partner, on a variety of state ethics charges. The press release was short on details, but the charges include inappropriate solicitation or receiving of money or other items of value and allegations that Phillips violated rules against the “use of office for personal gain.” Glenn was indicted separately from Phillips on multiple counts of conspiracy or complicity.
AL.com reported that the charges stem from Glenn and Phillips’ involvement with an effort by the Drummond coal company to block an EPA cleanup of the 35th Avenue neighborhood of north Birmingham—an impoverished, mostly African American area that suffered decades of pollution from neighboring industrial sites. Under the Obama administration, the EPA—specifically its southeastern Region 4 office, currently led by Glenn—had sought to hold Drummond and several other companies responsible for the pollution, but Alabama state officials tried to block the move. The campaign to stop the EPA’s cleanup efforts was orchestrated by Drummond and its powerful Birmingham law firm, Balch and Bingham.
The company eventually enlisted the aid of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose office worked closely with the coal company and law firm to stymie the EPA’s efforts. Sessions has long had close ties to Balch and Drummond—the companies respectively ranked as his second- and third-biggest contributors during his Senate career, and collectively donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to his campaigns.
Earlier this year, David Roberson, a vice president at Drummond, and Joel Gilbert, an attorney for Balch, were convicted on corruption charges. They were accused of paying off a Democratic state legislator named Oliver Robinson. Robinson admitted to investigators he was paid by the coal company to use his position as a state legislator to help undermine the efforts of neighborhood activists and environmental watchdogs and reported back to Drummond on meetings he had with EPA officials.
According to AL.com, exhibits introduced in court during Roberson and Gilbert’s trial showed that Glenn and Phillips had also been involved in that effort. Upon taking his job overseeing Region 4 for the EPA, Glenn reported in his financial disclosure that he had also done work for Balch and Drummond.
Former Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who resigned in July in the face of numerous ethics investigations, installed Glenn in his current job in August 2017. According to testimony Glenn provided in federal court, Drummond executive David Roberson provided a reference letter while he was seeking the appointment.
After Glenn became the EPA’s southeastern administrator, he continued to engage with Alabama environmental regulators about the site, according to records obtained by the Project on Government Oversight and Mother Jones through the Freedom of Information Act. One state regulator, whom Glenn had lobbied while working as a consultant for Balch, shared a draft of a presentation in November 2017 with Glenn discussing the 35th Avenue site. “Call me and we can discuss,” emailed regulator Lance LaFleur, head of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
By January, Glenn had formally recused himself from any matters involving Balch and Drummond.
On Tuesday, an attorney who has previously represented Glenn and Phillips issued statements from both men denying any wrongdoing. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment about Glenn’s current status with the agency. ---------
Trump’s southeast regional EPA administrator indicted on Alabama ethics charges
Updated ; Posted
EPA Region 4 Administrator, at 2017 Trump appointee, has been indicted by a Jefferson County, Alabama, grand jury for ethics violations, along with his former business partner, former Alabama Environmental Management Commissioner Scott Phillips. (Glenn Baeske)
A Jefferson County grand jury has indicted the Southeast regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and a former Alabama Environmental Management Commissioner for violating state ethics laws.
Charges include multiple violations of Alabama’s Ethics Act, including soliciting a thing of value from a principal, lobbyist or subordinate, and receiving money in addition that received in one’s official capacity, according to the Alabama Ethics Commission.
Before being appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as the Region 4 administrator of the EPA, Trey Glenn worked closely with the Birmingham-based law firm Balch & Bingham and one of its clients, Drummond Co., to fight EPA efforts to test and clean up neighborhoods in north Birmingham and Tarrant.
Likewise, former Alabama Environmental Management Commissioner Scott Phillips worked with Balch to oppose the EPA. Phillips and Glenn worked together in a company they co-owned, Southeast Engineering & Consulting, at the same time Phillips served on the commission.
Under Alabama ethics law, it is illegal for a lobbyist or a lobbyist’s client, called a principal, to give a public official a thing of value, including a job.
