Readers React: Scott Pruitt’s secretive meetings and luxury air travel are costing taxpayers dearly

To the editor: Thank you so much for your March 2 article, “EPA chief’s clean-water rollback shaped by secrecy, luxury travel and handpicked audiences.”

What is significant about the article on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is not what it reveals about his luxury travel and secretive rule-making procedures, but what it doesn’t. Pruitt obviously intends to run his EPA with no oversight by Congress, the media or the American people.

I hope the Los Angeles Times keeps its focus on Pruitt until we start to get some answers. I also encourage Congress, the media and the public to demand that Pruitt open up his files to public scrutiny so we can clearly see whatever actions he’s taken to possibly undermine safe drinking water protections for Americans and their children.

Pruitt’s secrecy is not the way a democracy is supposed to operate.

George Shea, Studio City

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To the editor: Two articles that share the front page of The Times’ March 11 print edition illustrate exactly what is so horribly wrong about the Trump administration.

One article reports how Pruitt spends taxpayer money to travel so he can speak to his “roundtable” meetings (no public or press allowed) to tout his plans to pollute our waterways and destroy the drinking water we all need. In another article, Ismael Chamu, a UC Berkeley student, works his tail off to provide for his sisters and brother.

The taxpayer money that Pruitt, who can probably afford to upgrade to first class on his own dime, spends on airfare could go a long way toward helping Chamu get his education and take care of his family.

Julie May, Los Angeles

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