Yuman appointed to No. 3 EPA post
Darwin had been Gov. Ducey’s COO
Henry Darwin, a Yuma kid who grew up to oversee all 35 state agencies under Gov. Doug Ducey as his chief operating officer, will take on the same job at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency July 10.
Darwin worked at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality for 18 years, and was its director for four. He was named Ducey’s chief operations officer in 2015, and also as interim director of the state Department of Economic Security for six months.
Darwin will have the third-highest position in the agency, and he says his job will be to bring the same industry-based management system he’s implemented in Arizona to the national level.
“When President Trump was elected, and Administrator (Scott) Pruitt was appointed, there were several members of industry who met with Mr. Pruitt and said, ‘you really should at least meet Henry, and see what he can do for EPA,’” Darwin said in a telephone interview from Phoenix June 16, the day after his appointment was announced by Ducey’s office.
The same day Liz Bowman, an EPA spokesperson, confirmed Darwin’s appointment to the assistant deputy administrator position, which she said “is essentially the COO.”
She added, “With his leadership and expertise, Henry Darwin will be vital to this Administration’s plans to implement a positive environmental agenda and provide real results to the American people.
“He will deploy the same Lean Management System that he successfully deployed at the Arizona Department of (Environmental) Quality as its director. He will focus the Agency on providing value to taxpayers by helping us measure performance, improve our processes and solve the issues that matter to Americans.”
Darwin’s parents moved to Yuma in 1976 when he was 5 and he grew up with two sisters here, enrolling in the University of Arizona, after being on the Kofa football and track teams and graduating fourth in his class. He has a degree in hydrology from UA and a law degree from College of Lewis and Clark’s Northwestern School of Law.
“I always got a sense of community from Yuma. Yuma’s such an amazing place for the environment, being next to the Colorado River and just a short trip to San Diego or El Golfo, I did a lot of camping and hunting growing up, so growing up in Yuma really developed a love for the outdoors, and it really gave me a true sense for the environment,” he said.
That love of the environment combined with a calling to public service, which he attributed to his parents, who were active in the community; his father, Dr. George Darwin, was a longtime Yuma pediatrician, now retired.
“I just really kind felt a sense of the community and being a contributing member of the society, and just always wanted to do public service and that’s where I’ve been my entire career. I’ve always loved public service, and now my focus is making government as efficient and effective as possible,” he said.
His wife, the former Veronica Garcia, is also from Yuma, though the two didn’t meet until both had moved to Phoenix. They have a daughter, Leah, and a son, Jack.
His parents moved to Escondido, Calif. 17 years ago, and said Friday they are hugely proud of what their son has attained. Lynn Darwin said she isn’t that surprised her son has won such an elevated position in the federal government.
“And my gosh, when you think it could happen, you say yeah, it could happen but when it actually does, you’re kind of taken aback, like wow, it really did happen,” she said. “But that was already there, that was always in the back of everyone’s minds, because he’s just so capable and accomplished. He can do this job.”
Irv Johnson, a retired Yuma teacher and longtime friend of the Darwins, is referred to as a “second father” by both Henry and his parents. He helped instill a love of the outdoors into Henry through their hunting and fishing trips spanning three decades.
“We’re all very proud of him, you know,” he said.
Despite his devotion to government work, Henry Darwin has been implementing a business-based management model wherever he goes. The “Lean” methodology has been around for decade, started within the automobile industry, and is based on providing more value with fewer resources, largely through employees identifying where there is waste.
He says he picked up from Misael Cabrera, who he first met when they were in high school in Yuma (Cabrera went to Yuma High). Cabrera is now director of ADEQ, moving up from deputy when Darwin became part of the governor’s office.
Darwin said ADEQ had to be cut back when it was taken out of the state general fund budget several years ago; now, 85 percent of its money comes from fees paid by the industries being regulated, and the rest from EPA grants.
“In order to survive, in order to provide the very important mission-related services, we’re just forced to find a different way of doing business, and that’s when I reconnected with Misael, he was also an environmental professional, and knew about Lean, and helped me learn about it and together we deployed it at DEQ, and he continues to do that today,” he said.
He rattles off a string of successes within Arizona state government which he attributes to this methodology.
“We reduced permitting times by 60, 70 percent in almost every permitting process that I’ve helped with, reducing the time for facilities to get into compliance by 50, 60 percent as well. We’re reducing MVD wait times by over 50 percent across the state, I was part of the elimination of the backlog of investigated cases in the Department of Child Safety.
“I’ve been involved in the design of a management system that’s been used here, in Arizona, and I’m going to take that management system and implement it at EPA,” he said.
The 31 percent cut Trump has proposed for the EPA is the biggest in the administration’s proposed budget, and likely the most controversial. Much of the plan ran into bipartisan resistance at a House Appropriations subcommittee earlier this month, according to several news outlets.
According to the Associated Press, Rep. Ken Calvert, a Republican from California who chairs the subcommittee, introduced Pruitt at the start of the meeting with the blunt assessment that Congress is “unlikely to entertain” many of the cuts proposed by the White House.
But Darwin said he dealt with the same magnitude of cuts at the ADEQ.
“The president, rightfully so, wants to make EPA smaller, and that’s exactly what happened when I took over at DEQ, under Gov. Brewer, and I was able to find a way to make the agency even better at its job with a smaller job and fewer resources. Our employee count went down by 30 percent while I was at DEQ and at the same time all of our performance measures improved,” he said.
He said that as ADEQ director he participated in some of the same lawsuits against the EPA as Pruitt, who as Oklahoma attorney general was known as a vocal and litigious opponent of the agency, and he’s on board with Pruitt’s and Trump’s vision for the agency.
He pointed out that as ADEQ director he filed several lawsuits of his own against the agency. “I do believe, under the previous (Obama) administration, the EPA overstepped its legal authority and tried to step in the shoes of the states. The way the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and a lot of the federal statutes around environmental protection were specifically drafted to give states certain responsibilities and authorities.
“Over time, and especially in this last administration, EPA had chosen to substitute their judgment for the judgment of the states, and the federal laws that established these programs really didn’t envision that.”
He said he has not met President Trump yet. “I’m very much a behind-thescenes person, trying to make the trains run on time, so I don’t know that I will.”
As Darwin and his family get ready to make the move to D.C., his parents say they will be visiting him every chance they get, and Johnson believes that Darwin will remain essentially the same once he reaches the vortex of federal power.
“He’s a very strong person, and I think that is a thing too, that he will remain the kind of person he is when he gets back there. He’s very honest, his integrity is super, I just speak accolades of him. I just have so much faith and happiness in him, watching him grow up and also what he’s become, too. He’s just a super strong person, and I like that,” Johnson said.