Jo-Ellen Darcy, a long-time Senate staffer who has specialized in water and environmental issues, will be nominated as assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, the White House announced on March 31. The assistant secretary oversees the civil works program of the Army Corps of Engineers. Darcy currently is senior environmental advisor to the Senate Finance Committee. Before that, she spent more than a decade as a staffer on the Environment and Public Works Committee, where she played a key role in drafting Corps-related legislation. Her positions on the EPW staff included senior policy advisor and deputy staff director.
Michael L. Connor, a top Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee staffer, is President Obama's choice to lead the Interior Dept.'s Bureau of Reclamation, the White House announced on March 18. Connor has been counsel to the energy committee since May 2001 and worked on water, Indian lands and energy issues. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar served on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee during his term in the Senate. Connor worked at Interior from 1993 to 2001 as deputy director and director of the secretary's Indian water rights office. Connor's nomination as Commissioner of Reclamation is subject to Senate confirmation.
Contractors are not pinning their hopes on the Obama administration’s stimulus efforts to completely pull them from an economic riptide that threatens not only profitability, but solvency. But they do see the $787-billion stimulus package’s $130 billion of construction spending as a life preserver that will allow them to at least tread water over the next year or two. Photo: John J. Kosowatz / ENR Shear outlined NAVFAC efforts. “It is absolutely necessary for our industry...but this is not an infrastructure panacea,” said Stephen Sandherr, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of America, to hundreds of attendees at AGC’s
After a nearly two-month delay, the embattled nominee for the top post at the Dept. of Labor won Senate confirmation Feb. 24. The Senate voted 80-17 to confirm Hilda Solis, a Democrat from California, as Labor Secretary. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said shortly after her confirmation, “America’s working men and women will be fortunate to have someone of Hilda’s tremendous talents leading the Dept. of Labor.” Unions describe Solis as a strong ally and advocate for working families and say that she built a solidly pro-labor voting record while in
Timing is everything. With the nation buzzing about the economic stimulus package—considered extremely likely to include billions of dollars for infrastructure—the American Society of Civil Engineers brought 80-plus experts together for a critical infrastructure summit. The meeting was part of ASCE’s long-range planning effort, but attendees found themselves discussing the next few months as well as the decades to come. Blaine Leonard, ASCE president-elect and research program manager of Utah Dept. of Transportation, told attendees at the Dec. 8-10, Landsdowne, Va., session that their mission was to begin to identify how organizations that work with multifunded, multijurisdictional, long-term construction and
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