Twenty nineteen will certainly have a lot of twists and turns in the world of environmental policy, but one thing I won't have is Ryan Zinky. This week on Parts Pavilion, we talk about the ousted head of the Interior Department and who might be succeeding there Shallohman, Welcome to another episode of Parts Pervilion, the podcast from Bloomberg environment I'm
your host, David Schultz. Christmas is coming up, of course, and we had a little Christmas surprise a few days ago with the announcement that Ryan Zinki would be resigning. Zinki was the first person to serve as the head of the Department of the Interior in the Trump administration, and we're here discussing his twenty two months leading that agency with Bloomberg Environments. Stephen Lee, Stephen, thank you for
joining us. Hi, David, Hi, sot. Ryan Zinky is out or I guess he will be out at the end of this year, which is quickly approaching. Can you talk a little bit about why he resigned. I understand he was going to be investigated or was being investigated from a lot of different angles. Yeah, that's right. And you know Zinki himself said that it was because politically motivated
attacks had turned him into a distraction. And you know, by the way, he was very honest about that, which you've got to give him credit for that, because usually people say I want to spend time with my family, you know, that sort of thing. He just moved on to bigger and better things, exactly. He came right out. The point is he's not leaving because of any policy disagreement with the White House. I mean, he was carrying
out the Trump agenda. But as you say, there were at least thirteen federal investigations against him, just a whole range of things. He was involved in a land deal in Montana with the CEO of Halliburton that raised conflict
of interest sort of paid a play questions. He blocked an Indian casino in Connecticut, allegedly after being lobbied by MGM Resorts, which wants to build its own competing casino close by, as allegations that he and his wife he allowed his wife to travel with him in federal vehicles. He also angered President Trump when he said he would exempt Florida from the administration's plans to drill for oil off the Atlantic coast. That's something that the White House
had not approved. You know. He became a distraction also when he recently accused Congressman Rael Griholva of being a drunk on Twitter. Yeah, that's not a good sign when the person who's going to be the chairman of the committee that oversees your department is the person you're calling an alcoholic onto. Yeah, and that's right. And Griholva has said repeatedly, Look, I'm going to investigate the hell out of Ryan Zinky. When Democrats take control of the House,
Griholve is clearly going to go hard on Zink. He still is going to do that, by the way, even though Zincy's is going to be out, and I think it's just Trump decided, you know, I don't want to deal with these kinds of smears in the news every day. Will Zinky's tenure at the Department of the Interior be remembered for anything in particular, you know, was there a particular policy area or an initiative or something that the heat spearheaded that you know, we'll look back on it
and think that was a Ryanzinke development. Oh, there's a whole bunch of things that he did. I mean all in you know, consistent with the White House's kind of deregulatory push. I mean, he he reduced federal protections for two national monuments in Utah. Those are the biggest, was the biggest single reduction of protected land in US history. He ended in Obama or a moratorium on leasing public
lands for mining. I mean, he has been just such an activist champion for development, and his supporters, those in the in industry, you know, they love what he's done. They think that this is the right way to sort of spur the economy, make the US energy independent. So it sounds like he was making the White House happy. With a couple exceptions, he was making industry pretty happy.
But he just had these sort of personal scandals or investigations into what he was doing that ultimately just became too much for him to continue on. I think, just too much of a distraction. You know, who's on the short list to replace him? You know, we have an acting head, or we will have an acting head after he leaves at the end of this month, But who, if anyone, is on the shortlist to replace him permanently. Okay, so you're referring to David Bernhardt, he's the deputy secretary
former fossil fuel obvious, he is the front runner. You know, he has been the architect in the background behind Interior Department policy for a long time now. And he's a lawyer, you know, he first served an Interior in two thousand and one. He's a you know, DC insider. And of course the concern about him is that he you know, he has allegedly conflicts of interest because he used to represent companies, including Halliburton, they would now stand to gain
from his decisions. Okay, So he's clearly the number one candidate, and he's someone who is going to be serving in the as the head of the department in an acting capacity until they find someone permanently. That's right. Yeah, and he would also have to be confirmed again, he's been confirmed once already. That's you know, one reason that he would be sort of a path of least resistance because he you know, has already been okayed by the Center
for his current job. There's other names that are out there. You know, You've got Senator Dean Heller of Nevada who just just lots to see it if you last month, we should we should note. Yeah, so he's going to be looking for something to do. Sure, you've got Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah. He's retiring in twenty twenty, so that's a ways off, but his name is out there.
