Environmental Law

Judge Michael Krancer Named as next PADEP Secretary

By Joel Bolstein

Governor-elect Tom Corbett today announced that he intends to nominate Environmental Hearing Board Judge Michael Krancer, 53, of Bryn Mawr, Montgomery County, as Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection.

As most people in the Pennsylvania environmental bar know, Judge Krancer has been a Judge on the Environmental Hearing Board for almost ten years.  He was nominated to serve on the EHB by Governor Tom Ridge in 1999, and in 2003 was named by Governor Rendell as Chief Judge and Chairman of the EHB.  Judge Krancer stepped off the EHB for a short time to be the Republican nominee for Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and then serve as Assistant General Counsel for the Exelon Corporation, prior to returning to the EHB.  

I have worked with Judge Krancer and I know that he takes his work very seriously and he has been an outstanding and thoughtful jurist.  He no doubt has a tough job ahead of him running PADEP.  The Department has been battered in recent years by budget cuts and many of us have never seen morale so low.  The Department has also lost many senior staff to retirement in recent years and the expectation is that more retirements will be coming.  On top of all that, the most significant economic opportunity to hit Pennsylvania in decades, the development of the Marcellus Shale, raises a whole host of environmental issues that will quickly confront the new Secretary.  Those issues include balancing the need to grow Pennsylvania's economy and create jobs with the need to strictly regulate the industry and protect the state's water supply.  They also include defending Pennsylvania's sovereignty and its ability to control its own economic destiny while others, such as EPA and DRBC, try to push their way into the regulatory framework.  My feeling is that all other environmental issues are likely to become secondary to dealing with the Marcellus Shale.  But beyond Marcellus Shale, it is a big Department with many moving parts, and as someone who's worked on the 16th floor, I know that Judge Krancer is going to have his hands full.  At the outset, there is the matter of reorganizing the Department.  The reorganization isn't as extreme as when we came into office in 1995 and the DER was split into PADEP and DCNR.  But Governor-elect Corbett has talked about pulling all the energy functions out of the Department, and I expect that will occur relatively quickly, along with other restructuring necessary to implement his "back-to-basics" philosophy for the Department.  

I've already wished Judge Krancer well in his new position.  I know that he's excited about being selected and recognizes the challenges that lie ahead.  It's important that we all give him our full support as he takes on his new responsibilities.        

Full post as published by PA Brownfields Environmental Law on January 11, 2011 (boomark / email).