A Bungled Ethics Ruling at the Bureau of Land Management: Who's to BLM?

Yesterday POGO sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar raising concerns about both the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) failure to respond to investigative findings that regional manager Steve Henke received improper gifts, and the subsequent approval of Mr. Henke's stroll through the revolving door.

BLM’s lack of response to Henke raises questions about whether the Interior Department needs to broaden its recent ethics reform efforts, which have to this point largely focused on the office regulating offshore drilling, and whether current enforcement is sufficient.

BLM Director Bob Abbey recently sent a letter to the San Juan Citizen's Alliance saying that BLM's administrative options are limited at this point, but POGO found that BLM had nearly a month to act—hell, at least issue a slap on the wrist in the form of administrative leave or a warning—and chose to do nothing, sending the message to his employees that flouting ethics rules was inconsequential.

But what's far more disturbing was how inadequate BLM's ethics process was when they approved Henke becoming the president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association (NMOGA). In the decision for Mr. Henke, which POGO obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the ethics official told Mr. Henke that based on her discussion with Mr. Henke and a review of NMOGA's website, there would be no need for post-employment restrictions since his new position would concern only New Mexico (as opposed to federal) oil and gas issues. In our letter we point out that not only does the membership of NMOGA have a significant financial interest in federal oil and gas issues—including lobbying BLM—but that Henke acknowledged as much in a writing sample he sent to NMOGA from his BLM email account.

Read the letter, and our recommendations, here.

POGO wants to know what readers think. Is this the mark of a broken system? Did the ethics official bungle the decision? Is denial not just a river in Egypt? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Here at POGO, we're a little verklempt.

-- Mandy Smithberger

Image of Henke business card is NOT authentic—created from scratch by Mandy Smithberger. 

Comments

[Synonymous Anonymous]

Nice job on the BLM letter. I liked the docs you guys dug up through FOIA. Vintage POGO! BLM ignored the Henke problem for 30 days after a guy who oversees $1 billion in oil and gas production admitted to lying on his ethics forms, accepting thousands of dollars in gifts from energy companies, and misusing $1,000 in federal cash so he could go see the PGA. Keep up the heat. Salazar can talk about being the "new sheriff" all he likes, but situations like this show that is BS. Anyway, great work.

[Nick Schwellenbach]

Hey Rick,

Do you have any tips on what we could FOIA?

Thanks,
Nick
POGO

[Redrock Rick]

This is outrageous. I know BLM employees who have been suspended without pay or threatened with other disciplinary action for simply sending internal E-mails that raised questions about the legal propriety or scientific adequacy of decisions or actions by BLM managers. This is part of the unwritten but well-known management "culture of secrecy" in some BLM offices whereby employees learn that they should not put anything in writing that might eventually be disclosed through a FOIA request or litigation discovery that could prove embarrassing for managers. BLM employees in key legal compliance and scientific roles may well be seriously compromised by this fundamental "catch 22" that they may be disciplined for simply trying to do their jobs by documenting their concerns and recommendations. Meanwhile, despite reports of his egregious financial conflicts of interest and ethical problems, Mr. Henke from NM BLM apparently got a free pass. It is no wonder that ethical BLM employees who want to do the right thing are so demoralized. BLM Director Bob Abbey tells his employees that he wants to make BLM the "premier" land management agency. Sadly, he is either clueless or disingenuous.

[Observer]

We need to face the fact that the WH would be too embarrassed to can Salazaar without a very long decent interval between his bungling of the reorg of BLM, followed by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and the currently-being-botched reorg/renaming of BLM under the competent Bromwich.

Ken S. is just a pol, and not a very skilled one. But the WH just can't stand the heat from its just barely-better-than-Katrina handling of the recent disaster.

[Dennis Willis]

Pretty amazing. A few years ago, I was required by the BLM to resign from the board of a non-profit because of a conflict of interest, even though the organization had no finanicial dealings with BLM. Another employee was found to have a conflict of interest for mere membership in that organization and barred from doing work in his profession because of it. Guess if we had figured out a way to actually cash in, it would have been OK.