WASHINGTON — Some Alaskans are eagerly anticipating the selection of a new regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, hoping that this time, an Alaskan will oversee the regional office.
There's a tradition, but no requirement, of rotation among the states in the region. And by that measure, it's Alaska's turn. But it could take a year before Alaskans find out whether it's a tradition that will be honored by the incoming Trump administration.
The position is key to how the agency is managed in the state, said John Iani, the last regional administrator to come from Alaska. "EPA is very thinly managed," with regional administrators reporting directly to the top in Washington, Iani said. During his tenure, he moved to beef up the number of staff in the Anchorage office of the EPA, he said.
Alaska has four EPA field offices and the largest is in Anchorage.
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EPA has offices in each state, and 10 regional offices that oversee those offices and report to the administrator, a Cabinet-level position. Alaska is part of Region 10, which also covers Idaho, Oregon, Washington and 271 Native tribes. The regional headquarters is in Seattle and does not change between administrations.
But the person who leads the region, and a few other positions within, do change at the pleasure of the president. The administrators are appointed but not Senate-confirmed. Commonly, the decision is made in the White House, with the help of the national EPA administrator and members of the congressional delegation from the president's party, according to EPA, congressional and EPA regional staffers.
President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. The Senate must confirm the nomination with a simple-majority vote.
The current Region 10 administrator is Dennis McLerran, a native of Washington state. He oversees about 500 employees and a $300 million budget, according to the agency.
McLerran's experience offers a window into how long some of these appointments take. He wasn't nominated until January of President Barack Obama's second year in office. He was sworn into the position in February 2010.
Prior to his presidential appointment to the EPA, McLerran was executive director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, a state government program established to enforce clean-air laws.
McLerran followed three Region 10 administrators during the administration of President George W. Bush: Elin Miller, an Oregonian; Michael Bogert of Idaho; and Alaska's Iani.
So for those counting, that means the rotation has swung back around to Alaska.
"We'll be putting names up," Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said of a variety of federal agency positions, in an interview earlier this month before Congress broke for the holidays.
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Iani, who was appointed to head the EPA regional office in September 2001, has a close relationship with the delegation and previously worked for Young and former Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska. He was senior vice president and general counsel at UniSea, a seafood processing company, when he took the job at the EPA.
"I was the last one that Alaska put into that job, but there's no guarantee that the Trump administration would do the same thing," Iani said.
Iani issued a word of caution for EPA opponents who might think the agency's efforts and requirements would change "overnight" under a new president.
"These laws are real," he said. And "courts will enforce them."
A "four-year administration is basically a nanosecond in the life of a bureaucracy," Iani said. He also cautioned against the idea of limiting agency staff and budgets — the trend in recent years. The law still requires environmental permits and there has to be staff to issue them, he said.