Fortune magazine Senior Reporter Jessica Mathews published an in-depth investigative story of these events last November, which I summarized in a Confined Space post shortly thereafter.
To refresh your memory, following the severe chemical burns suffered by the firefighters, OSHA issued a $425,595 citation to the Boring Company that included three willful violations for not providing appropriate training and protective equipment to the workers. Then it got interesting:
On May 28, hours after Nevada’s workplace safety agency served notice of more than $400,000 in fines to Elon Musk’s $5.6 billion tunneling startup the Boring Company, the phone rang at Nevada governor Joe Lombardo’s office.
Boring Co. president Steve Davis was on the line. Boring Company was challenging citations from Nevada’s workplace safety regulator blaming it for chemical burns two firefighters had suffered in its tunnels during a training exercise.
By the next afternoon, a group of high-ranking state officials, including the governor’s state infrastructure coordinator who took the call, were convened in a room with Davis, who was himself wrapping up a stint in Washington D.C. helping Musk run the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). At the beginning of that meeting, the citations and fines—among the agency’s largest in a decade and a potential threat to Boring’s plans to build tunnels in other U.S. cities—were summarily rescinded.
And the citations and penalties were not the only things that disappeared.
The record of the Governor’s office meeting with Musk’s company was removed from a public document without explanation. More irregularities in the case file occurred: Documents weren’t saved to the file, and a document intended to provide reasoning for revoking the citations was left out.
Lambert here: “Jake…..”
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