Why Obama's New Pick for the EPA Will Be Good for Cities

President Obama yesterday nominated Gina McCarthy to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency as Lisa Jackson prepares to step down. Until now, McCarthy has lead the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, an obscure-sounding position from which she’s been instrumental in creating new federal rules regulating soot and mercury emissions from power plants. But her name may ring a bell for smart-growth advocates thanks to an even earlier – and particularly relevant – chapter in her career.

McCarthy, a Boston native, was among the brain trust behind the innovative Office of Commonwealth Development in Massachusetts under then-Governor Mitt Romney. That office made smart growth a central pillar of the state’s environmental policy a decade ago (it also prioritized funding to local communities using that metric), and it pioneered the kind of inter-agency collaboration that was later adopted by the Obama Administration in the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities.