U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Cathy Stepp wore a fake nose and sunglasses to try to help her daughter pass a 2011 Wisconsin driving test after she failed her initial attempt.
Stepp’s daughter Hannah told the story at an all-hands staff meeting on January 11, after President Trump appointed the former Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources secretary to be the EPA Region 5 administrator.
Staffers were nervous about meeting her because she cut scientists at the Wisconsin DNR and scrubbed language stating that humans are causing climate change from the agency’s website. The number of environmental enforcement cases decreased sharply during her Wisconsin tenure as well.
Cathy Stepp, right, as been appointed the EPA Region 5 administrator. At an all-hands meeting earlier this month, her daughter Hannah, left, told a story about how she helped her pass her driver’s test
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland January 26, 2018
After failing the driving portion of her exam seven years ago, Hannah, left, said her mom, right, put on a disguise and followed a car taking the driver’s test so she could memorize the course and help her daughter pass the test
The 53-year-old asked her daughter to introduce her in an attempt to humanize her, according to the Chicago Tribune.
During the introduction, Hannah said her mother wore the fake nose and sunglasses so she could follow someone taking the Wisconsin driver’s test seven years ago.
She said she had failed her first test and her mother wanted to learn the route to help her practice for her second attempt, which she passed.
At least two EPA workers in the room were taken aback by the story, and the ethics of what Stepp (left with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker) did
‘I failed my first driving test,’ Hannah repeated the story to the Tribune. ‘My mom said, “You’re not going to fail it again!”
‘She put on a disguise of a fake nose and sunglasses and went to the DMV and followed someone taking the driving portion of the test so that she could learn the route, and then we practiced it. I didn’t fail the second time!’ Hannah said.
She told the newspaper that her mom always carries a fake nose around.
While Hannah thought the story went down well, at least two EPA employees at the meeting thought it was bizarre to showcase an incident in which her mother tried to help her cheat on a test.
‘It was baffling,’ one anonymous staffer told the paper. ‘For a public official’s daughter to admit that in front of her entire staff? It’s unethical … and then, did she help put someone unsafe on the roads?’
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation said it would not make Hannah take the test again and that it ‘takes no opinion’ on the ethics of learning the drivers license test course beforehand.
EPA spokesman Jeff Kelley said he ‘wouldn’t characterize it as cheating’.