Democracy Dies in Darkness

Head of EPA air office violated ethics rules, agency watchdog says

Joseph Goffman failed to disclose his stock in a paint company before helping to craft a rule that affected it, according to the EPA Office of Inspector General.

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Joseph Goffman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency's air office, addresses the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority winter meeting in Cheyenne in 2015. (Mead Gruver/AP)
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Joseph Goffman, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s air office, violated federal ethics rules by failing to disclose his financial interest in a company regulated by the agency, the EPA Office of Inspector General said in a report released Wednesday.

Goffman did not disclose that he held more than $25,000 worth of stock in Sherwin-Williams, which makes paint and coatings, before helping to craft a rule that directly affected the company, the EPA’s internal watchdog said. The rule is intended to limit harmful air pollution from facilities across the country that manufacture coatings.

The rule’s financial impact on Sherwin-Williams is probably minimal, the report found. Affected facilities are expected to incur roughly $6,700 in annual costs — a tiny fraction of Sherwin-Williams’s roughly $23 billion in net sales last year.

The watchdog nonetheless faulted Goffman for not promptly alerting his colleagues to the potential conflict of interest or recusing himself from the deliberations.

“Goffman failed to assess whether specific parties or industries that were involved posed a potential financial conflict-of-interest,” the report says. “As a result, he did not refer them for a financial conflicts-of-interest screen and recuse himself from the matters pending the determination of that screen.”

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