Christine Todd Whitman

Christine Todd Whitman

Christine Todd Whitman (Christie) was elected as Governor of New Jersey in November 1993 and was appointed by George W. Bush as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January 2001. She resigned from the EPA on May 21, 2003. Since 2004, she has headed Whitman Strategy Group, a lobbying / consulting firm with offices in New Jersey and Washington DC. [1] Since at least 2006, she has consulted for the Nuclear Energy Institute, promoting nuclear power as the co-chair of the industry-funded "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition." [2] In January 2008, she was named a co-chair of the Aspen Institute's Health Stewardship Project.

Whitman co-founded the Republican Leadership Council, which works to get centrist Republicans elected. Her daugher, Kate Whitman, is the group's executive director. In November 2007, Kate Whitman announced she would seek the Republican nomination for New Jersey's 7th district Congressional seat. [3]

Lobbying / consulting work

After returning to private life, Whitman founded a consulting / lobbying firm called the Whitman Strategy Group in 2004. [4]

The Whitman firm's first client was FMC Corporation, "a chemical company negotiating with the EPA over the cleanup of arsenic-contaminated soil at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y." In a May 2005 interview, Whitman said she had not worked directly with FMC, but would likely advise them on "how to improve their image" and gain "access to the people they need to speak to." FMC "is responsible for 136 Superfund sites across the country ... and has been subject to 47 EPA enforcement actions." [5]

Nuclear power

In 2006, Whitman was named as the co-chair of and a paid spokesperson for the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear power group funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). [6]

"Whitman and NEI spokesman Scott Peterson declined to give the [Clean and Safe Energy] coalition's budget," reported the National Journal. "Nor would Whitman disclose what NEI is paying her consulting firm, the Whitman Strategy Group."

In a July 2009 talk in San Antonio, Texas, representing the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, Whitman promoted nuclear power and criticized environmentalists. "It's nice to be against everything, but you have got to be for something at some point," she said, according to the San Antonio Express-News. "If they would just stay quiet, that would be good." Whitman had been invited by the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, as part of their efforts "to persuade the community to support the expansion of the nuclear South Texas Project outside Bay City."

Water policy

In June 2008, Whitman was named chair of the Water Policy Institute, a project of the law firm Hunton & Williams.

According to Congressional Quarterly, Whitman "is now helping to bring clients to the law firm of Hunton & Williams as chairwoman of its new Water Policy Institute. ... Whitman's firm will get an undisclosed fee for its work."

Whitman's also part of the Oceans of Abundance working group, "a bipartisan working group of two dozen economic and environmental leaders and scientists" that released a report on overfishing in November 2008. The working group's co-chairs are former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and former Congressman and Biotechnology Industry Organization CEO James C. Greenwood. The working group was convened by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

According to ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten, the EPA under Whitman's tenure engaged in secret negotiations with industry, while supposedly addressing drinking water issues related to a gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." In 2004, the EPA undertook a study on the issue and "the EPA, despite its scientific judgment that there was a potential risk to groundwater supplies, which their report clearly says, then went ahead and very surprisingly concluded that there was no risk to groundwater," Lustgarten said on Democracy Now! "[P]art of my reporting found that throughout that process the EPA was closer than seemed comfortable with the industry. I filed FOIA requests for some documents and found conversations between Halliburton employees and the EPA researchers, essentially asking for an agreement from Halliburton in exchange for more lax enforcement. The EPA, in these documents, appeared to offer that and agree to that. And it doesn’t appear, by any means, to have been either a thorough or a very objective study."

Whitman's "personal legacy"

The media contact given for Whitman on the Whitman Strategy Group website is Heather Grizzle, with the firm ASG Advisors. The ASG firm offers services related to "strategic philanthropy and executive positioning." A case study on the ASG website appears to refer to Whitman:

A former governor and federal cabinet member had many requests for ways to spend her time, energy and reputation. ... ASG wrote a strategic plan for managing the Governor's post-office reputation and legacy. The plan included strategy on her involvement in both state and national matters and recommendations for how she should expend her time in the public eye. As part of a full-service effort, ASG assisted with drafting speeches and op-eds in the Governor's name that furthered the direction we suggested her legacy take.

