Key policy positions still vacant in administration

Trump issued order but hasn’t filled posts to fix U.S. infrastructure

Nearly 10 months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to speed environmental reviews of infrastructure projects, many important positions to implement the policy remain vacant.

WASHINGTON – Nearly 10 months after signing an executive order to speed environmental reviews of infrastructure projects, the Trump administration has failed to name key federal officials charged with implementing the policy.

President Trump frequently criticizes the time it takes to review highway, bridge and other projects, and his administration is working to cut the average review to two years. But critics say it is the White House itself that has been slow to appoint some of the caretakers of his effort.

Trump made fixing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure a central theme of his campaign and has described lengthy environmental assessments of infrastructure projects as standing in the way. One study found that the typical project takes six years to clear federal regulatory hurdles.

Despite the president’s interest in the issue, he has not selected a chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House office that plays a major role overseeing environmental reviews. He has not named the head of a permitting council charged with monitoring those assessments.

Several top positions at the Department of Transportation, including the head of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Highway Administration, are filled with acting administrators.

“One of the key things the White House isn’t doing is using the permitting council to knock heads together,” said Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the National Resources Defense Council. “You need to put the money

President Trump frequently criticizes the time it takes to review highway, bridge and other projects.

and the people on the ground to get these things done.”

Administration officials said that work is underway and that progress is being made. A dozen departments and agencies signed an agreement in April committing to the two-year goal and a system in which one agency will make decisions about each project.

David Bernhardt, deputy secretary at the Department of Interior, said he is aware of at least five projects Interior officials are considering under an expedited review, including solar and wind energy developments. He declined to name them specifically.

Bernhardt said the department, which reviews projects planned for federal lands, took steps to reduce the length of reviews, such as cutting the number of days to approve required public notices from three months to about 15 days.

“The president enables us to deliver results and is willing to accept out-ofthe-box thinking,” Bernhardt said.

Critics say the administration has not produced a list of projects considered “high priority” and say developers are waiting for more detailed guidance on how the sped-up process will work. Many point to a lack of permanent officials.

Trump named Kathleen Hartnett White to head the Council on Environmental Quality last fall but withdrew her name in February after she failed to gain traction in the Senate. The office oversees implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Nixonera law that requires environmental assessments of major projects. The White House didn’t name a replacement.

The president has not named an executive director at the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, an entity created by a 2015 law aimed at speeding approvals. Trump’s executive order allows the council to designate certain projects for faster review and charges it with helping agencies meet the two-year goal.

The position does not require Senate approval.

Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sent a letter to the White House last year expressing concern about the delay. They wrote that “a lack of clear leadership from the top” hampered progress on improving timelines.

Signaling the importance of the issue, Trump signed an initial executive order four days after his inauguration setting out broad goals for speeding reviews.

The administration sought input from governors about projects that should be expedited. Six governors responded with several projects each, but administration officials could not say whether any but one were put in a queue for expedited review.

Ciara Matthews, a spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, said the governor’s office had not heard back from Washington about his request and declined further comment. Ali Bay, a spokeswoman for California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, referred questions to the Trump administration.

One project listed by a governor that has received attention from the administration is a roughly $1 billion effort to connect the Mississippi River to wetlands in the Barataria Basin of Louisiana. The timeline for that project was shortened in April by nearly two years.

Analysts were skeptical of how widespread success has been.

“To date, there has been very little impact, if any at all, on permitting timelines and overall environmental review times for infrastructure projects,” said Christy Goldfuss, former managing director of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Obama administration, who is with the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “The Trump administration has tried to govern through press releases and announcements but has done very little to exercise their existing authority.”