business
Interior Official Budd-Falen Advocates for Reduced Grazing Regulations, Acknowledges Family Benefit
Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen told a Senate Western Caucus event in December she was “so excited” about reducing regulations on grazing permits that directly helped her father-in-law. Campaign for Accountability has asked Congress to investigate potential ethical violations given her family’s five ranches valued at more than $5 million and federal grazing allotments.
The IndependentAudio version
Tap play to generate a narrated version.
Developing·Limited corroboration so far. This page will refresh as more sources emerge.
Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen, the number three official at the Department of the Interior, said in December she was “so excited” about reducing regulations that made it more difficult for ranchers to obtain grazing permits. Budd-Falen spoke at a Senate Western Caucus event hosted by Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis.
She told the audience she is a rancher and that grazing regulations were the thing that was probably the closest to her heart.
She added that relaxed regulations on cattle grazing through “categorical exclusion” directly benefited her father-in-law in Nevada. According to Budd-Falen’s financial disclosure report, she and her family own and operate at least five cattle or ranch operations in Wyoming and Nevada, each valued at a minimum of $1 million.
Budd-Falen and her husband Frank Falen hold allotments that allow them to graze cattle on federal land overseen by the Interior Department.
The public video of Budd-Falen’s December remarks was first reported by The Washington Post. Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan nonprofit watchdog group that discovered the video, sent letters to congressional committees requesting they investigate Budd-Falen for potential ethical violations. “Ms.
Budd-Falen has been actively directing federal public lands policy in ways that appear to benefit her family’s extensive ranching operation, and the DOI ethics office, in dereliction of its mandate, seems eager to ratify, rather than remedy, the behavior,” Campaign for Accountability stated.
