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Energy Department Refuses To Give Trump Team Names of People Who Worked On Climate Change (businessinsider.com)
The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will reject the request by President-elect Donald Trump's transition team to name staffers who worked on climate change programs. Energy spokesman Eben Burnhan-Snyder said the agency received "significant feedback" from workers regarding a questionnaire from the transition team that leaked last week. From a Reuters story, syndicated on BusinessInsider: The response from the Energy Department could signal a rocky transition for the president-elect's energy team and potential friction between the new leadership and the staffers who remain in place. The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and reviewed by Reuters last week contains 74 questions including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years. "Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people," Eben Burnham-Snyder, Energy Department spokesman said. "We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department," he added. "We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team."
You make many assumptions, without having read even a single word of the actual 74 questions in the memo.
Here's a hint: It's about the MONEY. Every question about a person's identity was about "Who authorized their hire", "What funding was given for that position", "What authorization was given to send people to that conference" and other, similar, funding issues. A full third of the questions were about the DOE's "clean Energy Loans" program, that has been repeatedly cited by the Inspector General of the DOE for improper handling of money.
The federal government tracks funding carefully. Time-charging fraud and misuse of funds are about the only things that can get you fired from the Federal Government. The fact that the entire department panicked as soon as they were asked the incredibly common question "what's you charge number for this" indicates that there are going to be a LOT of people in trouble once the auditors get sent in. And they'll deserve every bit of it.