NH Senate - GOP Members of Joint Health Care Oversight Committee Call Out Governor Hassan on Broken Promises and Lack of Transparency

The New Hampshire Senate

Majority Office

Concord, NH - Republican members of the Joint Health Care Reform Oversight Committee today issued the following statements after disclosure from Governor Hassan’s office as well as the Department of Insurance that her administration would no longer be pursuing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the federal government with regards to the implementation of the Health Care Exchange Partnership as was originally promised to the committee last month.  The Hassan Administration has instead indicated an intention to move forward with the proposed partnership without an agreed upon MOU.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Andy Sanborn (R-Bedford) said:

“The Governor’s suggestion that she can single-handedly implement ObamaCare in New Hampshire without a contract or MOU of how the federal government is going to take over providing insurance to New Hampshire citizens is astonishing.  The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will forever change how insurance is provided to the people of this state and the Governor’s office is now deliberately pulling back on a promise to be transparent and disrespecting the legislative process.  This act of purposefully withholding details on ACA implementation only further suggests the Governor and Washington bureaucrats do not want the legislature, taxpayers, or small business owners to know the details or costs of this expansion.  New Hampshire government does not operate under the cover of darkness, and the Governor needs to bring an MOU to the Oversight Committee, as promised, showing a complete, detailed plan of how she intends to implement this costly venture.”

Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro) said:

“I am extremely disappointed that, after promising legislative oversight, Governor Hassan is seemingly reneging on that promise.  I am concerned a Health Care Exchange partnership will not protect taxpayers, will increase consumer confusion, and subvert New Hampshire sovereignty.  Those concerns are heightened when it appears the Governor’s office is choosing to not layout the next steps of this process in a MOU as they had earlier indicated they would.”

Representative John Hunt (R-Cheshire 11) said:

“After listening to the presentation from the Executive Branch, I conceded to considering the state enter into a partnership exchange to protect New Hampshire’s interests, specifically because the Governor’s office committed to providing an MOU to our committee which would provide complete details on how the ACA would be implemented.  Now that the Governor has refused to share an MOU, the people of this state have no idea on the cost, timing, affects and options associated with how the exchange, partnership and plan management will be enacted and operated.  It is exceptionally disturbing to see the Governor attempt to implement the ACA, void of real, honest transparency on this important issue and I do hope the Governor reconsiders such a reckless action knowing how much money, time and effort is at stake here.”

Note: The next meeting of the Joint Health Care Reform Oversight Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, April 9^th at 8:00AM.

CEI, ATI Sue EPA for Instant Messaging Records

Potential Landmark Case Seeks Discussions on Agency's War on Coal, Role of Pressure Groups from Little-Known Accounts That Have Escaped Scrutiny

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1, 2013 — In what could be a landmark case, two free-market groups—the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center—have filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Environmental Protection Agency seeking communications among senior EPA officials using instant messaging or IM technology.

In the joint lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., CEI asked the court to compel EPA to produce IM discussions to or from former administrator Lisa Jackson, including her alias “Richard Windsor” account, discussing the Obama administration’s war on coal. CEI already is in court for the “Windsor” emails on the same topics.

ATI sought Jackson’s IM correspondence to, from or discussing the Sierra Club and two other environmental pressure groups, as well as similar messages of two other senior officials—Gina McCarthy, who has been nominated to succeed Jackson as administrator, and former senior counselor Lisa Heinzerling, who has rejoined one of these groups.

In the course of CEI’s “Windsor” litigation, it learned EPA staff first used IBM “Sametime” to discuss creating the “Windsor” account. EPA provides Sametime and Oracle Messenger to staff as an alternative to email. Although IMs are “agency records” under the law, they do not seem to have been searched by EPA in response to FOIA requests or requests from Congress seeking “records," or “electronic records,” both of which would cover IMs.

“In addition to important conversations both inside the agency and with outside parties, we expect this suit to provide important information about EPA’s compliance with the law and Congress’ legitimate oversight activities,” said Christopher Horner, attorney, senior fellow at CEI and author of “The Liberal War On Transparency,” the research for which led to the investigation. “Based on information we have obtained, it seems we have uncovered another major transparency scandal in that either EPA is destroying instant messages against the law, or it is withholding them in defiance of its legal obligations to produce.”

EPA’s only response to the groups’ IM requests was to deny fee waivers for both, which are provided for under FOIA for non-profits that broadly disseminate information on government activities.

But, in what Horner calls “an apparent retaliatory tantrum,” the EPA has responded to his involvement in exposing the Richard Windsor account by denying all of his outstanding and subsequent requests for these routine fee waivers, for either ATI or CEI. While these denials are overturned on appeal, Horner claims that “this seems to be yet one more way ‘the most transparent administration, ever,’ is throwing obstacles in the way of transparency for those it deems inconvenient.”

► Read CEI and ATI's March 28 complaint here.

---

CEI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei.  

Senator Bragdon & Bradley Statement on Passage of SB153 Oversight of Collective Bargaining

The New Hampshire Senate

Majority Office

Good government and transparency requires legislative oversight of employee contracts.

