Chemical agency officials used private email accounts, watchdog says

Chemical Safety Board (CSB) officials used private email accounts to conduct business, in violation of the law, according to a watchdog report.

CSB Chairman Rafael Moure­-Eraso used non-governmental email systems because he did not trust an employee who he believed could access the communications in which he was seeking advice from the agency’s attorney, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General, which has jurisdiction over CSB.

{mosads}Emails outside of CSB’s official system are not properly preserved and would not be subject to public records requests.

“These communications on non-government email systems about official government business would never be able to be searched or found in response to a [public records] request, and therefore, would not be made available to the public,” Inspector General Arthur Elkins wrote in a letter to the White House to convey the findings of an investigation into the CSB’s practices.

Elkins accused Moure­-Eraso of illegal “purposeful circumvention,” along with his general counsel Richard Loeb and managing director Daniel Horowitz.

CSB spokeswoman Hillary Cohen said many CSB employees use private email accounts, and the practices was not prohibited by federal guidelines until March 2013.

At that point, CSB employees stopped using private email accounts except on rare occasions, and those emails are now preserved in the agency’s systems to comply with guidelines.

Cohen said the agency completed its own investigation and found other instances of using private email accounts. CSB did recent training to remind staff on federal rules for record retention.

The report was the result of a years-long contentious investigation that resulted in a series of hearings of the House Oversight Committee last year that spurred lawmakers to call for Moure­-Eraso’s resignation.

Moure­-Eraso had refused to show Elkins the emails in his private account until Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), then chairman of the Oversight panel, told him to comply.

Elkins sent his report in January directly to the White House, since Moure­-Eraso’s only supervisor is President Obama.

He also sent a copy to the Oversight committee, which released a redacted version Tuesday.

At a hearing with that panel in January, Elkins said the White House was reviewing the report.