Five minutes after I posted that question, it was announced that Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) will head up Interior. These are quotes from an article about her:
McMorris Rodgers is a booster of hydropower and has pushed legislation to tackle forest fires in the West.
She has voted in favor of expanding fossil fuel development on public lands and in federal areas off-shore. She opposes efforts to change the royalty rates on federal coal mining, something pushed hard by Obama’s Interior Department, and voted for a GOP budget that would allow the sale of public lands to mining companies.
In the past, she has introduced legislation to require congressional approval before the president can designate a national monument, and a bill directing the Bureau of Land Management to release public lands it holds that it has deemed not suitable for wilderness status.
In a 2012 speech to the Society of American Foresters, McMorris Rodgers said, “it is no coincidence that many of the counties with the highest unemployment rates in the country are those which are surrounded by federal forests,” and said the federal government should “undertake a comprehensive review of their land ownership policies.”
Bottom line -- this is not a surprising nomination.
