Earlier today I posted on Pruitt getting a sweetheart deal condo rate that didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me. But looking at the details on the raises he got for his top aides, even after the White House rejected them, does look pretty bad:
ATLANTIC – In early March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt approached the White House with a request: He wanted substantial pay raises for two of his closest aides.
The aides, Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp, were part of the small group of staffers who had traveled with Pruitt to Washington from Oklahoma, where he had served as attorney general. Greenwalt, a 30-year-old who had worked as Pruitt’s general counsel in Oklahoma, was now his senior counsel at the EPA. Hupp, 26, was working on his political team before she moved to D.C. to become the agency’s scheduling director.
Pruitt asked that Greenwalt’s salary be raised from $107,435 to $164,200; Hupp’s, from $86,460 to $114,590. Because both women were political appointees, he needed the White House to sign-off on their new pay.
According to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, staffers from the Presidential Personnel Office dismissed Pruitt’s application. The White House, the source said, declined to approve the raises.
Okay that’s a lot of money for an increase! We’re talking almost 85,000 between the two of them. I can see why the White House rejected the raises.
But that didn’t stop Pruitt from making the raises happen:
So Pruitt found another way.
A provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act allows the EPA administrator to hire up to 30 people into the agency, without White House or congressional approval. The provision, meant to help expedite the hiring of experts and allow for more flexible staffing, became law in 1996. In past administrations, it has been used to hire specialists into custom-made roles in especially stressed offices, according to Bob Perciasepe, a former acting EPA administrator.
After the White House rejected their request, Pruitt’s team studied the particulars of the Safe Drinking Water provision, according to the source with direct knowledge of these events. By reappointing Greenwalt and Hupp under this authority, they learned, Pruitt could exercise total control over their contracts and grant the raises on his own.
Pruitt ordered it done. Though Hupp and Greenwalt’s duties did not change, the agency began processing them for raises of $28,130 and $56,765, respectively, compared with their 2017 salaries. Less than two weeks after Pruitt had approached the White House, according to time-stamped Human Resources documents shared with The Atlantic, the paperwork was finished.
That’s definitely slimy. No doubt about it.
What is wrong with people? They get to Washington and suddenly lose their minds? Didn’t anyone learn anything from Tom Price?
And if this is slimy, then perhaps the sweetheart condo deal is slimy too? That would be a bigger deal if they could prove that, but as I suggested before, they’ll need more than just a cheap condo rate.
I like what Pruitt has done over at the EPA which is why this is a bit distressing.