Video: Trump criticizes Drakes Bay Oyster Co. closure before signing transparency orders
Drakes Bay Oyster Co. owner and Point Reyes rancher Kevin Lunny was invited to the White House on Wednesday to speak prior to the president’s signing of the two executive orders.
President Donald Trump criticized the National Park Service’s 2014 closure of the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. this week before signing executive orders aimed at increasing transparency of federal agencies.
The orders, he said, are “just the latest step in my administration’s tireless fight to curtail job-killing, soul-crushing regulations.”
Drakes Bay Oyster Co. owner and Point Reyes rancher Kevin Lunny was invited to the White House on Wednesday to speak prior to the president’s signing of the two executive orders.
“With us today is Kevin Lunny,” Trump said, “whose company was forced out of business through the terrible practice of a certain way of government handling of things. Not fair. Not right.”
The president also referenced the ongoing impeachment inquiry during his comments.
“No American should ever face such persecution from their own government — except perhaps your president,” Trump joked before turning toward Lunny. “Don’t feel bad, Kevin. They treated you better than they treat me. I do believe that’s true.”
The Drakes Bay closure order came on Nov. 29, 2012, when then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he would allow the company’s 40-year lease — originally negotiated with the Johnson Oyster Co. in 1972 and taken on by Drakes Bay — to expire. The federal government bought the land from Johnson in 1972 for $79,200 and provided the lease to operate within the Point Reyes National Seashore.
In his statements on Wednesday, Lunny brought up the National Park Service’s ongoing review of its management of cattle and dairy ranches within the Point Reyes National Seashore and the adjacent Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
“The National Park Service forced our oyster farm out of business,” Lunny said. “And if that wasn’t enough for our family and our community today, the rest of agriculture, which includes about another 24 ranching family farm businesses within the national seashore are facing the exact same process.”
“Our fear is that process could ultimately be facing — and those families may be facing — what the oyster farm faced,” Lunny continued.
While one of the management options the park is considering includes phasing out all of the nearly 28,000 acres of ranch land in the national seashore, the agency’s preferred option would actually extend the ranch leases from five- to 20-year terms as well as give the ranchers the ability to diversify their livestock in certain cases.
The national seashore deferred all comments on the executive orders to the White House. Melanie Gunn, outreach coordinator for the seashore, said the park service is reviewing nearly 7,600 comments it received on the environmental review for its management plan. A final draft of the environmental review is set to be completed in early 2020 and adopted under a record of decision after 30 days, Gunn said.
“We hope we have been successful in making the required National Environmental Policy Act process clear and accessible,” Gunn wrote in an email. “From the time we began scoping in the fall of 2018 through the close of public comment last month, we have participated in dozens of meetings with a wide array of interests and stakeholders. We were gratified at the level of participation in our public meetings and in the array of thoughtful comments submitted.”
The National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit expressed alarm at the comments made at Wednesday’s press conference and the orders.
“We seriously thought Point Reyes was different than ‘Cliven Bundy style’ ranching, but this appalling episode suggests otherwise,” the association’s Pacific region senior programs director Neal Desai said in a statement. “Seashore ranchers need to state their agenda: are they with Lunny, Trump and fueling hate against government, or do they respect national parks, sustainable ranching and science? We are at an unprecedented crossroads.”
Cliven Bundy is a cattle rancher whose protests of government overreach and unpaid grazing fees led to the 2014 armed standoff with law enforcement in Nevada.
Trump said the first of his two new executive orders will require federal agencies to publish documents online to make them more easily accessible to the public. The order will also require agencies to seek public input on guidance documents, a process which he said will be directly overseen by the White House.
“We’ll have somebody right here in the White House looking at it, Kevin, so this doesn’t happen to other people,” Trump said to Lunny. “You’re really brave to be here. I think it’s incredible. I really mean it.”
The other order instructs agencies to offer opinion letters to businesses that request them, so people can learn how to comply with the law.
These orders, Trump said, will protect citizens from “secret interpretations of regulations, unexpected penalties and violations of their rights.”
“Americans will no longer be subject to the rules of hidden games that are played on the public,” Trump said.
The two executive orders can be found online:
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-promoting-rule-law-improved-agency-guidance-documents/
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-promoting-rule-law-transparency-fairness-civil-administrative-enforcement-adjudication/
A video of Wednesday’s press conference can be found online, with Lunny speaking at the 10:25 mark, at https://youtu.be/4dzXbdvv7sI
The Associated Press contributed to this report.