The wake of the government shutdown, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a contingency plan showing that a limited number of staff would continue to work while Congress wrestles with how to fund the government. EPA’s plan doesn’t indicate that agency staffers would continue to work on regulations – or on repealing climate-related rules that have been a priority for Trump, such as the endangerment finding.
Bracewell’s Holt Edwards, who served at EPA during Trump’s first term, told E&E News it would be “pretty unusual” for the agency to work on regulations during a shutdown. The time lost could be longer than the shutdown itself, he said.
“It takes a little bit of time to ramp things down, and it takes a good bit of time to ramp things back up,” Edwards said. “And that’s especially true the longer that a shutdown goes. Work gets stalled. Workflows get missed. And all of a sudden a slight lag compounds upon itself.”
