Dear CCC Members and Allies,

Please take quick action now on Kathy Karpan's conflict of interest and pass
the
word. Here's the scoop:

On March 15, we found out that OSM Director Kathy Karpan had scheduled a
job
interview for the top job at the National Mining Association and we spread the
word. We weren't surprised because we had been hearing from OSM
employees since
last summer that she wanted the job. First the Charleston Gazette, next the
Lexington KY Herald and then today the Washington Post (see below) ran
articles
with OSMers confirming that she had long wanted this job.

Soon after Karpan became OSM director in August 1997, she started taking
an openly
anti-citizen, anti-environment and pro-coal industry line all across the country.
Among other actions,

* Karpan supported the coal companies who unlawfully filled streams with
hundreds of millions of tons of mine waste from their mountaintop removal
strip mines; she even pledged to weaken the rules and let them continue
destroying streams when a federal judge decided last fall that their actions
were illegal. * Karpan gave Peabody an award in 1998 for good reclamation at
its mine on Black Mesa. * Karpan publicly criticized OSM inspectors who had
written violations and told industry and state officials she wouldn't put up
with vigorous enforcement on her watch. * Karpan strongly resisted protecting
Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee from acid mine pollution. * Karpan
opposed regulations on toxic coal ash dumping into groundwater. * Karpan
mocked citizens who asked for inspections or to speak at public meetings. *
Last December, Karpan approved new rules that allow underground mines to
collapse the land surface under cemeteries, national parks, wildlife refuges
and up to 1.8 million homes; she claimed underground mines needed these rules
so they could make enough profit to stay in business.

Interior Department officials claim there's no reason to fire Kathy Karpan because
"only 25 citizens, all from West Virginia, have sent an e-mail or fax to Bruce
Babbitt, demanding that she be fired."

It's time for all of us to tell Bruce Babbitt to dump Kathy Karpan out of OSM.
Please write him at bruce_babbitt@ios.doi.gov and pass the word to others on your
network.

Thank you,
Carolyn Johnson
CCC Staff Director

--------------------------
THE WASHINGTON POST
In the Loop Column
Throwing the Watchdog a Bone?
By Al Kamen
Monday , April 3, 2000; page A15

It takes a lot in this town, birthplace of the revolving door, to raise a ruckus
over a government regulator's move to a top job in the industry he or she once
regulated.

Still, the director of Interior's Office of Surface Mining (OSM), Kathy Karpan,
appears to have created a major fuss, especially among enviros and newspapers in
West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, by applying for a job with the National Mining
Association. Yes, that would be the industry her office directly regulates. West
Virginia's Charleston Gazette, which broke the news of Karpan's aspirations,
editorialized last week that her situation "raises ethical concerns when
high-ranking public officials go directly from a regulatory position to a job with
an industry they regulated. The suspicion lurks that decisions made while
supposedly representing the people were actually aimed at securing a lucrative
private job." And enviros, who have not been happy with Karpan's actions as head
of the office, are in major we-always-knew-she-was-one-of-them mode. Interior
officials say Karpan has done nothing wrong, pointing out that she recused herself
as soon as a headhunter called her on March 15 asking if she would be interested
in the nearly $500,000-a-year post. (Karpan, a former Wyoming secretary of state
who came to Washington after she lost a bid for the Senate to Republican Mike
Enzi, makes about $110,000 a year.) What's more, the officials noted, she has
recently taken positions that were much at odds with what the industry wanted--not
something she would do if angling for a job. "She took exactly the action required
by consulting with ethics officials and recusing herself" from decisions
involving the National Mining Association, said Interior spokesman Michael
Gauldin. "The fact that the industry association would call her," said Joan
Mulhern, legislative counsel for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, "demonstrates
they view her as an ally, not a watchdog." Karpan's office "has been the most
vocal advocate within the administration for the industry's position" in a
controversial case, now in the courts, involving the mining industry's slicing off
the tops of mountains to get to the coal, Mulhern said. The government is expected
to file a brief in two weeks on the industry's appeal from a judge's ruling
banning decapitation. Meanwhile, Karpan detractors at OSM say she knew the job was
coming open before it was announced in October, and had told staff, if not NMA,
that she thought it was one fine job. (At that salary, who can argue?) Interior
and OSM officials insist her first discussion of the job was March 15. A specific
request to check with her on any informal contacts with NMA prior to March 15--or
to have Karpan call back to chat about that issue--went unfulfilled. Karpan, on
vacation and recused until April 9, is said to be one of a dozen finalists for the
job. If she doesn't get it, enviros wonder how she can return to regulate the
industry. "We see her as permanently damaged goods," said Natural Resources
Defense Council lawyer Daniel Rosenberg. Well, let's hope she gets the job.

