All BLM directors have ‘baggage.’ Is Biden’s pick’s too much?

摘要

When she was first announced as President Biden’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management, backers touted Tracy Stone-Manning as a bridge builder uniquely positioned to right an agency that went without confirmed leadership throughout the Trump administration. But after a bruising nomination battle driven in large part by Republican attacks on Stone-Manning’s involvement in a tree-spiking incident more than three decades ago, observers suggest that if she does take the helm of the bureau, her first test could be winning over the employees she seeks to lead. That’s because if confirmed — which could be set in motion as soon as this week with a vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — Stone-Manning, currently the associate vice president for public lands at the National Wildlife Federation, will lead an agency whose 10,000 employees are largely dispersed across the rural, and often conservative, West.