Obama Mining Scandal Emerges

By Judson Berger, Fox News

The Obama administration pressured analysts to change an environmental review to reflect fewer job losses from a proposed regulation, the contractors who worked on the review testified Friday.

The dispute revolves around proposed changes to a rule regulating coal mining near streams and other waterways. The experts contracted to analyze the impact of the rule initially found that it would cost 7,000 coal jobs.

But the contractors claim they were subsequently pressured to not only keep the findings under wraps but "revisit" the study in order to show less of an impact on jobs.

Steve Gardner, president of Kentucky consulting firm ECSI, claimed that after the project team refused to "soften" the numbers, the firms working on the study were told the contract would not be renewed. ECSI was a subcontractor on the project.

The government "'suggested' that the ... members revisit the production impacts and associated job loss numbers, with different assumptions that obviously would then lead to a lesser impact," Gardner testified before a House Natural Resources subcommittee."The ... team unanimously refused to use a 'fabricated' baseline scenario to soften the production loss numbers."

The charges escalate a dispute over environmental regulations that has been brewing for months, as the Obama administration tries to overhaul mining rules that were put in place at the end of the George W. Bush administration following a years-long review.