2013 Press Releases
Washington, D.C. – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), rocked by documentary evidence — its own records — that it treats environmental groups favorably when it comes to granting waivers for public records fees while denying fee waiver requests for conservative organizations, attempted to cover-up the emerging scandal by calling for an internal “programatic audit.” The American Tradition Institute (ATI), one of the two organizations receiving serial, facially improper fee waiver denials as a hurdle to obtaining public records regarding EPA’s relationship with its group of favored green pressure groups, and which has cited specific, admitted instances of EPA’s bias in pending litigation, said today that a programatic audit is clearly not enough to get to the root of this scandal.
ATI Names Craig Richardson Executive Director (5/1/13)
Washington, D.C. – The American Tradition Institute (ATI), a nonprofit public policy organization dedicated to free market environmentalism, named longtime Washington veteran Craig Richardson as executive director. Richardson has nearly three decades of non-profit, communications, fundraising, and political experience at the national, state, and local levels.
Washington – Today, the American Tradition Institute (ATI) filed a Freedom of Information request with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking all e-mails, instant messages (IMs), and texts from EPA’s Headquarters Office of Air and Radiation and/or Office of the Administrator that involve the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies (AAPCA), and an EPA and AAPCA contractor, Battelle.
Washington – Yesterday, the American Tradition Institute (ATI) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) withdrew their lawsuit without prejudice that they jointly filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seeking to compel the Agency to respond to the groups’ requests for certain Instant Messages (IMs) to or from three senior current and former EPA officials. The groups dropped their suit after EPA provided an atypically specific response, openly acknowledging the availability of this previously unrevealed alternative to email it offers, asserting that no such records for the three officials ever existed, and that none of the three officials had ever used “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s instant-message application.”
WASHINGTON – Stung by widespread publicity resulting from recent American Tradition Institute (ATI) and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits seeking emails, and most troubling, instant messages (IM’s) filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), acting administrator Bob Perciasepe yesterday reminded EPA employees they are expected to comply with open-record laws. Notably, this all-staff memo promised to do better managing IMs — an alternative to email that we now know that EPA provides its employees, but which the Agency apparently has never provided to Congress or FOIA requesters.
Colorado Admits Certain Defeat In Renewable Energy Law Suit With Introduction Of New Bill (4/4/13).
DENVER – Facing certain defeat in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard mandate, lawmakers attempted to “fix” major elements of the law with the introduction of Senate Bill 13-252 yesterday. In doing so, members of the Colorado Senate and House admitted that the state’s law imposing a renewable energy standard is unconstitutional.
This admission is of national significance and validates the lawsuit brought by the American Tradition Institute on behalf of Colorado ratepayers. In effect, Colorado is telling all states that have similar statutes that they are vulnerable to legal challenge and will have to change their laws to remove preferences for in-state producers. Among states with such discrimination in their laws, California is the biggest offender.
WASHINGTON – In what could be a landmark case, two free-market groups – the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute – have filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Environmental Protection Agency seeking communications among senior EPA officials using instant messaging or IM technology.
ATI Applauds North Carolina Bill Aimed at Stopping Inhumane EPA Human Experimentation (03/07/2013)
WASHINGTON – Today, the public interest group American Tradition Institute (ATI) expressed strong support for a recently introduced North Carolina bill (S.B. 187) aimed at halting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unethical practice of using humans subjects to research the impact of fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5. If passed, the law would make any “person who violates this section… guilty of a Class F felony,” a serious crime which can carry a sentence of more than a year to nearly three years, according to the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission.
ATI Environmental Law Center Sues EPA to Compel Response to FOIA Request (1/28/2013) Today, the Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) in federal district court in Washington, DC. ATI seeks to compel EPA to end its eight-month stonewall of two requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding EPA’s close working relationship with two pressure groups with which EPA has uncomfortably close ties, at great taxpayer expense.
