• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Bush Nominates Former Industry Exec Stickler to MSHA

Posted on: Saturday, 17 September 2005, 00:00 CDT

Sep. 16--A Marion County native who spent about 30 years as a coal company manager has been named by President Bush to be the nation's top coal mine safety regulator.

Richard Stickler was nominated Thursday to be assistant secretary of Labor in charge of the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Stickler, 61, spent roughly three decades in various management positions for the mining unit of Bethlehem Steel.

More recently, he worked for about six years as the top underground mine safety official in Pennsylvania.

From 1996 to 1997, Stickler served as assistant to the president of Performance Coal Co., a subsidiary of Richmond-based Massey Energy Co., records show.

"He has many years of experience in this field," said Allen Abney, a White House spokesman.

At MSHA, Stickler will run an agency with 2,200 employees and a $280 million annual budget. MSHA is charged with protecting the health and safety of the 320,000 miners who work at the nation's 2,000 coal mines and 12,400 metal and nonmetal mines.

Stickler will take over for David Dye, who has been running MSHA since Dave D. Lauriski resigned shortly after Bush won re-election. Lauriski's term was highly controversial, in large part because of his long career working for coal companies.

"We believe that the Senate should carefully review this appointment to ensure that this nominee will be the kind of watchdog on behalf of American coal miners that they need," said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers union.

Bush appointed Stickler to the MSHA post at the same time that he filled another vacant Labor Department position -- the head of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Both nominees will face confirmation hearings before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

In a short "personnel announcement" Thursday afternoon, the White House said that Stickler "held a number of positions, including manager, superintendent and shift foreman" during his time with Bethlehem's Beth Energy Mines Inc. Stickler was not made available for media interviews.

Doug Conaway, director of West Virginia's Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training, grew up in the same community as Stickler -- Barrackville, a town of 1,300 people just northwest of Fairmont.

"Richard is a very capable individual," Conaway said.

In 1963, Stickler was captain of the Barrackville High School basketball team that won 27 games in a row, including the state championship, according to an article published in the 2002-20 Fairmont State College annual report.

Five years later, Stickler graduated from Fairmont State with a bachelor of science degree in general engineering.

"People don't have respect for what mining contributes to the economy and our everyday lives," he said in the Fairmont State article. "People think mining is a pick and shovel industry, but it is really high tech."

At Beth Energy, Stickler started as a general laborer and rose to manager of the company's Pennsylvania operations. He took over management of Beth Energy's Boone County holdings in West Virginia in 1994.

After that, he worked from 1996 to 1997 for Performance Coal, according to the Fairmont State article and a news release from the Pennsylvania Bureau of Deep Mine Safety.

"During his career, Stickler has managed six underground mines, including four longwall faces, and more than 2,100 employees," the Pennsylvania news release said. "He is credited with restructuring operations, implementing cost controls and decreasing Beth Energy's accident frequency rate while improving the company's bottom line."

In March 1997, Stickler was named director of Pennsylvania's underground mine safety agency, a post he held until July 2003.

Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said that Pennsylvania made "great strides" in mine safety during Stickler's time with the state agency. "He clearly has a great deal of experience with mine safety and health," Raulston said.

While he was in the Pennsylvania job, nine coal miners were trapped for three days in a flooded underground mine near Somerset, Pa.

Various investigations have said that state and federal regulators -- including the agency that Stickler was running -- could have done more to prevent the Quecreek flood.

For example, a state grand jury issued a report that said, before approving a permit for the operation, the state could have required Quecreek Mining to confirm the location of a flooded underground mine that the workers accidentally drilled into, causing the flood.

Davitt McAteer, another Marion County native who ran MSHA during the Clinton administration, said Stickler is "a guy with a history in the mining industry, and this is a job that requires you to represent everybody -- not one side or the other. I hope he meets that challenge."

If confirmed, Stickler would not be the first former Beth Energy official to hold the MSHA post.

David A. Zegeer, a Charleston native, was a Beth Energy official before he served as MSHA chief from November 1983 to Jan. 31, 1987.

Zegeer resigned in the midst of congressional hearings into allegations that MSHA doctored accident reports, destroyed memos and ignored safety violations.

-----

To see more of The Charleston Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.wvgazette.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

ISG, MEE,

Source: The Charleston Gazette

More News in this Category