Shortly before Thanksgiving, the U.S. Department of Interior announced it was carving up several turkeys caught in the sex, drugs and graft scandal at the Minerals Management Service office in Lakewood. After months of costly investigation and blistering official reports on brazen conflicts of interest at the troubled agency, the DOI decided to take disciplinary action against a handful of badly behaved employees, ranging from written reprimand to suspension to termination.
But under federal
Ken Salazar, the new Secretary of the Interior, who spent much of last week traipsing around the Denver area declaring that there's a new sheriff in town, has taken what he calls "an important first step" in restoring balance to federal public lands policy -- pulling the plug on a controversial sale of oil and gas leases on lands in close proximity to spectacular parks and wilderness areas in southeastern Utah.
In a February 4 teleconference with journalists, Salazar announced that he was ord
As we reported several moons ago in a Westword feature entitled "The Zen of Ken," one of Ken Salazar's first official acts as Secretary of the Interior was to visit the Lakewood office of the Minerals Management Service and vow to clean up the place. The obscure but vital agency, which collects billions in royalties for oil and gas leases offshore and on federal lands, had been rocked by charges involving cocaine use, graft, sexual liaisons with energy company execs, sweetheart deals and fault
