WASHINGTON, May 9 -- President Bush has filled several
senior environment-related jobs in his administration with
pro-business advocates who have worked on behalf of various
industries in battles with the federal government, largely
during the Clinton years. Mr. Bush has announced his intent to nominate a mining
industry lobbyist as the No. 2 person at the Interior
Department. He has
chosen a lobbyist for the
National Cattlemen's Beef Association to be the department's
chief lawyer. His choice for No.
2 at the Environmental Protection Agency was a lobbyist for
Monsanto, the chemical company now devoted to
agribusiness. He wants as
chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality a lawyer
who represented General Electric in its fight with the
E.P.A. over toxic waste sites. Many of these candidates share a pro-property rights
philosophy as well as a libertarian leaning, and
conservatives find this just the right approach. Supporters
also say that the individuals selected are deeply familiar
with the issues that will come before them, and that they
will know how to balance environmental protection and
economic interests. "We're real happy with the team that Bush is putting in,"
said Mike Hardiman, legislative director of the American
Conservative Union. "After eight years of the extremist, anti-people,
anti-access policies of the Clinton administration and its
overzealous application of the Endangered Species Act and
the shutdown of recreational access to public lands as well
as the commercial access, we're now going to have more of a
balance," he said. The list of intended nominees--most have not been
officially nominated--is notable for the absence of picks
from the environmental movement. Mr. Bush was considering
John Turner, president of the Conservation Fund, for the No.
2 job at Interior, but Mr. Turner was dropped after strong
opposition from Mr. Hardiman's group and others. In Mr. Turner's place, Mr. Bush has nominated J. Steven
Griles, a mining industry lobbyist who once worked in the
Interior Department under James Watt, President Reagan's
first Interior secretary. "They are lawyers and lobbyists who built their careers
by helping industry get out of environmental regulations,"
said Maria Weidner, policy advocate for the Earthjustice
Legal Defense Fund. "Now, assuming they're confirmed, they
will be doing the same thing, only the taxpayers will be
paying for it." Business advocates assert that the industry credentials
of the nominees does not necessarily foreshadow their
approach in their new jobs. William L. Kovacs, vice president for environment,
technology and regulatory affairs at the United States
Chamber of Commerce, said that critics had portrayed the
Bush team as anti-environment even as the president let
stricter standards concerning diesel emissions and reporting
on lead emissions go into effect. "I don't think that just because these people worked for
business, you can call them pro-business," Mr. Kovacs said.
"They're not as clear- cut as the enviros would like to
paint them." Guided by the tone set at the top--from Mr. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney to Gale A. Norton, the Interior
secretary, and Christie Whitman, the E.P.A.
administrator--these nominees will help determine what
policies to advocate, what regulations to enforce and what
litigation to pursue. They replace Clinton loyalists who came largely from
strong environmental backgrounds. When President Bill
Clinton took office, for example, his Interior secretary,
Bruce Babbitt, was a former governor of Arizona but also
head of the League of Conservation Voters. Mr.
Babbitt put George Frampton, a former head of the
Wilderness Society, in charge of fish, wildlife and
parks; Mr. Frampton ended up in charge of the White House
environmental council. Now, some former Clinton officials--many of whom work for
environmental lobbying groups--complain that the Bush team
generally views the environment as resources to be mined,
logged and drilled. "Their collective orientation is clearly pro-development
and pro-exploitation of public resources for the personal
profit of various industries," said Dave Alberswerth, who
worked at the Interior Department under Mr. Babbitt and is
now at the Wilderness Society. Some holdovers--like Dale Bosworth, the new Forest
Service chief, who was a regional forester in Montana--have
not drawn environmentalists' fire. And Mr. Bush has yet to
name picks for a handful of key posts. But many of those he has named at Interior, E.P.A. and
other agencies with environmental oversight have corporate
backgrounds and appear skeptical of the regulatory process.
Most candidates declined to discuss their prospective roles
before their Senate confirmation hearings. One of Mr. Bush's most influential choices would be John
D. Graham as administrator of the Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget.
If confirmed, Mr. Graham, a Harvard professor who has argued
that the costs of most environmental regulations exceed
their benefits, would be in charge of reviewing all
regulations proposed by federal agencies. As he said in a 1996 speech at the Heritage Foundation,
"environmental regulation should be depicted as an
incredible intervention in the operation of society." Mr. Bush has also said he would nominate Linda J. Fisher
to be deputy administrator of the E.P.A. Most recently she
headed the government affairs office at Monsanto. Ms. Fisher
served at the E.P.A. in the Reagan and first Bush
administrations as director of the office of pesticides and
toxic substances; assistant administrator for policy,
planning and evaluation; and as chief of staff. Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental
Trust, called her a "moderate, corporate-style Republican,
not a hidebound conservative" and said Ms. Fisher was seen
as "pretty reasonable by environmentalists" during her
tenure as head of the agency's pesticide office. "But afterward," he said, "she headed Monsanto's lobbying
operation while the company was trying to head off any
government oversight of genetically engineered crops." Other Interior nominees include Bennet William Raley, a
lawyer who has represented farm interests, as assistant
secretary for water and science, and Lynn Scarlett,
president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian group, as
assistant secretary for policy, management and budget. "I don't like to tell people how to live their lives,"
Ms. Scarlett said. "If that means I'm gun-shy of mandates,
where they'll undermine environmental performance, stifle
innovation and heighten conflict, then I'll say so. But I
think too often we judge environmentalism as being the
equivalent of adherence to a particular statute rather than
achieving specific results, and they're not the same
thing."
New York Times, May 12, 2001