Michele Siekerka, who has served as Mercer County Regional Chamber of Commerce president and CEO for more than six years,will fill the newly created post of assistant commissioner for economic growth and green initiatives at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
DEP Commissioner Bob Martin told lawmakers during recent budget hearings that he was creating the position and was reviewing potential candidates for the job. This afternoon, a DEP news release confirmed the appointment.
Siekerka earlier this year served on Governor Chris Christie's Red Tape Review group, which issued a report that called for easing some regulatory mandates at the DEP and other state agencies.
"For me personally it is a culmination of things I have been working on over the course of the past year," Siekerka said in a Trenton Times story today.
She cited the chamber's Economic Development Foundation, which she helped create to look at issues that would encourage businesses to stay and grow in New Jersey, and a Ford Foundation-funded fellowship on regional sustainable development that she was selected for.
"Sustainability isn't just the environment," she said. "It's environmental, economics and the quality of life."
Before joining the chamber in 2004, Siekerka worked in the general counsel's office at AAA Mid-Atlantic, and was a lawyer in private practice for 12 years in Robbinsville, NJ. She also served as a member of the school board in Washington Township for 10 years.
The announcement was met with skepticism by one of the state's most-quoted environmental activists, Jeff Tittel, executive director of the NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club. Tittel said he was concerned the position went against the DEP's main mission of environmental protection.
He also said some of the chamber's members during Siekerka's term were subject to DEP regulation.
"This person has worked for the chamber, and is now going to be working for the DEP in a position affecting applications for permits," he said. "Isn't there a conflict of interest?"
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The Asbury Park Press sure understood the implications - in a strongly worded April 16 editorial; “Aiding economy not DEP’s job“, the Asbury Park Press blasted DEP Commissioner Martin for his views on DEP’s role in economic development and his plans for creating a new Assistant Commissioner for economic development:
ReplyDeleteNow and then, some public official will say things that make the attentive listener go, “Whoa! That doesn’t sound quite right. Does this guy understand his job?”
The most recent example to come out of the Christie administration is found in the musings of Bob Martin, the new commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection. …
The DEP’s job is to protect and preserve the environment, not to insert itself into questions of the economic issues involved. That’s for other state policymakers to address. It is much too early to form any judgments on how Martin will do on the job. But some of his statements thus far should give those who care about New Jersey’s environment real pause.
http://www.wolfenotes.com/2010/06/the-day-before-disaster/