While it is still early in the four-year ritual over speculation over key federal jobs, Joyce Connery, a longtime government hand who chairs the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, is being mentioned as a possible Joe Biden administration choice to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
The Biden administration is just a couple of weeks old and still awaiting a vote by the full Senate on energy secretary nominee, Jennifer Granholm. Biden has yet to nominate a deputy secretary of energy.
Nevertheless, sources call Connery a viable candidate to be nominated as DOE’s assistant secretary of environmental management (EM). She is often described as a respected federal manager with ample experience in nuclear weapons and security issues. A couple of the same sources, however, add that Connery could attract consideration for other nuclear-related jobs in the Biden administration.
Reached Thursday, Connery pointed to her recent reappointment as chair of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) and added she is “focusing my efforts on our important mission” at DNFSB. She declined to comment further.
Connery began her second stint as DNFSB chairwoman on Jan. 20, Biden’s inauguration day. She previously served in the post from 2015 to 2017.
First nominated by President Barack Obama, Connery joined the board, which provides outside safety analysis and recommendations to DOE, in 2015. She has also worked for DOE’s national laboratories, the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, and the National Security Council, according to her DNFSB biography.
Should Connery be nominated to lead the DOE nuclear cleanup office, she could glean some background from her fellow DNFSB member, Jessie Hill Roberson who held the post herself from 2001 until 2004.
Biden’s energy secretary nominee Granholm passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday and is awaiting a vote by the full Senate. It is difficult to predict when the administration might focus on offices such as EM.
The Senate confirmed Rick Perry as the Donald Trump administration’s first secretary of energy in March 2017. The Trump administration did not nominate Anne Marie White to be assistant secretary for EM until January 2018 and she was confirmed two months later.