Other

In June 2009, Christine Todd Whitman, on behalf of the Whitman Strategy Group, met with "top officials of UAB 'Dujotekana', one of the leading energy companies in Lithuania," according to a press release from the company. "This trip was the beginning of a long term development plan of UAB 'Dujotekana,' which will include construction and financing of a new power plant facility in Lithuania and a new port terminal in Russia," it added. The release described the Whitman Strategy Group as "a consulting firm that specializes in energy and environmental issues."

Background

"Prior to becoming governor, Whitman headed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the Somerset County Board of Freeholders. She grew up in Hunterdon County, N.J. and earned a bachelor's degree in government from Wheaton College in Massachusetts in 1968," an EPA biographical note stated. [7]

Whitman was the first woman elected as Governor of New Jersey.

N.J. voter suppression allegations

Her 1992 election campaign was marred by claims by her campaign manager Ed Rollins of voter suppression tactics. In a November 1993 speech, Rollins boasted "about how he had just helped win a governorship for New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman, [and] said the campaign had spent about $ 500,000 to suppress the black vote. He said GOP operatives had made payments to Democratic precinct workers in black areas on condition they sit on their hands on election day. And he said the Whitman campaign had contributed to church charities in return for black ministers keeping mum on the virtues of Democratic incumbent James Florio," reported Columbia Journalism Review. Rollins later recanted, then re-affirmed his statements about voter suppression. [8]

N.J. environmental record

Whitman claimed that, while she was Governor, "the number of days New Jersey violated the federal one-hour air quality standard for ground level ozone dropped from 45 in 1988 to four in 2000. Beach closings reached a record low, the state earned recognition by the Natural Resources Defense Council for instituting the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the nation, and a new watershed management program was instituted which resulted in New Jersey leading the nation in opening shellfish beds for harvesting." [9]

Reporting on the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's (D.E.P.'s) weak record with regard to the cleanup of contaminated sites in the state, the New York Times mentioned Whitman's not-so-green record as governor: [10]

During the administration of Gov. Christie Whitman, the staff of the environmental agency was cut 20 percent, and hours were reduced to 35 from 40 a week, said Bill Wolfe, a former department official who today is director of New Jersey Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit watchdog group. The agency’s site remediation program, which is responsible for overseeing cleanups, dropped to 500 employees from 600 in 1996, even as the department’s responsibilities were expanded to include the regulation of solid and hazardous waste.

"The D.E.P. never recovered," Mr. Wolfe said.

In early 1996, "a coalition of environmental and public-policy groups ... gave Governor Whitman a grade of C- on how she has handled environmental issues." The top concern of the groups was "cuts she has made in the budget of the Department of Environmental Protection." [11]

"Whitman proclaimed her dedication to the environment while she implemented severe cuts," wrote Steve Shalom in 1997. "Fewer personnel and funds meant fewer inspections. Water pollution and land use inspections were down about a third from fiscal years 1993 to 1996; air pollution inspections declined more than 40 percent. A 1996 report noted that despite a history of contamination, no fish had been tested for PCBs since 1991. Fines on polluters dropped sharply. Assessed water pollution penalties fell from $23 million in 1993 to only $4 million in 1996. Collections plunged as well. Funding for attorneys to enforce permits and handle appeals of DEP rulings were slashed and the Office of Environmental Prosecutor was abolished." [12]

Shalom also noted that Whitman appointed as DEP head Robert C. Shinn Jr., who as a state legislator had tried to gut the state's "Right to Know" law, which provides "employees and communities information on some 2,900 hazardous chemicals they worked with and lived near." As DEP head, Shinn "removed 2,000 of the 2,900 chemicals from the list, and excluded from the law’s coverage supplies of a chemical weighing less than 500 pounds—so that a 55-gallon drum of highly toxic substances would not have to be reported. The Right to Know budget was cut nearly 25 percent and the staff reduced by a third." [13]

Many of Whitman's environmental policy changes and funding cuts came under the heading of her "Open for Business" initiative. Whitman said the initiative "created jobs and improved the local economy," according to the American Journalism Review. But in a 13-part 1996 series in the The Record (Hackensack, N.J.) titled "Open for Business," reporters Dunstan McNichol and Kelly Richmond showed that "that the real boost in jobs had occurred in lower-paying occupations and temporary positions. Their number-crunching also demonstrated the ways in which policies intended to keep businesses from leaving the state, such as lower pollution fines and more lenient emission rules, caused a chain reaction adversely affecting the environment, the economy and, ultimately, citizens and consumers." [14]

"In her first three years in office, 738 employees at the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) lost their jobs, and the remaining staff found themselves on a four-day week," wrote Laura Flanders in her book "Bushwomen" (Verso, 2004, full title, "Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species"). Under Whitman, DEP also eliminated the Office of Public Advocate.