-------------------
Published Thursday, March 30, 2000, in the Herald-Leader

Strip-mine enforcer's motives questioned
OSM chief seeking mining lobbying job
By Lee Mueller
EASTERN KENTUCKY BUREAU

Dark clouds are gathering in Kentucky now for Kathy Karpan, the director of the
U.S. Office of Surface Mining, whose job search already has produced a storm of
controversy in West Virginia.

Karpan is taking a break from her role as the nation's top enforcer of
strip-mining laws to seek a new job: director of the National Coal Association,
the nation's largest mining lobbyist.

``I assume that Kathy Karpan is cleaning out her desk as I type,'' Harlan County
activist Robert Gipe said last week in an e-mail message to Karpan's boss, U.S.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. ``If you don't fire her, I will assume that
President Clinton and the environmental vice-president will be calling on you to
clean yours out.''

Linda Brock of Knox County, a member of the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
citizens' group, said Karpan's agency issued several rulings favorable to the coal
industry before March 15, when Karpan first recused herself from her OSM duties.
That decision, she said in a letter dated Friday to her boss, ``allows me to
interview for a position outside the government.''

The timing raises a lot of questions, Brock said. Gipe said KFTC should call for a
review of the way OSM has been operating.

``Certainly, there's a lot of good people at OSM, people who are doing what
they're supposed to,'' Gipe said, ``but I think it's time for OSM to change
directors and get someone who's more likely to protect the interest of all
citizens in the coalfields.''

Karpan could not be reached for comment yesterday. ``She's on vacation through
April 7,'' said an aide, Andrew Duechsler. ``She's not reachable.''

But Mike Gauldin, director of communications for the Department of Interior,
defended Karpan yesterday and said she has done nothing improper. Karpan was not
looking for a job when she was contacted by an executive-level recruiter, Gauldin
said.

It would have been a possible conflict of interest for an OSM director to take
action affecting a regulated industry with whom she was discussing future
employment, he said, but Karpan took the proper precaution of recusing herself
before entering such discussions.

``They might have a point if she had not recused herself while she talked about
future employment,'' Gauldin said. ``She did what she was supposed to do. There
are some folks who want to overlook that and jump on the situation for their own
purposes.''

Karen Batra, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association in Washington, said
current director Richard Lawson, a retired Air Force general, is scheduled to
retire at the end of the year.

``If (Karpan) did have an interview, it wasn't with NMA,'' Batra said. ``It was
with the search committee. I don't even know if they're to that point now. I don't
know who they've interviewed and nobody here does.''

Karpan, a former reporter and a lawyer who was secretary of state in Wyoming, has
headed OSM since August 1997. She is responsible for developing and enforcing coal
mining regulations under the 1977 federal surface-mining act.

Kentucky environmentalists welcomed her two years ago when she visited abandoned
strip-mine sites in Perry County in an effort to increase funding for repairing
the damage.

But Brock said yesterday that since December, OSM has given the coal industry what
she says are favorable rulings. Among other things, they include easing
mountaintop-removal mining laws, underground mining subsidence and surrendering
its authority to issue permits and inspect mining on federal land to state
regulators.

``I definitely wonder about her motives,'' Brock said.

Gauldin, however, produced news accounts in Tennessee of OSM's decision this month
to reverse itself and recommend banning mining near a state park.

He also labeled criticism of Karpan as ``opportunistic.''

``Are they (environmentalists) saying that back in December she knew the director
(of NMA) was going to leave?'' Gauldin said.

After recusing herself from OSM duties between March 15 and March 26 to discuss an
outside job, Karpan last week wrote Interior officials to extend the period to
April 9, saying ``the process is taking longer than I originally anticipated.''

That process already is producing concern in West Virginia, where an editorial in
the Charleston Gazette recently cited ``ethical concerns'' with Karpan's job quest
and said she shouldn't be allowed to replace Lawson.

``The suspicion lurks that decisions made while supposedly representing the people
were actually aimed at securing a lucrative private job,'' the editorial said.

Gauldin said federal law does not permit former federal employees to lobby the
department for which they worked for a year.

It's unrealistic to bar anyone in government service from ever working for an
industry they regulate, Gauldin said.

``If that's the way they operate, the mining industry, or anybody, could knock out
anybody they wanted to by calling them up and offering them a job,'' he said.

Reach Lee Mueller at 606-789-4800 or 1-800-950-6397 or
lmueller1@herald-leader.com.

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