WASHINGTON _ David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist who is facing questions over his industry ties, vowed Thursday to "fundamentally transform" the Interior Department's ethics programs "to ingrain a culture of ethical compliance and reduce workplace misconduct."
Citing several instances of documented misuse of funds by agency employees, Bernhardt, the acting head of Interior and Trump's pick to assume the role permanently, told a Senate confirmation hearing that ethics would be a priority.
"The reality is that the ethics program throughout the Department of the Interior has been sadly neglected for some time," he wrote in a prepared statement.
Bernhardt has led the department since early January, when former Secretary Ryan Zinke stepped down.
The change in leadership has not translated into a change in direction. Under Bernhardt, the agency has continued its push to expand oil and gas drilling.
As acting secretary, he now regulates many of the businesses whose interests he formerly advocated as a lobbyist.
Bernhardt's former firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, has sued Interior four times on behalf of Westlands Water District, the nation's largest irrigation district. Bernhardt personally argued one appeals case challenging endangered species protections for imperiled California salmon.
Under Trump, Interior has shrunk the size of two national monuments in Utah in the name of opening up lands for coal and mineral mining. It has also proposed opening nearly of the United States' coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling.
It includes plans for 47 lease sales over a five-year period, more than half of which would take place in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
The plan would give the oil and gas industry the first new access to California waters in decades, with six proposed lease sales. Another lease sale would be held off Washington and Oregon. Governors of all three states have vowed to protect their coastlines from offshore drilling.