Whitman did create a few environmental positions as governor -- an Office of Dispute Resolution within DEP, that "usually resolved [conflicts] business's way"; and an Office of Business Ombudsman, "created to help businesses navigate environmental laws," wrote Laura Flanders. "A famous survey of state workers found that Whitman's environmental staff thought the biggest problem facing New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection was the Governor herself," Flanders added.

In 1997, a survey was conducted of NJDEP employees to guage their views on Whitman's environmental policies.

The 1997 PEER survey registered a sharp de-emphasis on enforcement, excessive corporate influence and manipulation of scientific findings under Governor Whitman.

"According to the professional staff who worked under Governor Whitman in New Jersey, pressure to block enforcement of anti-pollution laws, back-door efforts to gut regulations and a pervasive fear of retaliation have been the hallmarks of her tenure," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "Cozy accommodation of corporate violators appears to be her regulatory style."

The PEER survey, the only survey conducted of state environmental professionals, was sent to all DEP employees. and found:

• Nearly two out of three employees report instances where "DEP inaction or lack of enforcement has caused environmental damage."

• More than three out of four employees say that the "level of DEP's environmental enforcement has decreased in the past three years."

• Nearly three out of four employees believe that under Gov. Whitman, the "regulated community excessively influences DEP permitting, policy and enforcement decisions."

Whitman championed "market based" environmental policies, and derisively dismissed many environmental programs as "soviet style command and control regulation" and EPA "mandates from Washington".

One of Whitman's priority market based progams, the "Open Market Emissions Trading" (OMET) program came under severe criticism by national environmental groups, including NRDC and Environmental Defense, a groups that generally support market based policies. In an ironic twist, shortly after Whitman assumed the helm at EPA, in a strongly worded May 31, 2001 letter, leading national environmental groups asked Whitman to impose a moratorium on her own OMET program. The groups argued that:

"...this approach [OMET] to air pollution trading fails to protect minority and poor communities against continued degradation of air quality in their neighborhoods. Second, rather than balancing incentives with enforcement, these programs simply concede enforcement to market participants and then fail to buttress that concession with credible monitoring, audit and backstop provisions. Finally, the programs fail either to provide adequate protection against localized community-specific impacts, or to provide those communities with sufficient and timely information that they need in order to participate in these decisions. These programs disempower the communities and retreat from the rigor and enforceability of established health and environmental protections." [15]

The approval of "open market" air pollution trading authority for states, the first initiative from Christine Todd Whitman at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), violates the Clean Air Act to the detriment of public health, according to complaints filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club. Last week, EPA formally proposed open market trading for Michigan and New Hampshire. Approval of similar programs is pending for New Jersey and Illinois.

Under open market trading plans, corporations can buy credits instead of cleaning up pollution. These credits can be generated from, and exchanged between, different pollution sources (e.g., smokestacks for auto emissions) and over different periods of time (allowing industries to create credits today for past pollution reductions). Over the past five years under Whitman, New Jersey has developed a de facto trading market. EPA approval will not only sanction New Jersey's market but endorse the spread of similar pollution credit exchanges in other states.See: NEW POLLUTION TRADING FOR FOUR STATES GUTS CLEAN AIR ACT — Whitman Trading Plans Emerge as First EPA Policies Read the Request for an IG investigationand the NJ Overfile Request here.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a confirmation hearing on Whitman on January 17, 2001. NJ based environmental groups, including Sierra Club adn Audubon Society, strongly opposed Whitman's confirmation, and submitted extensive documentation of her record. Those submissions and Whitman's detailed rebuttal were incporproated in the hearing record. A transcript of that hearing and the full record may be found here.

Cheney Energy Task Force

"Whitman owns interests in oil wells in Texas and Colorado valued at between $55,000 and $175,000," reported the San Jose Mercury News on February 28, 2001 ("Top officials face conflict of interest queries over oil connections"). "She has promised to divest of them to meet ethics guidelines." The particular companies Whitman held investments in were CEX Operating Co. of Dallas, Hunt Oil Co. of Houston, and St. Mary Operating Co. in Colorado. The conflicts were highlighted during meetings of Vice-President Cheney's Energy Task Force.

