Click the graphic to access the OregonLive article, “Oil-backed climate skeptic could get key EPA job in Pacific Northwest”

September 15, 2018  Dena Jensen

Our Doug’s Got to Go posts are reaching a mature 21 days and it is a good time to share OregonLive’s excellent summary of Republican State Senator Doug Ericksen’s status as he was beginning to juggle his state senator responsibilities with a new job with Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency in early February of 2017. 

The 2/10/17 article by Rob Davis begins with a few Ericksenisms that blast through tenets of the modern-day environmental movement and then moves into describing an ominous sense of Ericksen’s potential influence inside the EPA.

The next section, included below, reminds us of Senator Ericksen’s obstruction of information to the public, both in local media and at the EPA; the cloudy legal status of his job with the EPA, Senator Ericksen again failing, at the date of this article, to provide verification of that legal status; the disruptive effect of his EPA job on the legislative session at that time; and an apt reminder about Doug’s level of commitment to those of us he is seeking, once again in 2018, to represent. At least till his next job offer from President Trump. Here’s that excerpt:

“Ericksen’s salary is unclear. He said he doesn’t know how much he’s being paid. “I’ll get paid eventually I hope,” he said.

“In Washington state, where the legislature is in session, Ericksen remains the senate’s tie-breaking vote. In the other Washington, he’s the temporary communications director at the EPA at a time when the agency has halted most communication, going silent on social media.

“The legal boundaries of his work in the nation’s capital are murky.

“Ericksen said he’s been approved by the EPA’s ethics office to work on communication, not policy. But he wouldn’t release their written opinion saying so. ‘We can release that at some point,’ he said. ‘Not today.’

“Holding down both his legislative job and one at EPA has brought intense criticism. Washington state Democrats say he’s hampering the legislative session because the Republican majority doesn’t want to vote without him. He missed 75 percent of committee meetings, according to a Bellingham Herald analysis.

“Ericksen has pledged to immediately resign his legislative seat if he’s offered a full-time role with any federal government agency. He said he’s interested not just in the possibility of working at the EPA but also the Agriculture Department or Interior Department.”