Scott Pruitt Bars EPA Grant Recipients from Serving on Advisory Boards

The Washington Examiner covers EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision to block scientists who receive agency funding from serving on advisory boards.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday that he will block scientists who receive agency funding from serving on advisory boards.

The directive applies to members of all of the EPA’s 22 advisory committees, including three major ones: the Science Advisory Board, Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, and Board of Scientific Counselors.

“CEI strongly supports EPA Administrator Pruitt’s sensible and long-overdue reforms of the agency’s numerous advisory boards,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, who led President Trump’s EPA transition team. “The scientific advice the administrator receives from these boards must be objective and free from even the appearance of conflicts of interest. The fact that some of the EPA’s advisory boards are filled with members whose research receives millions of dollars of funding from the EPA is an obvious conflict of interest that should never have been allowed to develop.”

Read the full article at The Washington Examiner.