Concord, NH - Senate President Peter Bragdon, R-Milford, and Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, issued the following statement today on the passage of SB 153, which requires Fiscal Committee approval of the cost items included in the state’s collective bargaining agreements:

“By ensuring legislative oversight of the cost items included in state employee contracts, this bill aligns the contract approval process at the state level with how it is done in cities and towns across New Hampshire.  Good government and transparency requires that the legislative branch, the branch responsible for writing and approving the state’s budget, have oversight of the agreements that govern the salaries and benefits of thousands of state employees.  This responsibility, and the impact it has on the state’s taxpayers, should not be left to a small group within the Executive Branch.  We are grateful for the State Employees Association’s support of this legislation and we look forward to a favorable response from the House ahead of upcoming contract negotiations.”

ALG - McCarthy EPA Administrator nomination rejection urged

March 4, 2013, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government urged the U.S. Senate to reject Obama nominee, Gina McCarthy, for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

McCarthy has been embroiled in scandal after scandal which can only indicate either pure managerial incompetence or a complicity in the failure to perform her most basic duties.

One example that reportedly has held up McCarthy's nomination at the White House was the failure of the EPA's radiation monitoring system in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

McCarthy, who currently heads the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, has come under withering criticism after the EPA's own Inspector General issued a report revealing that at the time of the Fukushima disaster many of the Agency's radiation monitors were out of service or so poorly maintained that they failed to work with 20 percent completely out of service.  The report goes on to report, "In addition, six of the RadNet monitors we sampled (50 percent) had gone over eight weeks without a filter change."  EPA policy calls on operators to change the filters twice per week."

Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government, called on the Senate to reject McCarthy as, "unfit to run a Burger King, let alone a Cabinet level agency that threatens our nation's economy through its series of strange and bizarre regulatory rulings."

McCarthy has also been on the cutting edge of a budding controversy over her approval of the use of DuPont's R1234ef air conditioning refrigerant in U.S. vehicles, ignoring a massive European recall by Daimler Benz when the product caught fire in crash testing scenarios.

Wilson expressed outrage over the McCarthy R1234ef decision stating, "This is an example where a German car company has discovered that a product that is being foisted upon them by environmental agency's is actually dangerous, and environmentally toxic, yet McCarthy has turned a blind eye to the health and safety hazards that she is creating through EPA incentives for car company's to use this deadly refrigerant.

"At a time when Obama's own State of the Union threat to continue to pursue unilateral executive actions through the EPA in lieu of climate change legislation, no nominee to the EPA should be confirmed, and it particularly foolish to allow a nominee who has twice put the public safety and environment at risk while in her current position. Gina McCarthy should be fired, not promoted based upon her record in office."

To view online: http://getliberty.org/mccarthy-epa-administrator-nomination-rejection-urged/

Attachments:

ALG Nominee Alert, Gina McCarthy, March 2013 at http://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Regina-McCarthy-NomineeAlert-2013.pdf

"Obama and his rogue EPA," By ALG President Bill Wilson, Feb. 14, 2013 at http://netrightdaily.com/2013/02/obama-and-his-rogue-epa/

###

Americans for Limited Government is a non-partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free market reforms, private property rights and core American liberties. For more information on ALG please call us at 703-383-0880 or visit our website at www.GetLiberty.org.

CEI - McCarthy "Wholly Unqualified" To Serve as EPA Administrator, CEI Says

Nominee Has Misled on Major Regulations and Is Implicated in Email Scandal

WASHINGTON, Mar. 4, 2013 — Gina McCarthy has decades of experience as an environmental bureaucrat, but a number of factors make her wholly unqualified to serve as EPA Administrator, say experts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. President Barack Obama nominated McCarthy on Monday to succeed Lisa Jackson as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“As Assistant EPA Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy has implemented radical environmental policies that will put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work but do little to nothing to improve environmental quality,” said Myron Ebell, Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at CEI.

“McCarthy has regularly tried to conceal the Obama administration’s economically destructive policies by misleading Congress, the public and industry. She has regularly stonewalled congressional requests for crucial information. And she is up to her ears in the Richard Windsor email scandal,” Ebell said.

McCarthy testified under oath to Congress in October 2011 that fuel-economy standards and regulating greenhouse gas emissions are “closely aligned but not related.” Subsequent releases of information reveal McCarthy and the EPA were fully aware – as is everyone else – that regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles is inextricably related to fuel-economy standards. This matters because EPA has statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions but not set CAFE standards for vehicles.

On coal, she told a gathering of industry officials the emissions regulations her office was developing would not require utilities to switch from coal to natural gas in building new power plants, as long as they used best available technology. But the New Source Performance Standards for new power plants released in 2011sets limits natural gas plants can meet but coal plants cannot.

Chris Horner, Senior Fellow at CEI and counsel for its investigation into Jackson’s secret email accounts and efforts to avoid disclosure, said, “There is a real paucity of emails from McCarthy in what we’ve seen so far … so much so it makes one wonder if EPA managed its release of these records with the prospect of her being nominated in mind.

“We know she was Jackson’s chief lieutenant in the ‘war on coal.’ We know she was routinely party to discussions among senior leaders who received emails from the Windsor account. It will be interesting to see if her name appears any more frequently when we receive the next tranche of Richard Windsor emails on Mar. 15.”

“She has, at best, a strained relationship with disclosure and transparency,” said Ebell. “She promised Congress she would deliver additional information during her first confirmation hearing but never did. As assistant administrator, she promised to provide the scientific data and studies EPA has based its new Clean Air Act regulations on, but has not kept her promise. At the very least, the Senate should demand she answer all outstanding questions before it considers her nomination to be EPA Administrator.”

---

CEI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets. For more about CEI, visit www.cei.org/about-cei.