President Trump's pick to run the San Francisco EPA office doesn't want to live there
WASHINGTON - The White House has finally found someone to take on the stress of overseeing President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel-friendly environmental agenda in the heart of hostile territory: California and nearby states.
But there’s one glaring problem.
The guy who will lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in San Francisco doesn’t appear to want to live anywhere near San Francisco.
That didn’t stop the administration from hiring Santa Barbara County GOP stalwart Mike Stoker, a politico well positioned to annoy the powers that be in California.
He credits himself with conceiving the “lock her up” chant that Trump rallygoers shouted in their rage against Hillary Clinton. He was the spokesman for one of the state’s most embattled oil companies. He questions the scientific consensus on climate change.
None of those things are disqualifying, even if some in California think they should be. But Stoker’s refusal to work in the liberal City by the Bay has put the administration in a pickle. Instead he wants to oversee the 700 or so enforcement officers, scientists, researchers and others guiding environmental protection in California and nearby states from a small, sparsely staffed Los Angeles satellite office.
That’s a big ask in an agency already reeling from investigations into the travel habits of its leaders, including the taxpayer-funded flights back home to Oklahoma by EPA chief Scott Pruitt, some of which were in the first-class cabin.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, fired off a letter to Pruitt on Thursday warning of the consequences of allowing Stoker to be an “absentee” chief of EPA Region 9. She demanded to know how the arrangement could possibly work, and what costs taxpayers would bear.
The EPA weeks ago alerted Stoker allies in Santa Barbara that his appointment was imminent. But the official announcement came only Friday, after his backers, including EPA political appointees, scrambled to figure out how he can run a large San Francisco-based bureaucracy without showing up there, according to staffers inside the agency who spoke on condition that their names not be used.
Some career officials at the EPA are deeply skeptical, and warn such an arrangement could create yet more ethics troubles for the agency.
The last time a regional EPA chief tried juggling work at the San Francisco headquarters with trips home to Southern California, federal investigators discovered some $69,000 in flights they said may have been inappropriately billed to taxpayers. That was during the late years of the George W. Bush administration. Feinstein reminded Pruitt about that investigation, and questioned if his EPA is heeding the lessons learned from it.
Stoker, a former Santa Barbara county supervisor who made his entry into politics in the 1980s as a strident opponent of a ballot measure limiting offshore oil development, did not return calls and emails.
A statement from the EPA said only, “Mike Stoker’s duty station is San Francisco.” Officials did not respond when asked multiple times if that is where he would be working.
Environmental groups joined Feinstein in expressing bewilderment that the region chief may keep living in Carpinteria, which is hours from even the Los Angeles office.
“You can’t do that job without face-to-face contact with the scientists, engineers, lawyers, and other professionals in Region 9’s office who do the heavy lifting,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former chief of civil enforcement at EPA who now runs the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. “Phoning it in is not going to work.”
Finding a leader for Region 9 was vexing for the Trump administration. One ally of industry after another rejected its overtures to lead the feisty office of career professionals who have little enthusiasm for the Trump agenda. The pay hardly compares to what potential recruits are making in the private sector, the cost of living in San Francisco is crushing and the neighbors are not particularly hospitable to folks carrying the “Make America Great Again” torch.
For such reasons, Stoker is a good fit. A Trump delegate at the 2016 Republican National Convention who delights in mocking liberals on social media, Stoker is a rare commodity on the California coast: a resilient Republican. Pruitt said he “understands the environmental challenges facing the region and will bring a wealth of experience and expertise to EPA.”
“He’s a bull wrangler, and that’s exactly what we need,” said Andy Caldwell, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business. He said Stoker is skilled at brokering deals among ?disparate interests.
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