Documents Show EPA Revolving Door, Collusion with Progressive Group

High-ranking EPA official worked closely with organization his boss set up, then left government to work for them

Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust show that a former Washington State official who worked for the co-founder of The United States Climate Alliance kept an extremely close relationship with that group as a Biden political appointee at EPA. He subsequently left the federal government to head that very same U.S. Climate Alliance.

Prior to joining EPA, Casey Katims was Director of Federal and Inter-State Affairs for Washington Governor and U.S. Climate Alliance (USCA) co-founder Jay Inslee. The Alliance is a coalition of governors formed in 2017 in reaction to President Trump spurning the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. USCA was funded by the Ted Turner-conceived United Nations Foundation and reportedly has ties to Arabella Advisors’ New Venture Fund. Arabella is a powerful channel funded by wealthy progressive activists that promotes left-wing causes.

When Katims joined the Biden EPA, the documents reveal, he maintained close relations with the Climate Alliance, including bi-weekly meetings and a running email dialogue. Katims essentially became a climate change financial advisor, fielding questions from the Alliance on “EPA’s openness and process to making changes to programs … to make it possible for states to better use those funds.” He apparently helped guide the Alliance member states in getting the most out of the climate windfall from recent legislation.

That role really didn’t change when he left EPA to become executive director of the Climate Alliance. According to its own statement, “The Alliance is forging a strong state-federal partnership to deliver on the promise of new federal laws, deploy historic climate investments successfully, and inform federal policies, programs, and actions.”

Katims, in other words, was a perfect fit for the revolving door.

“A lot of these funds can be blended and braided and stacked to strengthen the work across each of the different programs,” Katims, in his new job, told the Washington State Standard, “States understand that we need to be investing in strengthening capacity to be able to maximize these laws,” Katims said, boasting that “our [member] states are leading on efforts to bring all of these resources to bear to decarbonize our economy across sectors.”

“The American public is inherently skeptical of the revolving door between federal service and powerful special interests,” said Protect the Public’s Trust Director, Michael Chamberlain. “That skepticism is heightened when an official who recently marched through that revolving door talks about blending, braiding, and stacking federal funds in his new position. This represents another example where, despite the Biden Administration’s claims to the contrary, the revolving door is spinning faster than ever.”

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