Legal News

Corbett Taps Krancer for DEP Head

By Brian Harris

By Zack Needles
Of the Legal Staff

Governor-elect Thomas W. Corbett has selected Environmental Hearing Board Judge Michael Krancer as the new secretary of environmental protection.

Krancer will be tasked with managing the 3,000-plus employee Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which will likely spend a significant amount of time monitoring the environmental effects of the Marcellus Shale play.

Krancer began his career in 1983 and was a litigator until he was appointed to the EHB as a judge in 1999 under then-Gov. Tom Ridge.

In 2003, he was elevated to chief judge of the board but stepped down in 2007 to run for a spot on the state Supreme Court.

During his campaign, Krancer told The Legal that the one opinion he would take back and revise was in the 2002 EHB case Eagle Environmental v. DEP.

In Eagle, the court upheld a regulation that required a landfill permit applicant to identify the social and economic benefits of the proposed landfill and to demonstrate how those benefits outweigh the environmental risks of the project.

Krancer said he thought he was wrong to have joined in the majority in that case because the harms/benefits analysis it approved was one based on the personal subjective judgment of government regulators.

Krancer eventually lost his Supreme Court bid and, in 2008, went to work as assistant general counsel for Exelon Corp. before being reappointed to the EHB under Gov. Edward G. Rendell in 2009.

Read more about this in next week's Legal.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on January 12, 2011 (boomark / email).