(U.S. Senator James E. Risch Press Release, December 23, 2024)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) led 22 of their colleagues in sending a letter to Heather Gottry, the Department of the Interior Ethics Office Director, urging her to identify conflicts of interest throughout the department and advise the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director and others to recuse themselves from any pending agency business for the duration of their service.
“Over the last four years, the American West has suffered greatly as the BLM has imposed policies straight from the playbook of the BLM Director’s future employer. Across the west, those who live near and rely on public lands for their economic livelihood have suffered from new resource management plans that choose preservation over multiple use,” wrote the lawmakers. “Communities have languished from the BLM’s flat-out refusal to follow the law that mandates onshore oil and gas lease sales. Ranchers have struggled with grazing permit renewals all while staring down a new rule that improperly puts ‘conservation’ on equal footing with multiple use activities and threatening to end their businesses.”
Risch, Crapo, and Lummis are joined by U.S. Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), and 14 members of the House of Representatives.
Read the full letter here.
