EPA unveils its dubious “Office of Continuous Improvement”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a new department: the Office of Continuous Improvement. (Yes, that's its real name.) The office's main purpose is to trim bureaucratic fat across the agency to improve “quality, transparency, and speed” and “superior customer service” for stakeholders. (We assume by stakeholders, Administrator Scott Pruitt means his industry pals.) The irony is a little too on the nose, even for Pruitt. Since he took office, Pruitt and his agency have been routinely making headlines for doing just the opposite: covering up ethics scandals, frivolously spending taxpayer money, censoring important science, giving his buddies unreasonable raises, responding illegally slow to FOIA requests, and, of course, dropping the ball on the agency’s mission of protecting public health and the environment.