Posted on 01/07/2006 5:03:56 AM PST by cbkaty
Bush called more lenient on those facing serious safety violations
WASHINGTON - Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed, a Knight Ridder Newspapers investigation has found.
At one point last year, the Mine Safety and Health Administration fined a coal company a scant $440 for a "significant and substantial" violation that ended in the death of a Kentucky man. The firm, International Coal Group Inc., is the same company that owns the Sago mine in West Virginia, where 12 workers died this week. The $440 fine remains unpaid.
Relaxed mine safety enforcement is widespread, according to a Knight Ridder analysis of federal records and interviews with former and current federal safety officials, even though deaths and injuries from mining accidents have hovered near record low levels in the past few years.
The analysis shows:
•The number of major fines over $10,000 has dropped by nearly 10 percent since 2001. The dollar amount of those penalties, when adjusted for inflation, has plummeted 43 percent to a median of $27,584.
•Less than half of the fines levied between 2001 and 2003 — about $3 million — have been paid.
•The budget and staff for the enforcement office also have declined.
•In serious criminal cases, guilty pleas and convictions fell 54.8 percent since 2001. In the first four years of the Bush administration, the federal government has averaged 3.5 criminal convictions a year; in the four years before that the average was 7.75 per year.
Officials at the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Labor didn't respond by Friday evening to a list of 13 e-mail questions or to a request for an interview.
Davitt McAteer, who headed the mine safety agency during the Clinton administration, said it has become a "paper tiger."
McAteer said that without the stick of high fines, mandated payments of those penalties and consistent follow-up inspections, there's little incentive for companies to repair safety problems.
'Increased enforcement' The mine safety agency touts on its Web site statistics showing the agency's "overall record of increased enforcement against mine operators during this Administration."
Those statistics show that in 2005, the agency issued 4 percent more violation notices for all mines than it did in 2000 and that the number of coal mine violations issued increased by 18 percent. The agency also touted a 13 percent increase in "significant and substantial" violations.
But those numbers hide the fact that most of those fines are so small that they're meaningless to big coal and mining companies, said Dennis O'Dell, a health and safety administrator for the United Mine Workers of America union.
unbelievable ......
It's not worth the effort. From my experience it's more effective to just smile, shake your head, and say "You actually believe that crap? I thought you were educated!"
Gets 'em every time.....let them exercise their blood pressure for a change...
Coal mine production reached the highest levels in history in recent years. In 2004 coal mining fatalities were near the lowest level in history with 28. Even with the recent high production, MSHA’s accident reduction efforts helped to keep the annual fatality totals nearly 50% lower in recent years compared with totals recorded in the early 1990s.
1. Clinton’s last year in office, 2000, there were 48 deaths in coal mines. In 2004, there were 28
2. The injury rate in 2000 was 6.64, in 2004 it was 5.00
3. Citations for safety violations in 2000: 58,285; Citations for violations in 2004: 64,635 (this would indicate to me more rigorous enforcement under Bush, especially after having cut back on coal industry enforcement jobs as the Democrats claim. Sounds to me like the Clinton administration was asleep at the switch)
I'll try it. You're right, they aren't worth my time.
NBC wanted to know why it took so long for a federal response.
The dangers are different but just as deadly. I had three damned close calls in the surface mine where I worked. They involved flyrock, a dragline operator who couldn't see my pickup and almost knocked me off the bench and failed brakes on a pit haul dump truck.
Guarantee that Tim Russert will be citing some bogus statistics on his show, proving Bush killed the miners!
Question - where are Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd? Aren't these a-hole senators responsible for their own state? I haven't seen them ONCE on TV.
Good one! If the government inspectors thought the mines were unsafe, they should have closed them until they were safe. Government closes local restaurants because they fail health inspections. 'Issuing reports' does not cut it without enforcement.
Stupid.
No. We need temporary guest workers, who will be willing to work for $0.15 per day with no bathroom breaks and who don't care about the safety requirements.
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