EPA record

Whitman championed "free market environmentalism"; voluntary initiatives promoted by conservative think tanks and industry lobbies as an alternative to regulatory measures. Some of these programs included Climate Leaders, Energy Star, SmartWay Transport, and the new Water Quality Trading Policy and Bush's Clear Skies Initiative.

"Under Administrator Whitman's leadership, the EPA ... also [undertook] aggressive efforts to fulfill its mission by cleaning up the Hudson River, protecting children from environmental health hazards such as asthma and sun exposure, and requiring cleaner burning diesel engines and lower-sulfur diesel fuel to reduce emissions from America's dirtiest mobile sources," her biographical note stated. [16]

Yet, "EPA documents showed that the number of officially defined smoggy days had increased by 32 percent from 2001 to 2002. The completion of clean-ups at Superfund sites was down by close to half," writes Laura Flanders in "Bushwomen." Eric Schaeffer, the EPA's head of regulatory enforcement under Whitman, resigned under protest. He told Flanders that Whitman is "a Republican first and an environmentalist way down the list."

As Whitman was leaving the EPA, not only was "the Inspector General's report on the clean-up operation after 9/11" soon to be released (see next section), but new information was about to surface on pollution in Anniston, Alabama. According to Laura Flanders' book "Bushwomen":

Court documents revealed that a multi-million-dollar verdict against the chemical company found liable (Monsanto) was changed in Monsanto's favor just days after Whitman received a forty-five-minute "briefing" on the case. On the eve of Whitman's departure from the EPA, a former EPA attorney who had testified in the Anniston case came forward and said that inspectors general at the EPA and the Department of Justice had pressured her not to testify. Janet MacGillibray, formerly a Superfund attorney, said a high-ranking EPA official told her Anniston didn't make a list of national clean-up priorities because Monsanto didn't want it to.

On August 11, 2003, President George Walker Bush named Utah Governor Mike Leavitt as Whitman's successor. [17]

Misleading New Yorkers post-9/11

In February 2006, a federal judge found Whitman guilty of making "'misleading statements of safety' about the air quality near the World Trade Center in the days after the Sept. 11 attack." The judge further found that Whitman "may have put the public in danger," according to the New York Times (Julia Preston, "Public Misled on Air Quality After 9/11 Attack, Judge Says," February 3, 2006).

"The allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking," said Judge Deborah A. Batts. As early as September 13, 2001, the EPA put out press releases declaring "no significant levels" of asbestos dust, when agency officials knew there were significant hazardous emissions. Judge Batts' ruling allowed a 2004 class action lawsuit against Whitman and other EPA officials and the entire agency, which was filed on behalf of residents and schoolchildren from downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, to go forward.

Whitman's post-9/11 statements are further called into question by "the appearance of a conflict between Whitman's responsibility to the public and her own family's financial affairs," wrote Laura Flanders in her book "Bushwomen." "As the former Governor of New Jersey, Whitman owned bonds worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in the New York/New Jersey Port Authority -- the owner of the World Trade Center site and the major liable party in the affair. Her husband, John R. Whitman, formerly a Citigroup vice-president, manages hundreds of millions of dollars in the banking giant's assets, and Travelers Insurance, a Citigroup subsidiary, stood to lose multiple millions in Manhattan medical claims." Flanders gives the Whitmans' investment in Citigroup as being "up to $250,000 in stock," adding that "John Whitman received a six-figure bonus from Citigroup as recently as 2000."

In June 2007, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that "federal environmental officials misled Lower Manhattan residents about the extent of contamination in their condominiums and apartments after the collapse of the World Trade Center," the New York Times reported. In particular, "the Environmental Protection Agency did not accurately report the results of a residential cleanup program in 2002 and 2003." [18]

The preliminary GAO report was made public during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works. Whitman was scheduled to testify at another Congressional hearing the following week, "about her handling of the disaster and the way she communicated the level of risk to the public." [19]

Board positions and other affiliations

According to her bio on the Whitman Strategy Group website (accessed June 12, 2007), Whitman has the following affiliations: [20]

• Director, Americans Elect
• Co-chair, National Smart Growth Council
• Member, governors' board of the Oquirrh Institute
• Board of Directors, S. C. Johnson and Son, Inc.
• Board of Directors, Texas Instruments
• Board of Directors, United Technologies
• Board of Directors, Millennium Challenge Corporation
• Board of Directors, Council on Foreign Relations
• Honorary Board, Republicans for Environmental Protection

In June 2008, Whitman was named chair of the Water Policy Institute.

