{"id":12301,"date":"2012-06-08T16:31:38","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T21:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=12301"},"modified":"2012-06-08T16:50:29","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T21:50:29","slug":"after-skipping-house-hearing-armendariz-went-to-sierra-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/06\/08\/after-skipping-house-hearing-armendariz-went-to-sierra-club\/","title":{"rendered":"After Skipping Hearing, Armendariz Went to Sierra Club"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy of EPA<\/p>

Al Armendariz was the regional administrator for the EPA. He resigned after comments he made about enforcement came to light.<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this week, Al Aremendariz was back in the news. The former Region 6 administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)\u00a0had been scheduled to appear\u00a0at a House subcommittee hearing on the EPA,\u00a0but canceled at the last minute<\/a>. Texas regulators and other energy industry figures spent much of the hearing blasting him and the EPA anyway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Armendariz resigned from the EPA in April<\/a> after comments he made two years earlier came to light, where he talked about his philosophy\u00a0of enforcement: making a big example of lawbreakers. But his language was coarse. \u201cIt was kinda like how the Romans used to conquer those villages in the Mediterranean,\u201d he said in the video<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they\u2019d find the first five guys they saw, and they\u2019d crucify them. And you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few\u00a0years.\u201d Within days of that video becoming public, Armendariz resigned.<\/p>\n

So where was he instead of attending the hearing on Wednesday? According to Amy Harder<\/a> in the National Journal<\/em>, Armendariz went to the Sierra Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Harder says that it isn’t clear why Aremndariz skipped his testimony <\/a>Wednesday:<\/p>\n

“But it is clear that he was in Washington that day and met with someone\u2014at the Sierra Club, the nation\u2019s largest environmental organization.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday afternoon, when a reporter visited the Sierra Club\u2019s Washington headquarters just a few blocks from Capitol Hill, Armendariz\u2019s name was written on the sign-in sheet as having been the last person to visit the office.\u00a0The visit apparently came only a few hours after Armendariz had infuriated Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee when he canceled his scheduled testimony on EPA enforcement issues without offering a reason.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Naturally, Republicans on the\u00a0subcommittee\u00a0don’t appreciate the snub<\/a>. In a statement to National Journal<\/em>, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Fred Upton said that\u00a0“the fact that Dr. Armendariz was just blocks away and still refused to testify at our hearing raises even more questions, If he had time on his schedule to meet with the Sierra Club, it is even less clear why he was unable to fulfill his prior commitment to testify.\u201d You can read more over at the National Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Previously: Looking at EPA Enforcement, Beyond the Rhetoric<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, Al Aremendariz was back in the news. The former Region 6 administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)\u00a0had been scheduled to appear\u00a0at a House subcommittee hearing on the EPA,\u00a0but canceled at the last minute. Texas regulators and other energy industry figures spent much of the hearing blasting him and the EPA anyway. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":7330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[96,39],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12317,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12301\/revisions\/12317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}