Guardian (“JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip“):
JD Vance’s team had the army corps of engineers take the unusual step of changing the outflow of a lake in Ohio to accommodate a recent boating excursion on a family holiday, the Guardian has learned.
The request from the US Secret Service was made to “support safe navigation” of the US vice-president’s security detail for an August outing on the Little Miami River, according to a statement by the US army corps of engineers (USACE).
Vance was spotted in the south-western Ohio area on 2 August, his 41st birthday, according to social media posts that noted he was seen canoeing on the river, a tributary that Caesar Creek Lake feeds into.
One source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously alleged that the outflow request for the Caesar Creek Lake was not just to support the vice-president’s Secret Service detail, but also to create “ideal kayaking conditions”. The Guardian could not independently confirm this specific claim.
Given that there’s no actual evidence that this was done to “create ideal kayaking conditions,” much less that Vance himself ordered it, let’s take the Secret Service at their word. It’s still quite problematic, if not outrageous, on its face.
Perhaps because I worked in downtown DC for several years and was frequently greatly inconvenienced by police stopping traffic for long stretches to accommodate the motorcades of people too important to wait in traffic, I’ve questioned the reasonableness of these measures for a long time. I get that Presidents, Vice Presidents, and cabinet secretaries occasionally need to get places on time and that they need security when doing so. But, because they’re ostensibly public servants, the frequency and timing of these ventures should be weighed against the public harm.
That goes a thousand-fold for activities that are not the public business. I find it simply outrageous when, for example, presidents attend sporting events in person and subject tens of thousands of paid ticket holders to significant inconvenience. There’s just no need for them to be there. If the Vice President’s kayaking trip requires raising the water level of a river, he should do something else on his vacation.
And, then, of course, there’s this:
While there is no allegation that Vance’s office did anything illegal, the ethics lawyer Richard Painter, who served in the George W Bush administration, said it seemed hypocritical and “pretty outrageous” for Vance to be receiving these particular accommodations for his family holiday when the administration’s cuts have led to drastic cuts in the National Park Service (NPS).
The National Parks Conservation Association has estimated that the NPS has lost about a quarter of its staff since January, which in turn has led to sections of some parks to be closed and hours to be changed due to staffing issues.
“Those cuts are directly impacting middle-class families’ vacations,” Painter said. “Whether they are doing it for the Secret Service or for him I think is splitting hairs. What he ought to be doing is choosing another place.”
Norm Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, said: “When I was President Obama’s ethics czar in the White House I got a lot of unusual requests, but I never got one to increase the outflow of a waterway as part of a government official going kayaking.
“My nickname was ‘Mr No’ and I certainly would have lived up to it in this situation. I never would have permitted this kind of a thing because whether it technically violates the rules or not, it creates the appearance that the vice-president of the United States is getting special treatment that’s not available to the average person who wants to utilise that body of water for recreational purposes.
“While there may well be security-related explanations or justifications that come into the analysis, my reaction is: I don’t care. We shouldn’t be utilising government resources in this way. I never would have allowed it.”
I suspect there is no one filling Eisen’s post in the current administration.
