Hastings faces new criticism for free trip

YAKIMA – A group that contends U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings should step down as chairman of the House Ethics Committee criticized him Friday for taking a European trip paid for by a Hanford nuclear reservation contractor.

Hastings, R-Wash., has been the subject of increasing scrutiny in his position after House Majority Leader Tom DeLay asked the ethics panel to review his travels, which include trips arranged by lobbyist Jack Abramoff when the lobbyist worked for the Seattle-based Preston Gates firm.

At one point, Abramoff also touted Hastings’ relationship with his firm in a pitch to a prospective client.

The watchdog group Washingtonians for a Cleaner Congress already had urged Hastings to step down over the alleged tie to Abramoff.

Ed Cassidy, Hastings’ chief of staff, has said Hastings never talked to Abramoff, but his staffers spoke frequently with Preston Gates lobbyists because they came from a home-state firm and often represented clients from Hastings’ district.

In its latest critique, the watchdog group again called for Hastings to arrange an independent investigation of DeLay.

“Rep. Hastings simply cannot remain as head of the House Ethics Committee, which is tasked with investigating the lavish trips taken by members of Congress, when he has done the very same thing,” said Clarence Gipson of Yakima, a Democrat.

At issue is a five-day trip to Scotland and England in January 2000, paid for by BNFL Inc., the British firm initially hired to design, build and operate a multibillion-dollar waste treatment plant at the Hanford reservation.

The 586-square-mile site, created as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, is located in Hastings’ central Washington district.

The trip came two years after the U.S. Department of Energy hired BNFL to build the so-called vitrification plant, which will turn millions of gallons of radioactive waste into glass logs for permanent disposal. The waste is stored in 177 aging underground tanks less than 10 miles from the Columbia River.

A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office found the contract placed the federal government at significant financial risk.

In May 2000, four months after Hastings’ trip, the Energy Department fired the company after the estimated cost for the project soared from $6.9 billion to $15.2 billion. The project remains in financial upheaval today.