* Obama picks former Romney official to lead EPA
* Energy industry not expected to fight nomination
* Climate change, power plant rules will be big fights
By Patrick Rucker
WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) – After a long career in
public service including work for two Republican governors, Gina
McCarthy is expected to win confirmation as the next head of the
Environmental Protection Agency, thanks to her reputation as a
popular, fix-it regulator.
President Barack Obama said on Monday McCarthy was his pick
to lead the EPA and leaders of the energy and industry quickly
signaled their acquiescence.
“We congratulate Gina McCarthy on her nomination,” Jack
Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said in a
statement.
McCarthy’s nomination will have to be confirmed by the
Senate and she will likely face searing questions from foes of
the EPA. But even those lawmakers expect the official with more
than 25 years experience on clean air and water issues to assume
office.
David Vitter of Louisiana, the most senior Republican on the
senate environment panel, said he would demand answers for past
EPA decisions but that he could envision McCarthy in office.
“The EPA is in desperate need of a leader who will stop
ignoring congressional information requests, hiding emails and
more from the public, and relying on flawed science,” Vitter
said in a statement. “I hope she can reverse those practices.”
McCarthy, 58, who served as the EPA’s clean air chief in
Obama’s first term, could be grilled over rules written in the
last four years, but two stints working for Republican governors
could help guarantee her eventual confirmation.
As the top environmental enforcer in Massachusetts under
then Governor Mitt Romney and later in neighboring Connecticut,
McCarthy proved herself a master administrator, according to
former colleagues and policy partners.
“She has a natural grasp of how to make bureaucracies work
better,” said Doug Foy, who coordinated environmental and
development policy for Governor Romney. “Part of that is
accepting that 85 percent of what an agency does is routine. The
key is to make a difference with the 15 percent that’s left.”
Those who worked with McCarthy at the state level say she is
more motivated by booking successes than pushing a rigid agenda.
“It’s rare to find an official who can combine vision and
persuasiveness with a real practical sense of how to get things
done,” said Don Strait, director of the Connecticut Fund for the
Environment.
McCarthy was elevated from a junior state post in
Massachusetts after Romney took office in 2003 wanting to find a
way to “bust silos” that stood between agencies for housing,
transportation, energy and the environment, Foy said.
She helped promote the initiative by balancing the big
picture with retail messaging such as a plan to retire the
state’s fleet of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles.
“Setting an example is important when you’re asking more
from voters,” Foy said. “Gina has a knack for that kind of
thinking.”
McCarthy worked well with industry in an effort to clean up
Boston Harbor, Foy said, but she was also able to soothe the
power sector when Romney set tough goals to curb the greenhouse
gases blamed for climate change.
That work continued when McCarthy took over as head of
Connecticut’s environmental protection agency under Republican
Governor M. Jodi Rell in 2004.
With a mandate to curb greenhouse gas without unduly
increasing power rates for consumers, McCarthy was setting
policy at the crossroads of energy needs and conservation.
“I’m doing my best to get the environmental world to
understand the energy world is part and parcel of the
environmental world,” McCarthy said in 2007, Connecticut’s
Hartford Courant reported.
Connecticut led an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions
in the Northeast – an endeavor that Romney initially supported
and then opposed.
If she does step into the top role at the EPA, one of
McCarthy’s big tasks will be to set emissions rules for the
power sector that accounts for about 40 percent of greenhouse
gas emissions.
Strait, of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, ranks
McCarthy top among the five heads of the state environmental
agency he has known and he said she has the political touch to
succeed as head of the EPA.
“If you meet an official at that level and you feel
energized… that’s extraordinary,” he said of McCarthy’s time
in Connecticut.
