Letters reveal how Pruitt hired an unqualified lobbyist to head one of EPA's most important offices

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/11/1763587/-Letters-reveal-how-Pruitt-hired-an-unqualified-lobbyist-to-head-one-of-EPA-s-most-important-offices
"Bill Wehrum is the Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. The OAR is responsible for developing programs that promote energy efficiency, as well as dealing with regulations on both air quality and industrial pollution. Its regulatory reach extends for rules on radon on basements to ozone depleting chemicals and acid rain from power plants. It’s also the office that’s responsible for collecting information connected to climate change. It’s one of the EPA’s most critical offices. Which is why the previous administrator of the office had both a degree in biology from Yale and a degree in public policy from Harvard. So what exactly are Wehrum’s qualifications? It’s hard to determine, because although previous versions of the page showing the leadership team of the OAR included biographies of the principal officials, the new version of that same page has ditched all information about the backgrounds of the people in charge. As it turns out, Wehrum had two excellent qualifications. First, he was a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry who had continued to act as a lobbyist even when he failed to register as a lobbyist. Second, he had been turned down for exactly the same position in the past over conflicts of interest and simply lack of qualifications. Writing for one of his clients, Wehrum requested a meeting with Pruitt. After that meeting was held, Pruitt did more than just hear out the lobbyist’s concerns—he put Wehrum in charge of the entire area, even though Wehrum lacked any qualifications, and even though hiring him meant directly violating rules against hiring lobbyists to work in areas where they had clients. Wehrum is far from the only lobbyist hired by Pruitt. In fact, he’s staffed both the EPA’s leadership and what had been the scientific review boards with industry lobbyists cheering on the destruction of environmental protections."