Rauner taps Blago retread
Former EPA counsel now top adviser
GOVERNMENT | Bruce Rushton
A lawyer once at the center of disputes between Attorney General Lisa Madigan and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is now Gov. Bruce Rauner’s top adviser on environmental issues.
“Oh my God,” exclaimed former assistant attorney general Thomas Davis when told that Robert Alec Messina has been tapped by Rauner to be the governor’s policy adviser on energy and the environment.
As general counsel for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency under Blagojevich, Messina in 2007 wrote a letter to Madigan’s staff saying that the IEPA would no longer refer cases to the attorney general for enforcement. Criminal enforcement referrals that had already fallen stopped entirely, with no criminal cases being referred from IEPA to the attorney general for at least two years.
Referrals began dropping in 2005, when Madigan launched an investigation into allegations that Blagojevich had been trading jobs for campaign contributions. The rift deepened when Blagojevich cut funding for the attorney general’s office and Madigan responded by threatening to keep fines collected from polluters that otherwise would have gone to fund other agencies.
“Overall, I didn’t see the cooperation with the attorney general’s office that you would expect from somebody like Alec in the position that he was in,” said Davis, who retired last year from his job as environmental bureau chief in the attorney general’s office.
In 2009, eight days before Blagojevich was impeached, Messina wrote a letter to Michael Beyer, chief executive officer of Macoupin Energy, promising that IEPA would work “in a cooperative spirit” with the company to address water pollution at a coal mine near Carlinville that the company wanted to buy from ExxonMobil. Macoupin Energy subsequently bought the mine, which had been idle, and restarted operations under ExxonMobil’s permit, even though the permit wasn’t supposed to be transferable under terms of its initial approval in the 1990s.
Under former Gov. Pat Quinn, the IEPA, with a new general counsel, referred a water pollution case at the Carlinville mine to the attorney general’s office for enforcement action. That prompted a letter of protest to IEPA from Beyer, who cited Messina’s 2009 letter as evidence of a promise from the state to work cooperatively with Macoupin Energy instead of calling in the attorney general to force compliance with environmental laws.
Macoupin Energy is a subsidiary of Foresight Energy Services, a top donor to Rauner’s inauguration committee that gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to help pay for inaugural festivities. Foresight donated $10,000 to Rauner during the campaign but also gave $48,500 to former Gov. Pat Quinn.
Phil Gonet, president of the Illinois Coal Association, praised Rauner’s decision to make Messina his top adviser on environmental issues.
“(He’s) extremely, extremely pro-business,” said Gonet, who served on Rauner’s transition team. “I couldn’t be happier with his appointment there. I think it is in keeping with what the transition team said was important in improving the business climate in Illinois.”
Davis said that the attorney general’s office has historically had a less-than-productive relationship with IEPA.
“I worked at EPA for four years in the 1980s – I saw it from that side,” Davis said. “I don’t know if it’s in the DNA or what. The Illinois EPA doesn’t trust the attorney general, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, therefore they do things on their own that are not in strict compliance with the law. … I hope that doesn’t continue with Mr. Rauner being in charge of the agency.”
Like Davis, Gonet said that squabbles between the attorney general and the agencies under control of the governor are nothing new.
“I’m used to the attorney general not defending state agencies,” Gonet said. “It didn’t start under Blagojevich and it’s not going to end there, either.”
Messina’s appointment comes as the state Department of Natural Resources institutes an overhaul in permitting procedures pushed by the attorney general’s office, which three years ago sued the department over a permit for a coal mine near the village of Banner, about 70 miles north of Springfield. As part of a settlement reached last spring that carries the weight of a court order, the department agreed to reform a permitting process that environmentalists had complained was stacked in favor of industry.
The Department of Natural Resources agreed to require earlier public notice of permit applications, make applicants pay permit fees upfront instead of after approval and require applicants to appear at public hearings and answer questions from opponents. The department also agreed to post permit application materials and hearing transcripts on the department’s website and promised that department officials would remain neutral during hearings. The department also promised to conduct environmental reviews earlier in the permit process and ensure that the department director makes the final decision on permit applications.
Nine months later, many of the promised changes haven’t been realized. Some of the reforms require changes to administrative rules, and those proposed changes are now before the federal Office of Surface Mining for review and comment, Chris Young, Department of Natural Resources spokesman, said in an email. Once the feds weigh in, the proposed changes would be sent to the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules for consideration and approval.
“The entire process could take up to a year,” Young wrote.
