DOI and/or divisions may move West out of Washington, D.C.
From the Denver Business Journal
Colorado native David Bernhardt, an attorney and lobbyist for Denver-based law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the No. 2 official at a sprawling agency that administers vast tracts of public land across the West.
Both of Colorado’s U.S. senators — Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat Michael Bennet — voted in favor of Bernhardt, despite opposition to the appointment from several environmental groups and most of Bennet’s Democratic colleagues.
Monday’s final vote was 53-43.
Bernhardt, a Rifle native, will serve as the top deputy to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and COO of the federal lands and energy agency.
“David Bernhardt is a native Coloradan from the Western slope who has a deep understanding of Western land issues and will do what is right for the American people when it comes to our public lands,” Gardner said after the vote.
“I’ve known David for many years and know he is the right man for the job. His command of public policy and experience working in the Interior Department will be an enormous asset to Secretary Zinke and I look forward to working with David on issues important to Colorado as he assumes his new role.”
Gardner noted that Bernhardt has expressed support for the Colorado senator’s proposal to move the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management headquarters from Washington to a western state, placing it closer to most of the land the BLM administers.
Bennet, meanwhile, said he was “counting on Deputy Secretary Bernhardt to uphold his commitment to protect Colorado’s forward-leaning methane rules and ensure we are not put at a disadvantage. We’re also grateful for his commitment to protect Colorado’s public lands. We look forward to having him back in Colorado so he can put these words into action.”
Many environmentalists, meanwhile, were not pleased.
“David Bernhardt’s numerous conflicts of interest should have made this an easy ‘no’ vote for the entire Senate. The revelation that Bernhardt misled the Senate by continuing to lobby for major clients after telling Congress he was no longer doing so should have at least least led to the postponement of [Monday’s] vote,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Denver-based Center for Western Priorities.
The Interior Department runs the national parks, the BLM, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It also oversees energy development on the federal lands it administers, which includes millions of acres in Colorado and other western states.
Bernhardt has been a Washington-based shareholder and co-chair of the natural resources practice at Brownstein. He also headed up President Donald Trump’s Interior Department transition operations before Trump took office.
And from 2001 to 2009 under former President George W. Bush, Bernhardt worked in the Interior Department in various roles, including solicitor and deputy chief of staff to then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton (also a Coloradan).
As a lobbyist, Bernhardt represented the Westlands Water District, a sprawling authority that supplies water to farmers in California’s Central Valley.
He has sued the Interior Department and helped write legislation on behalf of Westlands, the Washington bureau of McClatchy Newspapers reports.
Bernhardt currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Colorado and a law degree from the George Washington University National Law Center.
He is married to Gena Bernhardt and has two children.
Described in the Interior Department announcement as “an avid hunter and fisherman,” Bernhardt has served on Virginia’s Board of Game and Inland Fisheries and previously was U.S. commissioner to the International Boundary Commission for the U.S. and Canada.
In his campaign for the presidency, Trump pledged to “unleash” U.S. oil, natural gas and coal production and “open onshore and offshore [energy] leasing on federal lands.”
As president, he signed an executive order lifting a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands administered by Interior — an order that many experts say probably won’t result in much additional coal mining in the near term, given the depressed state of the coal market and the fact that some coal companies are holding existing federal leases that they’re not developing.
