by Bill McAllister
Denver Post Washington Bureau Chief
The Denver Post
WASHINGTON – When the Reagan revolution arrived in the nation’s capital 20 years ago, Colorado had two key players on the
administration’s environmental team. James G. Watt was Interior Secretary and Anne Gorsuch Burford was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Immediately after both took office, controversies swirled around them.
Neither lasted through Ronald Reagan’s first term. Watt, whose fights with environmentalists were legendary, was pushed out after two years, nine months and 16 days. Burford, a former Colorado legislator and GOP fundraiser, didn’t last that long. She was pushed out after less than two years in office over Democratic allegations about mismanagement of the federal Superfund program.
The Bush administration is barely 10 months old and another Coloradan with environmental responsibilities is in serious trouble. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth threatened to hold Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt for her actions regarding the much-troubled Indian trust accounts her department manages for more than 300,000 American Indians.
To Dennis Gingold, the former Denver lawyer who is leading the Indians’ lawsuit, the parallels are there. “It’s pretty clear, based on experience of Anne Gorsuch Burford, James Watt and Gale Norton, that they were not equipped to handle difficult and sophisticated problems promptly and competently in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
All three were Colorado lawyers, he noted in an interview. “It’s just shameful that members of the Colorado Bar perform as poorly as Ms. Norton,” Gingold said, noting that the accuracy and truthfulness of some of Norton’s statements are in question in the trust case. Gingold said that Norton could lose “a significant part of her responsibilities” if the judge agrees to place the trust under the control of a receiver as the Indians have requested in their lawsuit.
There are various ways to read the judge’s actions. Some saw his blunt comments as an effort to pressure the Bush administration to quickly settle the case out of court – a course that Congress long has urged the Interior Department to take.
Although Gingold suggested that Norton’s tenure could be shortened by her court troubles, it’s hard to believe that it could lead to her ouster. After all, the same judge threatening Norton disciplined her Democratic predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, and his colleague, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs director Kevin Gover. No one in the Clinton administration called for their heads after they ran afoul of Lamberth.
This time Lamberth has motions before him suggesting he find nearly 50 federal officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations be held in contempt for their actions in the case. Babbitt is on that list along with several of his top former aides. Lamberth left no doubt that Norton has incurred his wrath, calling her first public pronouncement on the trust case “clearly contemptuous.”
But Norton has an out. If she agrees to let a court-appointed receiver run the trust operation, she and the entire Interior Department can wash their hands of the problem. If the receiver continues to have problems reconciling the many mangled
accounts, then Norton can say to her critics that she and Babbitt were correct: There was no simple solution to this problem.
That’s the approach some Interior officials quietly are suggesting she may take. If, however, Norton and her aides continue to fight with the judge over the trust, as others suggest, then Norton’s tenure seems certain to remain rocky. Her spokesman said he couldn’t comment. In any event, she’ll first have to persuade the judge, a Reagan appointee, that her actions in trying to resolve the trust problems were not contemptuous as he suggested. And that, like solving the problems of the trust accounts, may not be an easy assignment.
for more information: click here
|
