First, despite the fact that "no aggregated data on such environmental litigation or associated costs are reported by federal agencies," the agency's investigators were able arrive at some useful estimates. The Department of Justice spent at least $43 million from 1998 to 2010 defending the Environmental Protection Agency in court, while the Department of Treasury paid about $14.2 million from 2003 through 2010 to successful plaintiffs for attorneys' fees and associated costs. The EPA paid about $1.4 million from 2006 to 2010 to plaintiffs. Most of the plaintiffs represented Big Green groups. But those figures almost certainly underestimate the true amount of such costs because, GAO said, "the key agencies involved -- Justice, EPA and Treasury -- maintain certain data on individual cases in several internal agency databases, but collectively, these data do not capture all costs." In other words, federal officials don't know how many tax dollars are paid to Big Green environmental groups and their lawyers who sue the government.
As
The Washington Examiner showed last September with its "Special Report: Big Green and how the enviroleft is crippling the economy," the major players in the environmental movement are lavishly funded by private contributions from individuals and foundations. And many of them also receive hundreds of millions more dollars in government grants and contracts, so it's not as if these groups are unable to pay their legal legions out of their own coffers.
At a minimum, the GAO report demonstrates that taxpayers are getting stuck with legal bills for liberal political activist groups that have abundant independent financial resources that should cover such costs. As Vitter said of the report, it "shows that taxpayers have been on the hook for years, while 'Big Green' trial lawyers have raked in millions of dollars suing the government. Even worse, because of sloppy record keeping by the EPA and other agencies and a lack of cooperation by the Justice Department, we're not even sure how bad the problem really is."
The good news here, though, is that Inhofe and Vitter are only just getting started. Inhofe said the GAO report is just "the tip of the iceberg as we work to get to the bottom of just how many taxpayer dollars are going to pay attorneys' fees in environmental suits. It is outrageous that these agencies couldn't provide the requested information and it is even more concerning that we have yet to get the full story." We're confident these two senators won't quit until they get the rest of this obscure but important story.