In June 2006, The Record reported that Whitman had three paying board positions, for United Technologies Corp., Texas Instruments, SC Johnson & Son. Her total compensation for the three positions was $195,000 plus stock options. (Kathleen Lynn, "Getting on boards; Ex-officials land big fees as corporate directors," The Record (Bergen County, N.J.), June 18, 2006)

Whitman told The Record that "Being a former public official does give me the ability to raise the red flag for corporations as to the reaction of regulators to various proposed initiatives and some insight as to what to expect politically in the country."

Statements on nuclear power

• "We're going to have to recognize that there's a next generation of nuclear technology that is a whole lot safer than in the past." - June 14, 2004, Council on Foreign Relations briefing on "Climate change: What's next for American policy?"
• "New technology allows us to do it [produce nuclear power] better and in a safer way. The biggest hurdle obviously is where do you store the spent rods. There's also some research going on as to whether we are actually making maximum use of spent rods, if there isn't more we can get out of them that would render them even safer. We're working, obviously, closely with the Department of Energy on storage facility and what happens for a national facility." - interview with The Hill, published June 13, 2001 as "Interview: EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman"
• "I don't think that you can say that more nuclear power is environmentally harmful, necessarily, from a clean-air standpoint. It's much cleaner than coal, and we're 51 percent coal dependent at the moment. The real discussion that we're going to have to have in this country, and it's going to have to be a nationwide discussion, is how much do we prize the ability to turn on the lights and have them turn on when we want them to, have heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer versus no one wants gas pipelines near them because they might explode." - interview with Roll Call, published April 23, 2001 as "EPA Head Seeks 'Long-Term' Solutions on Pollution, Energy"
• "We've got to have a serious debate. ... Nuclear is just too big and too proven, and the potential is too great, to just write it off." - quoted in The National Journal (Lisa Caruso, "Can We Talk (About Nuclear Energy?)," September 9, 2006)
• "It's the only form of base power that doesn't produce regulated pollution or greenhouse gases when producing power."
• "I’ve got to preface this by saying I believe in nuclear power, because it’s the only base power source that does not emit any greenhouse gases or any of the regulated pollutants."

Appearances

• In East Lansing, Michigan on September 18, 2007 for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce Future Forum.
• In Manchester, New Hampshire on October 12, 2007, giving a talk at the "Global Warming & Energy Solutions" conference organized by Clean Air-Cool Planet.
• In Long Beach, California on October 23, 2007, at the "2007 Governor and First Lady's Women's Conference," hosted by California First Lady Maria Shriver and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [21]
• In Columbia, South Carolina on November 19, 2007, speaking at the University of South Carolina's business school about nuclear energy.
• In Clemson, South Carolina on November 20, 2007, speaking about "The CASE for Nuclear Energy."
• In West Des Moines, Iowa on December 1, 2007, speaking to the Iowa chapter of the Republican Leadership Council.
• In Chicago, Illinois on February 11, 2008, speaking to Chicago Public Radio about nuclear power.
• In New Haven, Connecticut on April 17 - 18, 2008, to speak at a Yale University conference on global warming
• In Kansas City, Kansas on April 22, 2008, as a keynote speaker at the "Central Exchange Women’s Lyceum: A Leadership Conference for Women." [22] [23]
• In Columbia, South Carolina on October 9, 2008, to "discuss the future of nuclear energy in South Carolina and the U.S."
• In San Antonio, Texas on July 8, 2009, for a talk sponsored by the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce about a proposal by CPS Energy / NRG Energy to build two new nuclear reactors.

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Aspen Institute / Aspen Strategy Group
• Bush regime environmental record
• CEO Water Mandate
• Cheney Energy Task Force
• Clean and Safe Energy Coalition
• Ed Rollins
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Global Water Futures
• Nuclear Energy Institute
• Patrick Moore
• Water Policy Institute
• Whitman Strategy Group

External articles

See the related page, Christine Todd Whitman: Articles