October 13, 2010

Why Aren’t BLM Honcho’s Ethics Violations Being Investigated?

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In August, we brought you the story of Steven Henke, a former Bureau of Land Management field manager and ethics probe target who recently landed a new job as head of an oil and gas industry advocacy group. Henke took gifts like golf tickets, lodging, and meals from an oil company, and also took money from the same company for his kid’s baseball team.

The Department of Interior’s inspector general found these to be clear ethics violations after a General Accounting Office report that found he was “too close to unnamed oil and gas industry officials and made decisions to benefit companies based on personal relationships, rather than the good of BLM.” But the district attorney general declined to prosecute the case. Now, the Project on Government Oversight wants to know why.

The watchdogs sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey asking why these violations were not investigated. The group argues that “ethics officials failed to exercise due diligence” in approving Henke’s move to his new job as president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, a classic example of the much-criticized revolving door between regulatory agencies and the industry.

While the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement) has been subject to an ethics overhaul since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, the department’s other offices need similar scrutiny, POGO argues.

“It’s shocking that BLM wasn’t concerned with the misconduct of one of its managers, nor his turn through the revolving door to represent the companies he was supposed to have been overseeing,” said POGO executive director Danielle Brian. “Henke’s new position could present a significant conflict of interest. This should be a no-brainer.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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