Congresswoman Kathy MacMorris Rogers of Washington. You know, there's a few names in the mix, and I sometimes wonder, you know, Okay, so granted, as we said, Hell and Bishop are shortly going to be looking for new lines of work. I always wonder why someone in a safe district, you know, would step aside from that job take a job in this very chaotic administration where you could be vaporized in
a split second. Yeah, that's yeah, that's true. And one thing that I noticed about that list is that all of those names come from Congress or either were in Congress or are currently in Congress. Is there anyone from outside of Capitol Hill, maybe someone from even the private sector who they're considering or is it are they just sticking with kind of you know, congressional figures who you know have been vetted, have a background, and there are
sort of known quantities. Yeah, it's a pretty short list. You'll notice also that those lawmakers are all from Western states, right, That's typically the DOI secretary typically comes from the West. I think they're looking for someone who has you know, okay, so Bernhardt. The thing that makes him so appealing is
that he does have real policy chops. Yeah. And so many people have made this observation that there is a parallel between the EPA situation where you had this very colorful sort of character Scott Prewitt, who you know eventually was replaced by basically a technocrat, Yeah, Andrew Wheeler, who's the current acting administrator and who the Trump administration is nominated to be the permanent head of the EPA. Yeah, And a guy who knows how the system works, who
gets sort of administrative law and regulatory policy. There's a real parallel there between that situation and the zinkei Bernhard situation. Same kind of thing, you know, moving to a guy who's sort of quietly behind the scenes, you know, a good chance he's going to be more effective. That would
be interesting to see. The last thing I wanted to ask you about is you know where will be in five, ten, twenty years, will will we be talking about Zinke's tenure and saying, you know, in twenty years or however long you know, are we still going to be remembering things that he did, or will a lot of the things that Zinke did during his tenure at the Interior Department just be wiped out the next time. We have a democratic president who replaces Zink with someone else and undoes
everything that he did. I guess I'm wondering how lasting his accomplishments will be. It's a good question in theory. Anything that's done by one administration could be undone by another. It would take some doing. I mean, Zinke's impact on policy has been very broad, and so a new administration would have to be pretty committed to turning them back. And some parts of the Zinke regime are going to
be more enduring than others. So, for example, a democratic president could easily reimpose the coal leasing moratorium, and that's actually in fact or court right now, so it might be reimposed anyway. And it's the same with the Trump administration's five year leasing plan for offshore oil and gas drilling. A new president could come in and just wave that plan away. In fact, that's what Trump did. Any regulatory change is going to have to be undone by a
new rule making. So for instance, the venting and flaring rule that's for methane, correct. Yeah. I mean if a new president wanted to change that and go back to the way it was under President Obama, he or she would have to embark on a whole new rule making that can take years, and you know, depending on how serious the administration is about considering the science and carefully weighing the costs and benefits, and then there would be
inevitable legal challenges. So on the regulatory side, I think it's a tougher road, all right. That was Bloomberg Environment Stephen Lee talking about Ryan Zink and the Department of the Interior. For more of his reporting, visit our website at newsdot Bloomberg Environment dot com. That website once again is news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com. This episode of Parks Rebellion was produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs. Our editor is Marissa Horne, and our audio engineer is
Nicholas and Zelada. Special help this week from Rjjewele. The music for Parkspabillion is a message by Jizar. Check back in the new year for more episodes and have a lovely holiday as everyone out there