STATEMENT OF JOHN PETER SUAREZ
NOMINEE FOR
ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR
FOR THE OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT AND COMPLIANCE ASSURANCE
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
UNITED STATES SENATE
Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to introduce myself and talk about my nomination for the position of
Assistant Administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
(OECA) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). With me today are my wife, Natalie, and our three children,
Chloe, who is 4 years old, Laina, who is almost 2, and Maxwell, who is all of 7
weeks old. Also, please accept my
apologies if any or all of them have to leave during this hearing.
First, I must thank President Bush
for his trust and confidence in nominating me to head the Office of Enforcement
and Compliance Assurance. I must also
thank Governor Whitman, for whom I have had the pleasure of working previously
and look forward to doing so again. I
believe that the Nation’s environmental laws are critically important to every
American, and I hope to have the opportunity to enforce those laws to help
ensure that all of us, especially our children, can enjoy cleaner air, purer
water, and better protected land for years to come.
I believe that my background and
experience have prepared me well for this challenging position, and I would
like to take a few moments to describe that for you. My interest in working in the public sector and serving the
public interest is deep- rooted, and comes in large part from the values instilled
in me by my parents. My father, whose
family hails from Spain, and my mother, who was born and raised in Nicaragua,
believed that public service was a noble calling, and encouraged all of their
children to consider careers in government or in service to others. My brother went to the Air Force Academy and
now serves as a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force assigned to the Pentagon, while my
oldest sister has nearly completed her doctoral thesis and hopes to provide
counseling and therapy to minority adolescents. My other sister is a lawyer who works for her husband’s
company. All of my siblings are
successes in my eyes, and I admire each of them.
When I went to law school at the
University of Pennsylvania, I knew from the moment I entered that I was
interested in pursuing a career as a prosecutor. After I graduated from law school, I clerked for a federal judge
and then applied to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, knowing that this was where I
wanted to start my career. I was,
fortunately, accepted by the District of New Jersey, and began to develop as a
lawyer in a terrific prosecutor’s office.
While at the U.S. Attorney’s Office
I learned many skills that I believe are essential for a chief law enforcement
officer. I learned how to try cases,
how to manage investigations, and how to be a tough but fair prosecutor. I also saw first hand the tremendous impact
that enforcement can have on the lives of those affected. I was fortunate to be able to try some
difficult and exciting cases, and as a result of one of those cases, the
successful prosecution of an Atlantic City street gang, I was awarded the U.S.
Attorney General Director’s Award. I
was fortunate that I did not lose any of the cases that I tried, and to me that
is a testament to the quality of the agents and supervisors with whom I had the
pleasure of working.
If I am confirmed for this position,
I believe that the lessons learned while in the U.S. Attorney’s Office have
equipped me well to understand the challenges facing agents, inspectors, and
legal staff who work the front lines in environmental enforcement actions.
After I left the U.S. Attorney’s
Office, I went to the State of New Jersey’s Division of Criminal Justice, where
I was the Special Assistant to the Director of a 600-person statewide law
enforcement agency. It was there that I
began to learn how to manage attorneys and investigators, and how to maintain
constructive relationships with colleagues in other state agencies, federal
agencies, and the local law enforcement community. I worked with the Director to shape policy for the Division of
Criminal Justice, and helped launch a number of statewide initiatives
addressing long-entrenched problems plaguing New Jersey’s communities. Through this experience, I learned the
valuable lesson of working cooperatively across organizational lines and with
different agencies to achieve the best results for law enforcement
programs.
Governor Whitman then asked me to
join the staff of her Counsel’s Office, where I provided advice to the Chief
Counsel and the Governor on criminal justice matters. It was while working in that capacity that Governor Whitman
nominated me to be the Director of the Division of Gaming Enforcement, the
state law enforcement agency charged with enforcing the laws and regulations
related to the casino industry.
