MMS Head Fired

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MSNBC is reporting that Elizabeth Birnbaum, head of the beleaguered Minerals Management Service, has been fired. The division of the Department of Interior responsible for overseeing oil and gas development has been under fire for lax oversight of offshore drilling.

Birnbaum, a former official with the conservation group American Rivers, has run the division since last July. She faced grilling before a House panel yesterday about the agency’s role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

We’ll have more when it becomes available.

UPDATE: Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar issued a statement saying that Birnbaum “resigned today on her own terms and on her own volition.” “Elizabeth Birnbaum is a strong and effective person and leader,” said Salazar. “She helped break through tough issues including offshore renewable development and helped us take important steps to fix a broken system. She is a good public servant.”

In her statement, Birnbaum pointed back to the Bush administration (without naming it directly) for leaving the MMS a deeply dysfunctional institution when she took over last July. She said that she hopes the reforms that Salazar has proposed for the agency “will resolve the flaws in the current system that I inherited.” Here’s her letter of resignation.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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