Ethics Watchdoggery at the BLM
- January 31, 2023
When Forest Service life is relatively dull, there’s always our friends at Interior to look to for drama.. thanks to Nick Smith for this. My BLM friends tell me that the drama is a function of the presence of politicals, and from outside I would have to agree.
I think it’s pretty clear that owning bonds would not make Culver suddenly friendly to the oil and gas industry,given her career and the apparent feelings of the Biden Administration.
Nevertheless, here are a couple of thoughts..
1. Knowing that your employees are held to standards, why wouldn’t you… follow the rules? It would be great if someone asked her this.
2. The IG said previously she violated ethics rules, but it was “unintentional”. I wonder how the IG knows that. Seems like more training would be useful perhaps.
3. You wonder whether if not for Protect the Public’s Trust queries, no one would have noticed. Because the IG only responds to complaints.
4. It’s pointed out in the article that “Protect the Public’s Trust bills itself as nonpartisan, but Chamberlain is a former Trump administration official.”
I think it’s great to point that out- many organizations are billed as nonpartisan, but have a more or less overt political slant. Still, it seems to me that both sides of watchdoggery can be useful if that’s what it takes to look at the performance of public officials. Here’s the link to the article, I don’t think it’s paywalled.