THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 27, 1995 TAG: 9501270630
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Republican leaders in the House signaled their intention Thursday to dramatically shift state environmental policy by appointing a conservative New Bern mortgage banker to head the House Health and Environment Committee.
Rep. John M. Nichols, a two-term Republican from Craven County, was named by House Speaker Harold J. Brubaker, a Randolph County real estate appraiser and cattle-rancher, to head the House committee that will control the fate of laws on environmental and health issues that come before the House over the next two years.
The appointment comes 21 years after the General Assembly approved the Coastal Area Management Act, designed to protect the coast from the ravages of pollution. Nichols has said he would like to revise or repeal the act.
In an interview after the appointment was announced, Nichols said he did not seek the committee assignment, did not want it and accepted it only after meeting with Brubaker. In that meeting, Nichols said, he was told that the new House leaders wanted to move that chamber toward a more pro-business stance and away from what they perceived as a pro-environmentalist position of past years.
``I have a different outlook,'' Nichols said. ``I hope people don't expect an environmentalist viewpoint from me because I don't have one.''
Efforts to reach Brubaker or a spokesman for the new speaker were unsuccessful Thursday night.
As chairman of the environment committee, Nichols, 50, president of First Choice Mortgage Co. in New Bern, succeeds former Rep. Karen E. Gottovi, a New Hanover Democrat defeated in the Nov. 8 election.
Gottovi, who chaired the House Environment Committee for two years, was regarded as an ally by several state environmental groups that supported her re-election campaign.
Nichols, who was in the process of moving to a new office in the Legislative Office Building, said he had not had time to develop an agenda for the upcoming session.
But he said his priorities include a review of the ``over-regulation of the East'' under the Coastal Area Management Act. He also said he would pursue some type of legislation that would help equalize permit requirements for downstream dischargers who are currently penalized because of pollution that enters a waterway from dischargers upstream.
``We need to have some type of equity for the eastern counties,'' he said.
Nichols' appointment wasannounced about one week after Roger Schecter, director of the Division of Coastal Management, the state agency that oversees enforcement of CAMA and other coastal regulations, said, it ``will be questionable'' as to whether the division can carry out its duties if programs and staff are cut.
The state's top environmental official, Jonathan Howes, notified the 4,000 employees in the Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources recently that his agency has no choice but to eliminate almost 100 jobs.
At least one other Republican coastal legislator - Rep. Zeno Edwards - also disagrees with CAMA. Edwards said at a recent gathering of eastern legislators in New Bern that he would like to re-evaluate the legislation and possibly do away with it altogether.
Nichols said he would favor efforts by the General Assembly to assert more control over the Coastal Resources Commission, Marine Fisheries Commission and other boards and agencies that oversee administrative rules and regulations affecting the environment.
``I think we should rein in all these state agencies and these bureaucrats,'' he said.
And he said he would favor a review of the Division of Marine Fisheries, the agency that regulates the state's coastal fishing industry, and its policy-making board, the Marine Fisheries Commission, with an eye to exerting more legislative control over appointments to that board.
The head of one state environmental group said Thursday night that he was not surprised by the appointment and that conservationists had expected to have to work harder in promoting their agenda to the new Republican majority.
``I've expected it to be a much different General Assembly,'' said John Runkle, head of the Conservation Council of North Carolina. ``This is just the first of many strong positions that people are taking this year.''
Runkle said he expects ``any number'' of environmental regulations to be ``on the table'' and subject to close scrutiny and revision this year. But he said he hopes that North Carolina will ``retain its leadership in coastal regulation.''
``If the legislators are willing to listen, I think we can convince them of the importance of these laws,'' he said. by CNB