The Department of Energy has temporarily halted an Obama administration regulation that allowed for civil penalties against federal nuclear contractors that retaliate against whistleblowers who report waste, fraud, abuse and dangerous conditions.
In procedural rules published in the Federal Register, the DOE said the regulation would be frozen from Jan. 31 until March 21 in keeping with President Trump’s “plan for managing the Federal regulatory process at the outset of the new Administration.”
[…]
Whistleblower advocates worry the rule could discourage the reporting of violations.
“There is already a chilled atmosphere for DOE whistleblowers and the rule that has now been stayed was meant to help address that problem,” said Lydia Dennett, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight. “Halting the regulation from going forward does nothing to help the department and certainly will not encourage whistleblowers to come forward with legitimate safety concerns.”
[…]
“This effort has nothing to do with deregulation so that business can thrive. These are government contractors running government facilities,” he continued by email. “These contractors must not be allowed to remain unaccountable, free from meaningful oversight, and able to attack whistleblowers and defend themselves though subsidies supplied by the very taxpayers who they have screwed over.”
Comment has been requested from the Energy Department and the Office of Management and Budget.
We’d like your help reporting this story. If you know of other agencies with similar rules regarding whistleblowers, please let us know. Send an email to joe.davidson@washpost.com with “whistleblower rules” in the subject line.
Read more at Trump administration halts penalties against firms that punish nuclear whistleblowers
