The Sierra Club sent a letter to President Obama this week, urging the President to make good on his promise of increasing transparency in Washington. Specifically, the environmental group wants the administration to be forthright about the political spending of mega-polluters and their government contracts.
Courtney Hight, director of the Sierra Club’s Democracy Program, issued the following statement after the letter was sent: “Corporations and big polluters already have too much power and influence on our government and our elections. The President has an opportunity to bring more transparency to the billions poured into our system from corporations by issuing this executive order. This action alone won’t bring all corporate election spending into the light of day, but it will begin to lift the curtain and let some light in.”
In addition to the Sierra Club, other signatories include the NRDC, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the League of Conservation Voters, and several other prominent environmental groups.
The groups are hoping that President Obama will issue an executive order forcing any company seeking or receiving a government contract to publicly disclose their lobbying and campaign spending. While this information is mostly available, the process of connecting the dots between spending and contracts is a bureaucratic nightmare.
An executive order from the president would take the guesswork out of the equation and create a system of transparency that is severely lacking in the current system.
The Sierra Club has good reason to be concerned. The available data shows that some of the country’s biggest polluters are also the recipients of some of the largest federal contracts.
In 2012, for example, 17 of the top 100 recipients of government contracts were listed as some of the worst polluters in America. These companies included General Electric (2nd in the U.S. at the time for air pollution), Shell, Exxon, Halliburton, and BP.
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