A government watchdog published documents exposing a conflict of interest between the director of the National Park Service (NPS) and a university on the West Coast the agency has contracted with.
On Thursday, the nonprofit group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) released records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) showing NPS Director Charles Sams was given the green light by ethics officials within the Department of the Interior to accept an honorary degree from Oregon’s Portland State University. Sams was granted approval by the agency ethics bureau in June last year despite the university being “party to numerous cooperative agreements with the [National Park Service]” and “likely [having] other matters, actions, or decisions pending before the Department.”
The Department of the Interior’s Ethics Office argued that “the Director’s acceptance of the honorary degree would not cause a reasonable person to question the Director’s impartiality in a matter affecting PSU.”
“We understand, based on information provided by NPS, that the vast majority of NPS’s cooperative agreements with PSU remain at the regional level and that the Director has had either none or very little involvement in the existing cooperative agreements with PSU,” the ethics department said in its decision.
The language used to justify the award from a partner university is similar to the wording deployed by the secretary of the interior to unilaterally waive ethics complaints related to her decision over an oil and gas moratorium in New Mexico. Last year, Secretary Deb Haaland prohibited new oil and gas
