Yesterday the Chemical Safety Board published a letter on their web site that was sent to the leadership of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the backlog of chemical incident investigations being conducted by the CSB. The letter from Chair Lemos is in response to questions asked at a hearing of the Subcommittee in September.
While the letter is lacking in any significant details about
the new ‘aggressive and agile approach’ CSB is taking to accelerate their
investigative process, it does provide a timeline for the expected completion
of the current 18 open investigations. The proposed timeline presupposes
congressional approval of funding for “new Mission Product team members”.
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Patrick, it appears to me that over the past several years - going back well before the Trump administration - the CSB has trumpeted its transparency, while in actuality progressively allowing less and less public input and communication. Public business meetings, while taking place once per quarter, are now - under Dr. Lemos - thoroughly scripted productions allowing zero input from the public. Most troubling is the continuing obfuscation concerning the number, role and experience of Chemical Incident Investigators. Dr. Lemos stated at the business meeting on 10/29 that two more were in the being hired and that they would soon be posting jobs for more. However, at the end of the meeting she quietly thanked Amanda Johnson (Recommendations Specialist in the Office of Investigations), who is leaving for another job, and mentioned that Mark Kaszniak (Senior Recommendations Specialist) would be retiring soon. Guess what - that will leave nobody but Charles Barbee (Director of Recommendations) in this group, which is part of the Office of Investigations! Of the ten remaining Investigators, plus the two presumed new hires, only Dan Tillema and Lauren Grim have more than three years experience at the CSB.
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