President Donald Trump appointed Glenn lead EPA’s Region 4 in August 2017, after incidents covered in the indictment. That region includes Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.
Former Alabama Environmental Management Commissioner W. Scott Phillips. (Dennis Pillion | dpillion@al.com) (Dennis Pillion | dpillion@al.co
The indictment is not Glenn’s first brush with Alabama ethics laws. In 2007, the Alabama Ethics Commission referred a complaint against Glenn, who then served as director of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office for prosecution.
However, in 2008, a Montgomery County grand jury declined to indict Glenn on those charges.
After leaving ADEM in 2009, Glenn co-founded SE&C with Phillips and served as a lobbyist for the Business Council of Alabama.
After he was appointed to the EPA position,Glenn reported income from numerous public and private entities, including the BCA, City of Birmingham, Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority, Matrix LLC, Blue Ridge Partners, Strada and Big Sky Environmental.
Big Sky Environmental made headlines this year after it accepted human feces from New York for disposal at its Adamsville landfill. A train that delivered that refuse stunk up the surrounding community and after national news coverage became known as the “poop train.”
In July, a jury in federal court convicted Balch partner Joel Gilbert and Drummond vice president David Roberson on charges they bribed an Alabama lawmaker, Oliver Robinson, to help fight the EPA’s cleanup efforts in Tarrant and north Birmingham.
From 2014 through 2017, Glenn and Phillips worked with those defendants to oppose the EPA efforts, court exhibits and trial testimony showed.
During that trial, prosecutors called Glenn and Phillips as witnesses. Court documents and testimony, in that case, showed that they had worked closely with Balch to push back on the EPA as recently as 2017.
One exhibit in that trial showed that Phillips proposed to “hijack” a north Birmingham community organization that had been working with the EPA to clean up neighborhoods there. During his testimony, Phillips said that by “hijack” he meant “work with.”
In the same exhibit, a PowerPoint slideshow Phillips' company had prepared for Balch, Phillips proposed to “undermine” and “fragment” proponents of the north Birmingham cleanup.
On the witness stand in that trial, Phillips denied knowing that Robinson, a state lawmaker, was being paid by Balch — something even defense attorneys didn’t seem to believe. On cross-examination, defense counsel showed Phillips a memo written to him in 2014 proposing “maybe Oliver Robinson” be hired for community outreach work in north Birmingham.
At the same time Phillips performed this work for Balch and Drummond, he served on the Alabama Environmental Management Commission, which oversees the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
On the AEMC, Phillips sat for meetings on north Birmingham environmental issues, including a 2015 meeting where Robinson spoke against EPA cleanup efforts in north Birmingham.
While serving on the AEMC, Phillips forwarded an advance copy of a presentation by the environmental watchdog group GASP to Glenn, who then forwarded those materials to Gilbert at Balch, trial testimony revealed.
Testimony in that trial also revealed that Phillips helped make introductions for Robinson, including a dinner in which Robinson met with AEMC chairman Lanier Brown to discuss north Birmingham issues.
The Alabama Ethics Commission lead the investigation after being asked for help by the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office.
“The Alabama Ethics Commission is committed to working with Alabama’s District Attorneys, and all enforcement agencies, whenever needed and asked to do so, to ensure enforcement of Alabama’s Ethics laws on behalf of the citizens of Alabama; and these indictments are evidence of that,” Alabama Ethics Commission Director Tom Albritton said in a press release. “I want to recognize the hard work from the Jefferson County DA’s office which requested our assistance in this important matter; and from our office, Cynthia Raulston, the Commission’s General Counsel, as well as Special Agents Dustin Lansford, Byron Butler and Chief Special Agent Chris Clark for their hard work and dedication to the enforcement of our Ethics laws.”
In separate written statements sent by an employee of the Melton Espy law firm from a personal email account, Phillips and Glenn proclaimed their innocence and vowed to fight the charges against them. A message left for attorney Joe Espy seeking comment was not returned.
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