Ex-EPA chief Gina McCarthy returns to Connecticut as Green Bank board director
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has named Gina McCarthy, the former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to serve as a member of the board of directors of the Connecticut Green Bank.
“As the Connecticut Green Bank demonstrates how mobilizing private investment into our clean energy economy can reduce the energy burden on households and businesses while creating jobs in our communities, it is imperative that these investments also improve public health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Malloy said. “Gina McCarthy will be fantastic advocate for advancing these causes. She has dedicated her career towards advocating for the very issues that the Connecticut Green Bank seeks to accomplish, and we are thrilled to have her expertise back in Connecticut serving the people of our state.”
McCarthy, a Boston native and resident, served as undersecretary for policy for Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs from 1999 to 2003 and as deputy secretary of the Massachusetts Office of Commonwealth Development from 2003 to 2004. From 2004 to 2009, she served as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection ”“ now the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ”“ under Malloy’s predecessor, Gov. M. Jodi Rell. Her appointment by President Obama to the EPA position took a record 154 days between her nomination and confirmation, and her EPA tenure was marked by a failed congressional attempt to impeach her and with criticism of her handling of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Since leaving the EPA, McCarthy has been a Spring Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. She has also taken the unprecedented step of voicing open skepticism about her EPA successor, Scott Pruitt, by issuing a statement after his confirmation that she will be watching his “every action very closely to ensure the Trump Administration upholds science and the law, respects its dedicated public servants and builds on the agency’s long track record of protecting public health and the environment.”