As the head of the Division of
Gaming Enforcement, I oversaw a staff of 400 employees charged with ensuring
the good character and integrity of the people and businesses who worked in the
industry. The Division was comprised of
several units, including a criminal enforcement section, a civil regulatory
prosecutions unit, an audit function, and a technical services unit that dealt
with the highly sophisticated computer software and hardware of the gaming
industry. As the Director, I was able
to lead the professionals from the Division in shaping policy and enforcing
statutes and regulations, in either the criminal or civil context, and also to
set the agency’s enforcement priorities.
I led the Division in the context of its licensing work, and crafted
appropriate enforcement responses for various degrees of statutory violations
in both civil and criminal matters.
My experience as the Director of the Division of Gaming Enforcement,
provided me the opportunity to use the skills I had developed as a lawyer with
an enforcement background in evaluating and analyzing the appropriate action to
take against a regulated entity in order to achieve the best result. In leading a large law enforcement agency,
with both civil and criminal responsibilities over a highly regulated industry,
I developed management skills that will serve me well if I am confirmed as
Assistant Administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
As is reflected in the summary of my
professional career, I have been involved in criminal or regulatory enforcement
at both the federal and state level for over ten years. My experience working in very active enforcement
offices has instilled a set of core principles that come with being in charge
of a government enforcement office.
These core principles include:
•
First is fairness, for I believe that it is incumbent upon a law enforcement
official to use the tremendous resources available in a fundamentally fair way,
lest the entire process lose sight of the impact that it can have on individuals
and communities.
• I
also believe that as a law enforcement official, you can often times achieve
better results by trying to work cooperatively with those who many would call
your adversaries. Indeed, in my
experience in the Division of Gaming Enforcement, I found that on many issues,
even though the industry may have disagreed with a decision that was reached,
the process of soliciting industry input and enlisting their counsel worked to
ensure a strong cooperative relationship between the regulator and the
regulated. I also believe that flexibility
is a critical component to a cooperative approach, because with flexibility you
can often times achieve the desired result quickly and with less cost.
• As
a necessary corollary to a cooperative and flexible approach, however, is the
willingness to pursue appropriate enforcement actions against those entities
who are either unwilling or unable to conform their conduct to what is
required. In the proverbial “carrot and
stick” model, I believe that a good enforcement official has the stick and is
not afraid to use it.
• Finally,
a good enforcement official must have faith in the system; faith in the
legislative process, which produces the laws that we must enforce; and faith in
the legal system, which is the forum that we must turn to when controversies
and cases need to be settled. My
experience has taught me that the system works, and it is a system that I have
enjoyed being a part of throughout my legal career.
My
experience, my commitment to public service, and my fundamental belief that our
environmental laws provide the best guarantee that our Nation’s natural
resources will be protected, will allow me to lead the Office of Enforcement
and Compliance Assurance. I can provide
strong leadership, and can bring to the Office those core beliefs that I think
are the mark of a good enforcement official.
I expect to rely fully upon the experience and expertise of the very
accomplished and dedicated staff of career employees in the Office of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. I
have met many of these dedicated staff and I am confident in their ability to
assist me in the day-to-day management challenges and policy issues that may
arise.
I
would like to assure all of the Members of this Committee, the President and
Governor Whitman, that if confirmed I will apply myself with the same vigor and
energy that have marked my career to date, and that I will work as long and as
hard as necessary to ensure that our Nation’s environmental laws are being
enforced as intended by Congress firmly and fairly.
At
the end of the day, I will do everything in my power to live up to the promise
that I have made to my three children, that this planet of ours will be a good
and safe place to live. I will dedicate
myself to a comprehensive enforcement program that will safeguard our water,
our air and all of our Nation’s precious natural resources.
I
believe that enforcement must be a vigorous and active component of the EPA’s
efforts to protect our natural resources, and I would very much appreciate the
opportunity to apply my experience and my desire to enforce the important
environmental laws that this Congress has put in place.
I
thank you for your patience this morning, and I am pleased to have this
opportunity to answer any questions that you may have.