As state and federal safety investigators begin to plan their probe into the Massey Energy Co. mine explosion that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners last week, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. raises a series of questions about the transparency of the impending investigation.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration has kept investigative interviews secret in the past, Ward says. He asks, why not make the interviews public and stream them online?
The agency has the authority to investigate via a public hearing but has seldom done so, Ward says.
All of the secrecy might make sense, if MSHA and state officials didn’t almost always allow coal company lawyers to sit in on the interviews. The only good argument for secrecy in these interviews is that allowing openness tips off the company to the direction investigators are headed, allowing them to thwart things like potential criminal prosecution down the road.
But if the company lawyers are in the room, well, what’s the point of the secrecy?
Ward e-mailed Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to ask if there would be independent investigation of whether government employees could have done more to prevent the disaster, or if the standard procedure in which MSHA employees investigate one another will be followed. Solis said the matter hadn’t been decided.
Related: At Massey Mine, a Missed Opportunity for Safety Scrutiny?
