- Associated Press - Thursday, December 29, 2016

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The North Carolina environmental agency leader who headed Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s response to coal ash and other pollution problems is taking a demotion and pay cut to avoid being fired by incoming Democratic Gov.-elect Roy Cooper.

State Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Donald Van Der Vaart is claiming a job as an environmental program manager effective Saturday - a day before Cooper becomes governor, according to employment records kept by the Office of State Controller. His pay will drop to about $97,000 after making $131,000 a year as agency secretary.

Van Der Vaart was one of a few dozen McCrory political appointees informed this week they’ll be out of work when Cooper takes over Sunday, Cooper spokeswoman Megan Jacobs confirmed Thursday.

A career middle manager in the environmental bureaucracy before McCrory promoted him twice over his former bosses, Van der Vaart took over as head of the agency nearly two years ago.

Van der Vaart did not respond to emails and phone messages seeking comment on whether he or McCrory engineered the job change. Neither McCrory nor his spokesmen returned emails seeking comment.

Agency spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco wrote in an email that Van der Vaart will return to DEQ’s air quality division, where he worked before McCrory promoted him.

DEQ under Van Der Vaart became an unusually vocal defender of business-friendly environmental regulation, which Republican state Rep. Chuck McGrady of Henderson County, a former national Sierra Club president, described last year as a disappointing “politicization.”

Van der Vaart last year criticized then-Attorney General Roy Cooper for opting against joining a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s final rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Van der Vaart and McCrory’s DEQ joined two dozen other states suing to block the EPA’s Clean Power Plan as federal overreach.

Last month, Van der Vaart co-signed a letter with environmental agency heads in four other states urging Republican President-elect Donald Trump to abandon Obama administration initiatives. Besides the regulations on coal-burning power plants, new EPA rules seek to extend federal jurisdiction over streams and wetlands that feed rivers, lakes, and coastal water. Van der Vaart and the others argued environmental regulations should be led by states.

It’s unclear whether Van der Vaart will keep his new position once Cooper becomes governor.

Republican legislators four years ago increased to 1,500 the number of political appointees like Van der Vaart that McCrory could hire and fire as the governor felt they were carrying out his policies. Lawmakers two weeks ago cut Cooper’s political appointees to 425, which could leave hundreds of other McCrory supporters with jobs that have civil-service protections.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court is preparing to decide the case of former Gov. Beverly Perdue’s director of Alcohol Law Enforcement, who slid into a lesser position as an ALE special agent - which enjoyed job protections - just ahead of McCrory taking office.

John Ledford was fired three months into McCrory’s term, and the state Court of Appeals ruled in May it was solely for political reasons. The court ordered his reinstatement to the job with back pay dating to his dismissal.

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Follow Emery P. Dalesio at https://twitter.com/emerydalesio. His work can be found at https://bigstory.ap.org/content/emery-p-dalesio.

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