hall. mayor gray s chief of staff out. thanks for joining us tonight at 10:00. i m shawn yancy. i m brian bolter. the move comes after weeks of scandals including revelations of overpaid staffers. fox 5 s wisdom martin here to explain what this means for the city government. mayor gray said he requested and accepted the resignation of chief of staff gerri mason hall. he said they discussed the resignation over the last several days and in the end gray says the distractions with the personnel matters were overshadowing the government s work. chief of staff gerri mason hall is out. the mayor says he s known her 20 years and she is an outstanding professional but when it came down to it i think this issue around personnel eventually became a huge challenge, numerous questions about it. reporter: the first few is no of the gray administration have been surround months of the gray administration have been surrounded by controversy, the biggest, the firing of sulaimon b
similar oil leak from offshore wells. and they testified, the oil companies testified before congress and said, this will not happen in u.s. waters. well, the proof is in the pudding. the oil and gas companies do not know how to drill safely in the gulf of mexico waters that are below 5,000 feet. we should stop all drilling operations right now. it sounds too big to fail. the politicians say it will always be better next time. eric, can you give us any insight right now as to the threat to the wildlife. we re just now seeing the oil wash up on the shores. we re concerned this is the time for sea turtle nesting, this is the time for bird and turtle nesting. there s a huge economy out there, the fishermen and the oystermen, that this is going to dramatically impact. perhaps the world s sixth largest gdp. we re going to see wildlife, marshland contaminated and potentially destroyed for generations. as well as whole economies of communities, this is truly a
tragic incident. listen, eric, keep us posted. i know the next few days are critical, obviously intervening into the flow of the oil slick and capping the well beneath the surface. up next here in busted, anthem blue cross blaming bad math for its decision to boost rates by as much as 39%. and a wrecking crew demolishing the wrong house. no joke. they re on the wrong side of the street. they knocked the place down. that was a rough time. my doctor told me i should ve been doing more for my high cholesterol. you should ve listened. you re right. now i m eating healthier and i trust my heart to lipitor. [ male announcer ] when diet and exercise are not enough, adding lipitor may help. lipitor is fda approved to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in patients who have heart disease or risk factors for heart disease. lipitor is backed by over 18 years of research. lipitor is not for everyone.
nothing like this happens again. we need to find out what happened. something went wrong. i should also argue we should only go down the road of anything that works, because i-degree with foumtly. if there s enough resource there, as there is the case for natural gas, where you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gallons, you can move the truck over as t. boone pickens likes to say, if there s not enough oil available, why do we bother creating the risk? just because it s good politics, i guess is my question. no one source is going to solve all of your problem. but right now in the midst of this crisis is not the time to be deciding the future of oil exploration. we need to first make sure that we reduce the damage from this disaster. and make sure we learn the lessons from it as well. i couldn t degree with you more, especially on the investigations, congressman, it s always a pleasure, thank you for giving us a visit this afternoon. now bringing into this conversation
eric, do you feel that the president and the white house have appropriately and aggressively responded to this spill as described? yeah, i think the president and the cabinet secretaries, you know, the secretaries are down there, we re deploying the military. the coast guard has been in close contact with bp. so i think the administration is doing what it can and should right now. we have to remember that bp, who is responsible for planning against these accidents, didn t predict the catastrophe that s going on down there. so you would argue that if anything, the failure to recognize the potential liability of an underground oil well busted and uncapped, pumping for days, was not anticipated, is that fair? it wasn t anticipated. and to be honest, let s look at, this industry has been telling the american public for at least two decades, that they are safer, they re more efficient, the technology is going to make oil and gas drilling clean. but we know that s not true. we saw in t