Former DEQ leaders on paid leave after Trump administration appointment
A pair of holdovers from the state Department of Environmental Quality under former Gov. Pat McCrory are on paid "investigatory leave" under the new administration.
Donald van der Vaart, the DEQ secretary for a portion of McCrory's term, and his deputy, John Evans, took demotions at the end of McCrory's term, placing them in non-political jobs and making them harder to fire when Gov. Roy Cooper took office.
Secretaries and other political appointees are typically replaced when a new governor takes office. The two had been regular department employees before accepting political appointments during McCrory's last year in office.
Van der Vaart also signed on to an open letter shortly after last year's elections, urging incoming President Donald Trump to rein in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, putting him out of step with the Cooper administration. He and Evans have written a number of scientific papers together, and van der Vaart was named last week to an EPA science advisory board as the Trump administration removed a number of university professors from the group.
DEQ leadership said this week that the department did not support that appointment and that van der Vaart wouldn't be speaking for the state on that board.
Department Secretary Michael Regan released a short emailed statement Thursday night saying van der Vaart and Evans "have been placed on investigatory leave." DEQ spokesman Jamie Kritzer said on Friday they are still being paid, in accordance with state policy.
NC Policy Watch first reported Thursday that the two men had been absent from the office, with their job statuses uncertain. The DEQ confirmed the leave some hours later.
Both men's state emails are set to automatic reply, and those replies refer people to another pair of DEQ employees. Those employees told WRAL News that their division director asked them about a week ago to cover van der Vaart's and Evans' calls.
Attempts to reach van der Vaart via numbers listed online were not successful Thursday. No listing was immediately found for Evans.
Before taking appointed jobs under McCrory, van der Vaart was a long-time manager at the department, and Evans was a department supervisor and attorney. A judge ruled last month that the Cooper administration could not fire a pair of state employees, and the governor has been fighting the General Assembly's Republican majority in court on several separation of powers issues, including a GOP move in the waning days of the McCrory Administration to drastically reduce the number of "exempt" state employee jobs the governor can fill at will.
