Scoop: Ferguson's office delayed climate data correction
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Gov. Bob Ferguson in May. Photo: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images
Washington state officials were ready to fess up: They'd vastly overestimated how much the state's cap-and-trade projects would cut greenhouse gas emissions.
- They prepped a news release to correct the error in December, but the fix got held up by Gov. Bob Ferguson's office, records obtained by Axios show. It didn't go out until January, after a conservative critic blogged about the inflated numbers.
Why it matters: Ferguson's tight control over what state agencies can say to the public left inaccurate climate data out there for weeks — even after officials had already caught their mistake.
- The holdup is one of several tied to a media policy Ferguson's office instituted last year, which requires most agency press releases and communications with reporters to be approved by the governor's office.
Catch up quick: The emissions error was not small: State officials estimated last November that projects paid for through the Climate Commitment Act — the state's cap-and-trade program — would cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 8.6 million metric tons.
- But the correct figure was actually 1.2 million — a mistake officials attributed to incorrect Department of Commerce data.
Behind the scenes: The Ecology Department, which released the faulty November estimate, emailed the governor's office Dec. 20 asking for permission to send out a correction on Dec. 22, according to emails Axios received through a public records request.
- "Given the size of the error, we believe we need to publicly acknowledge and take responsibility for it," Ecology Department spokesperson Dustin Terpening wrote.
- At least twice that weekend, Terpening asked the governor's office to approve a draft news release for Monday acknowledging the error.
- Ferguson's lead spokesperson, Brionna Aho, responded Sunday that she and Ferguson's chief of staff, Shane Esquibel, would want to review the release again before it went out.
The correction ultimately wasn't released until the afternoon of Jan. 6, several hours after Todd Myers with the conservative Washington Policy Center wrote a blog post about the discrepancy.
The other side: Aho, Ferguson's spokesperson, told Axios "additional review" was needed to "verify the source of the error" and to make sure there were no other mistakes — and to "put measures in place to prevent an error like that from occurring again."
- She and Ecology officials say they were preparing to send the news release before Myers published his blog post.
- Ecology spokesperson Andrew Wineke pointed to December's major flooding, the year-end holidays and preparations for the legislative session as factors in the timing.
Zoom in: The governor's office also resisted some requests for agency officials to speak with the media about the error after it became public, emails show.
What's next: Ecology's next report on state projects funded with cap-and-trade dollars is due later this year.