Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
11/14/2014
With Congress back in session beginning this week, the White House’s choice to serve as the next head of the Department of Energy’s cleanup program appears set to continue to face a tough road to full confirmation. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is maintaining a hold he has placed on Monica Regalbuto’s nomination to serve as the next Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management, his office confirmed late this week. Barrasso has placed the hold, which prevents the full Senate from easily approving Regalbuto’s nomination by unanimous consent, over concerns with DOE’s policies for transferring excess uranium to help fund Departmental programs, including cleanup activities. “If confirmed, Monica Regalbuto would be intimately involved in the Department of Energy’s uranium transfer policy. To date, the Department has refused to answer Senator Barrasso’s questions about its claim that DOE uranium transfers will not hurt America’s uranium producers. Until the Administration provides answers to Senator Barrasso’s questions, he will keep the hold in place,” a Barrasso spokeswoman said in a written response.
Regalbuto had largely been seen as an uncontroversial choice to head up DOE’s cleanup program, and sailed through a hearing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, upon which Barrasso sits, held to consider her nomination in June. She was nominated by the Obama Administration this spring to fill the vacancy left when Ines Triay stepped down as Assistant EM Secretary in July 2011. Since then, the position has been filled in an acting capacity, first by David Huizenga and then beginning in July by Mark Whitney, who also serves as EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.
At the time of her nomination, Regalbuto had been serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fuel Cycle Technologies in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. However, she has since moved to take a senior management role in EM, and now serves as Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.
Is Lack of Senate-Confirmed EM-1 Hurting DOE’s Cleanup Program?
In remarks at this year’s Weapons Complex Monitor Decisionmakers’ Forum, held last month, retiring Congressman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) highlighted the need for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to have a Senate-confirmed assistant secretary in place. “A nominated and confirmed Assistant Secretary would provide the EM program with a much needed level of certainty and sense of continuity,” Hastings said in prepared remarks. “And, in turn it would provide the program leader with the authority and accountability needed to meet cleanup challenges. Having an Assistant Secretary in place would help strengthen the Environmental Management program and put the federal government in a better position to meet its legal cleanup obligations.”
On the sidelines of the meeting, though, Whitney said the current leadership situation within EM is not having major impacts. “Maybe it’s a unique situation, but from my perspective and the folks at headquarters, it’s not an issue,” he told WC Monitor. “Monica and I have worked together before, we have a really good relationship and I think we complement each other really well. It’s definitely not an issue for the two of us, and I think we portray that in our actions and all of us there are like a team.”
