MAIN CONFIRMED TO LEAD MSHA

Finally, the Mine Safety and Health Administration has a new boss man on board.

The Senate voted unanimously Oct. 21 to confirm the nomination of Joseph Main (photo) as assistant secretary of labor for MSHA, installing the former United Mine Workers of America safety and health director as the nation’s lead voice on mining safety.

Main’s confirmation is being widely hailed by mining activists who had faulted the Bush administration for allegedly giving operators too much sway over the agency. UMWA President Cecil Roberts, said in a statement that Main "will bring a refreshing change to an agency that for too long has favored production over strong enforcement of workplace safety and health in America’s mines."

Main takes over an agency that has been rudderless since the end of Bush’s first term when Dave D. Lauriski resigned in November 2004. The administration then nominated Richard E. Stickler to replace Lauriski, but could not achieve a vote in the full Senate over Democratic objections. In a quirk of Washington politics and bureaucratic finagling, Stickler nonetheless ran the agency in an acting capacity through the end of Bush’s second term.

Main will have a considerable agenda at MSHA. The agency is still implementing provisions of the landmark Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act of 2006, bipartisan legislation spawned out of a spate of high-profile, fatal mining accidents that year. Many activists and political officials alleged a diminished focus at MSHA on mining enforcement during the Bush administration.

Additionally, Main will need to remake the MSHA bureaucracy into a more user-friendly agency, ensure staffing levels among mining inspectors are adequate due to retirements, and approve a plan to reduce miners’ exposure to coal dust.

MSHA regulates more than 2,100 coal mines and 12,700 metal and non-metal mines on an annual budget of about $350 million.

President Obama nominated Main in July, and, in a somewhat unusual occurrence for Washington, Republicans largely echoed Democrats’ support for Main. Generally, Republicans will scrutinize a labor union officials more closely, just as Democrats will look more warily at a nominee coming from industry.

But with Main, there was no controversy. Why? Perhaps Main was too pristine to oppose, even in the face of the Democrats' marginalizing of the Stickler nomination. Perhaps a deal was cut in exchange for some other political priority, which happens regularly in Washington.

Or perhaps the GOP realized that a fresh approach was needed at the agency -- even with the leader coming out of the UMWA. HELP Committee Ranking Member Sen. Mike Enzi and longtime committee member Sen. Orrin Hatch are from mine-rich western states in Wyoming and Utah, respectively. And Utah was the home of the nation’s last major mining disaster at the Crandall Canyon mine in Emery County that killed 6 miners and 3 rescuers in August 2007, the handling of which was a public relations nightmare for the agency.

Bottom line for Main is he will have the benefit of an extended honeymoon period to shape dramatically U.S. mining safety policy.

More: Main's 2003 congressional testimony on coal dust (page 9)

Photo: Joseph Main (Source: Charleston, WVA, Gazette)