The Environmental Protection Agency's social media campaign supporting clean water legislation violated bans against publicity, propaganda and lobbying by the federal government, the Government Accountability Office said in a report this week.
EPA lawyers said the agency did nothing wrong in its PR efforts. The government entity spent around $65,000 on resources for the campaign raising awareness of the proposed Waters of the United States rule, a PR push executed by EPA staff.
The GAO singled out the EPA's use of the social media platform Thunderclap, which allows users to share a message en masse to a group of supporters, along with a blog post that promoted the message to encourage support of the proposed rule. Similar efforts to tackle blowback against the rule were also called into question by the GAO as the EPA linked to external websites that encouraged users to sign up to support the rule.
Federal law prohibits government agencies from lobbying or producing covert propaganda and self-aggrandizement.
In lieu of fines, the GAO instructed the EPA to produce a full accounting of the campaign costs and a report to President Barack Obama and Congress acknowledging the violations.
The GAO report is available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2646341-GAO-Opinion-EPA-Social-Media-121415.html.
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