A Fourth Scandal Coming for the Obama Administration

The President is finding himself hit by multiple scandals including the deadly attack in Libya, the IRS targeting of tea party, patriot and religious groups and the seizure of Associated Press phone records in a leak investigation. Obama advisers cast the trio of controversies as an inevitable part of life in the White House.

But there is a fourth scandal brewing.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been playing favorites with who it allows to receive a media waiver fee and who doesn’t. Conservative groups seeking information from the EPA have been routinely forced to pay fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from “green groups” were waived.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reviewed Freedom of Information Act requests sent between January 2012 and this spring from several environmental groups friendly to the EPA’s mission, and several conservative groups, to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy for media and watchdog groups.  Most green groups, including EarthJustice, The Waterkeeper Alliance, and Greenpeace, saw their fees waived.

Similarly, requests from conservative groups Judicial Watch and National Center for Public Policy Research saw approval half the time, and all requests from Franklin Center and the Institute for Energy Research denied. Meanwhile, CEI had its requests denied 93 percent of the time.

Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit.