Laura Daniel-Davis, the acting acting secretary of the Interior Department under President Joe Biden, appeared to be in charge of dozens of pending eating cases in Idaho this week in a note sent to the office’s Office of Hearings and Appeals.
” I am assuming control of the]attached ] situations”, Davis wrote in the letter, citing federal script. ” Please give my business access to the pertinent papers and related materials right away.
With only two weeks to go in the current management, Davis sent the letter to the Office of Hearings and Appeals producer on Monday, the same day that President-elect Donald Trump’s November vote was certified. The report, but, says little about who will determine the circumstances pulled from the bureau appeals boards, or why they were pulled by the acting assistant Interior minister.
Former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who served as an administrative judge on the Interior Board of Land Appeals between January and November 2021 according to Linked In, called the walk “unprecedented” in an interview with The Federalist.
” I’ve not seen a situation pulled back”, Renkes said, and characterized the letter as “odd”.
Normally, as Renkes explained, when the Bureau of Land Management ( BLM) makes a decision, members of the public can appeal to the Office of Hearings and Appeals. If an applicant doesn’t succeed in this area, they have the right to bring their case before the Interior Board of Land Appeals. Members of the public may consider their situation to a federal district court if the company declines to overturn the BLM’s first choice.
Interior Secretary Melissa Schwartz informed The Federalist that acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis has been given the authority to hear 50 administrative appeals of last decisions regarding 28 eating dwellings in Idaho. The Office of Hearing and Appeals has been hearing and awaiting these pertains for more than ten years. The Department may then decide the future steps in the appeals procedure.
The Interior Board of Land Appeals is supposed to be an independent arbitrator of company reviews, but it has power from the minister. The table has been criticized as a “rubber stamp of the agency,” according to Renkes to The Federalist, but the panel also gives people the chance to provide evidence.
” I don’t know why you would annoyed that approach”, Renkes said. The acting deputy secretary’s approval of the memo’s authorizing on Monday, rather than the main cabinet secretary, who is confirmed by the Senate, gives the impression of something other than an independent review, he claimed.
Davis, who has been in charge of acting deputy director since October 2023, has recently been accused of breaking moral standards in his role as principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management. According to The Federalist, Davis was the subject of a complaint from Protect the Public’s Trust ( PPT ) over improper influence in connection with the Arctic’s decision to pull oil and gas leases in September 2022. The National Wildlife Federation, which had sued the federal government over the rentals under President Donald Trump, was the subject of the problem.
According to PPT,” Ms. Daniel-Davis had exercised her established power to obtain almost all of the constitutional remedies sought by her former boss in court within six months at Interior,” the time was at the time. Even worse, the constitutional arguments she used to support her decision were remarkably similar to those developed for and included in her former employer’s legal documents.
According to PPT Director Michael Chamberlain,” The Biden-Harris management came into office promising to reestablish traditional conventions.” However, their actions over the past four years has shown that they aren’t focused on anything but.
Chamberlain added that Chamberlain’s most recent attempt to avoid appeals boards” had placed the political management of the Department of the Interior in the position to be able to encourage their intellectual allies, at the expense of regular Americans.”
