By\u00a0Juliet Eilperin and\u00a0Brady Dennis, Energy and Environment, May 7, 2017<\/p>\n
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has chosen to replace half of the members on one of its key scientific review boards, the first step in a broader effort by Republicans to change the way the agency evaluates the scientific basis for its regulations.<\/p>\n
The move could significantly change the makeup of the 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises EPA\u2019s key scientific arm on whether the research it does has sufficient rigor and integrity. All of the members being dismissed were at the end of serving at least one three-year term, although these terms are often renewed instead of terminated.<\/p>\n
EPA spokesman J.P. Freire said in an email that \u201cno one has been fired or terminated,\u201d and that Pruitt had simply decided to bring in fresh advisers. The agency informed the outside academics on Friday that their terms would not be renewed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to rubber-stamp the last administration\u2019s appointees. Instead, they should participate in the same open competitive process as the rest of the applicant pool,\u201d Freire said. \u201cThis approach is what was always intended for the Board, and we\u2019re making a clean break with the last administration\u2019s approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the move came as a surprise to members of the board, who had been informed both in January, before Barack Obama left office, and then more recently by EPA career staff members, that they would be kept on for another term.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was kind of shocked to receive this news,\u201d Robert Richardson, an ecological economist and an\u00a0associate professor at Michigan State University\u2019s\u00a0Department of Community Sustainability, said in an interview Sunday.<\/p>\n
Richardson, who tweeted on Saturday, \u201cToday, I was Trumped,\u201d said that he was at the end of an initial three-year term on the board, but that board members traditionally have served two\u00a0such stints.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of any circumstance where someone didn\u2019t serve two consecutive terms,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Courtney Flint, a professor of natural resource sociology at Utah State University who had served one term on the board, said in an email that she was also surprised to learn that her term would not be renewed, \u201cparticularly since I was told that such a renewal was expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the broader view, I suppose it is the prerogative of this administration to set the goals of federal agencies and to appoint members to advisory boards,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n