Kasich: EPA staff must work as team

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Gov. John Kasich has made no secret of his frustrations with Ohio environmental regulators and on Friday he brought those concerns straight to the state employees whose approach he has criticized as slow and bureaucratic.

In a meeting with workers at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the new Republican governor told employees they need to make tough choices and not delay matters as he looks to attract and keep businesses in the state.

“Let’s not dangle things forever,” Kasich told a packed auditorium. “Let’s make decisions.”

All 1,200 EPA employees — including those from district offices — were encouraged to attend the meeting in Columbus, said agency spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer. For some, that meant taking a chartered bus from two hours away.

More than 900 employees attended the meeting, the governor’s office said. It was not mandatory and would be available by video to those who did not attend.

The governor called Friday’s meeting to share his vision for the agency and hear the workers’ concerns, said Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols.

“This is an agency that’s very important in terms of making Ohio business-friendly, open for business, and so it was a starting point,” Nichols said.

Kasich stressed the importance of working as a team and told EPA employees to “be big enough” to directly talk to him if they had a problem.

“Don’t go out and hurt the team,” he said.

Kasich, a critic of the agency’s backlog of environmental permits, has said the state should move at “the speed of business” while protecting the environment.

The meeting comes a week after a news conference in which Kasich touted the signing of a permit he said had been stalled at the agency for more than 20 months. The permit allows Mingo Junction Energy Center in eastern Ohio to capture and recycle waste gas that otherwise would be burned off.

EPA Director Scott Nally said last week that the permit had hit an impasse because of communication problems, which Nally said he resolved with a few phone calls.