Reply #13: Background on Jackson:

[babylonsister]

Lisa P. Jackson

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Published: December 11, 2008


A series of profiles of potential members of the Obama administration.


Name: Lisa P. Jackson

Being Considered For: Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Would bring to the job: Twenty years of experience as an environmental regulator and a reputation as a consensus builder. Ms. Jackson, who is a chemical engineer, brought a more policy-driven approach to New Jersey’s historically politicized Department of Environmental Protection as its commissioner. During her 33 months in that job, the state began conducting compliance sweeps to crack down on polluters in environmentally ravaged sections of Camden and Paterson, ended its controversial bear hunt and unveiled a plan to reduce carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

Is linked to Mr. Obama by: His transition team. Like her boss, Gov. Jon S. Corzine, Ms. Jackson supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton over Mr. Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries. Besides making a $1,000 donation to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007, Ms. Jackson was an at-large delegate pledged to Mrs. Clinton; only later in 2008 did she donate $200 to the Obama campaign. Shortly after she was named Mr. Corzine’s chief of staff in late October — taking over on Dec. 1, becoming the first woman and first African American to hold the post — she was chosen by President-elect Obama in mid-November to serve on his transition panel for energy and the environment.

In her own words: “When it comes to the auto industry, the E.P.A. apparently is the Emissions Permissions Agency.” (Announcing in December 2007 that New Jersey would join other states in suing the Bush administration for its ruling that prevented states from enacting tougher fuel efficiency standards, a decision she called “a horrendous change of course.”)

Used to work as: An administrator in the federal Environmental Protection Agency for 16 years, where her duties included regulating the cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Superfund program. She also ran various enforcement programs at both the E.P.A. and New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, as well as New Jersey’s Land Use Management Program.

Carries as baggage: The E.P.A. criticized New Jersey in a recent report for moving too slowly to clean up some toxic waste sites. Some environmentalists also say she caved in to pressure from big business by supporting a plan that would privatize cleanup of hazardous waste sites, and from developers by diluting a proposal to enact stricter groundwater quality standards.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/us/politics/11web-jackson.html