CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is opposing President Joe Biden's pick to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air office.
Morrisey wrote a letter January 31 to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell opposing the nomination of Joseph Goffman to lead the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. He has led the air office on an acting basis for more than two years and was instrumental in the development of former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Goffman’s nomination has been lingering for nearly two years, and the Morrisey said that’s for good reason.
“During his time as an officer with former President Obama’s EPA, and in his present position Principal Deputy Assistant for the Air Office, Mr. Goffman has been directly involved in — and often led — some of EPA’s most problematic proposals,” Morrisey wrote, noting in the letter that Goffman "seems to prefer regulatory measures that destabilize our grid, hamper our economy, eliminate jobs, and disregard Congress’s authority.
“And our country cannot tolerate the billions of dollars in regulatory costs that Mr. Goffman seems determined to impose.”
Morrisey says the Clean Power Plan isn't Goffman's only "regulatory misstep."
"Reports reflect that Mr. Goffman has played leading roles in the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, regulations on methane emissions from the oil and gas sectors, restrictions on particulate matter, ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards, regional haze state implementation plan disapprovals, regulations pushing electric vehicles and more," Morrisey wroe to Schumer and McConnell. "In extensive comments, my Attorney General colleagues and I have explained how so many of these proposals sit on unsound legal footing.
"I anticipate that these unduly aggressive measures will prompt long legal fights of their own. Indeed, some of Mr. Goffman’s handiwork — EPA’s ozone transport federal implementation rule — is already before the Supreme Court right now; the Court will hear argument on whether to stay that rule on February 21."
Morrisey says Goffman has complained about the need to conduct rulemaking at all.
"He apparently prefers informal guidance that requires fewer procedural safeguards," the AG wrote. "Mr. Goffman believes that 'the more rulemaking, the more litigation.' That’s true when an agency tries to do what’s unlawful.
"Altogether, Mr. Goffman seems to prefer hardline regulatory measures that destabilize our grid, hamper our economy, eliminate jobs and disregard Congress’s authority. And our country cannot tolerate the billions of dollars in regulatory costs that Mr. Goffman seems determined to impose."
Morrisey also said Goffman "appears to have little concern for working across the aisle to mitigate some of these harms," saying he previously attacked the Trump administration for the Affordable Clean Energy Rule and accused Trump of "sabotaging" the "machinery of regulation."
"That hardly sounds like a dispassionate environmental regulator," Morrisey wrote. "Mr. Goffman’s time at the Environmental Defense Fund plainly had an impact. Mr. Goffman has also already engaged in conduct that has raised ethics concerns.
"In an apparent violation of an ethics pledge, Mr. Goffman had official contacts with Harvard, his former employer. More problematically, while at Harvard, Mr. Goffman also consulted with Democratic Attorneys General on regulating CO2 under the ozone-related NAAQS, yet he did not disclose this involvement when he returned to EPA. Mr. Goffman did not recuse from ongoing litigation brought by many of those same AGs against the EPA concerning the same ozone NAAQS.
"Perhaps most unusually, even while moving in and out of positions with direct oversight authority over oil and gas companies, Mr. Goffman has invested tens of thousands of dollars in those very same companies — which in turn led Politico to flag questions about conflicts of interest."
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Goffman’s initiative — the Clean Power Plan — in its West Virginia v. EPA ruling. Morrisey's office calls that ruling the most consequential development in environmental law since he won a stay of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan at the Supreme Court in February 2016. West Virginia v. EPA already has become one of the central cases in administrative law.
