Attorney General Phil Weiser wants to set the fox loose in the hen house by hiring a lawyer with ties to radical environmental groups to represent the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Joel Minor worked for Earthjustice, also known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, which is dedicated to the elimination of the industry Minor would represent.
It’s a conflict of interest of magnificent proportions, says Suzanne Staiert, executive director of Public Trust Institute.
In a letter to Weiser objecting to his choice of Minor as an assistant attorney general, Staiert points to Minor’s Stanford University profile, which states:
“I decided to go to law school to protect the health of communities that I cared about from the harmful health and environmental impacts of oil and gas development.”
So Minor presumed an entire industry guilty of crimes, and now seeks to allegedly represent those industry interests?
“It defies logic that he could be appointed to advise the COGCC in a legal capacity. An assistant attorney general should not be placed in such an ethically compromised position and immediate action is necessary to resolve this legal conflict of interest,” Staiert wrote.
It does defy logic. It’s insane that our attorney general doesn’t see this as a conflict of interest — that Minor has dedicated his entire career to doing the exact opposite of the job Weiser would hire him to perform.
Hit the reject button, Weiser, and try again.