WASHINGTON — A congressional subcommittee chaired by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette lobbed accusations of lax enforcement against a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator during a hearing Tuesday.

Democrats on the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations accused the agency of placing people’s health at risk to follow President Donald Trump’s policy of being friendly toward big business.

Many of the allegations were based on the EPA’s recent annual report, which showed it collected $69 million in civil penalties against polluters in 2018.

“That’s the lowest level of penalties assessed to polluters since the EPA created the office of enforcement over 20 years ago in 1994,” said DeGette, D-Denver.

“What I see when I look at this report is an agency that is simply just sitting on its hands,” said DeGette, a Denver Democrat. “I see an agency that’s giving polluters a free pass and it’s putting our health and our environment at risk.”

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Testifying for the EPA was Susan Bodine, head of the agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, who said the numbers indicating low enforcement did not accurately portray the Trump administration’s environmental protection efforts.

“A strong enforcement program does not mean that we have to collect a particular dollar amount of penalties or take a particular number of formal actions,” Bodine said.

Instead, the agency has shifted toward seeking compliance from industry rather than penalties, she said. The EPA also turns over more of its enforcement to states than during previous presidential administrations.

“We call those state assists, but we’re getting compliance,” Bodine said.

She responded directly to DeGette when she said, “The staff is not sitting on its hands. They’re working very hard.”

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The EPA annual report said the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance lost 131 of its full-time employees over the past two years, or 17.8 percent of its staff. But Bodine said she plans to hire more enforcement staff this year.

Concessions Trump has made to industry in the past two years include rescinding or scaling back 47 environmental regulations. He plans to eliminate 31 more.

An environmental policy that prompted criticism from Colorado state Democrats was Trump’s plan to freeze auto emission standards at levels lower than the ones approved by the Obama administration in 2012. They call for the average fuel efficiency of automobiles to reach 39 miles per gallon by 2020 and 50 miles per gallon in 2025.

Trump wants the standards to halt at the 2020 levels in response to automakers’ complaints about the difficulty of achieving lower emissions.

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The EPA annual report showed the number of facilities the EPA inspected last year was at the lowest level since 1994; the number of civil enforcement cases dropped to 1982 levels and the number of cases referred to the Justice Department for prosecution was the lowest since 1976.

“Why is the EPA sitting on the sidelines?” DeGette asked.

Bodine said the EPA is not reducing its efforts to protect the environment but is making them more “strategic” and eliminating duplication with states.

“We look for opportunities to maximize the impact of our cases so that a single settlement returns multiple facilities into compliance,” she said in her testimony.

An example she mentioned was the 2017 settlement agreement with Kansas City-based Harcros Chemicals Inc., which has a Golden location, to audit its facilities in 18 states to eliminate the kind of chemical spill hazards that led to EPA enforcement.

Bodine said the EPA also compelled Denver-based natural gas company MarkWest Energy Partners to use new pipeline technology in Pennsylvania and Ohio that will reduce ozone-forming VOC emissions by 700 tons per year, reached an agreement with Amazon.com Inc. to remove listings of harmful pesticides from its retail website, and got the HGTV show “Fixer Upper” to explain on an episode of the home renovation program about how to comply with EPA’s Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule.

The hearing Tuesday was one of several so far this year used by Democrats who now control a majority in Congress to hold the Trump administration accountable for what they see as lapses.

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, said Trump oversteps his authority with his environmental policy.

“Congress enacts laws and provides funding,” Pallone said. “The executive is supposed to enforce the law. I just wish the Trump administration would follow the Constitution.”

Republicans said the EPA’s annual report shows figures for only one year, not a failure for the entire agency.

“I hope we don’t get ahead of ourselves that one year’s slightly lower enforcement numbers means the EPA isn’t doing its job,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican.