By MELANIE TROTTMAN
When worries about environmental cleanup costs stalled plans to redevelop an abandoned auto factory in Flint, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm called Edward Montgomery.
Mr. Montgomery, President Barack Obama's auto-communities recovery czar, cut through the bureaucracy at the Environmental Protection Agency, and brought officials from the EPA's Washington office to meet with Flint officials to get a deal done.
The solution: Carve out the part of the 700-acre site with the worst contamination, and clear the rest for potential sale to investors who have told the city they would create a multipurpose facility that would employ as many as 500 people in hard-hit Michigan. A process that could have taken years wound up taking just a few months.
'He's on my speed dial,' Ms. Granholm says. 'He has really been the hub of the wheel for us.'
At a time when the Obama administration is ratcheting up regulatory scrutiny of environmentally sensitive development, Mr. Montgomery is helping communities in struggling auto states find shortcuts through the administration's own bureaucracy, making it easier for the communities to redevelop sites as part of a recovery.
'What many expected to be a multiyear process with the EPA became a multimonth process,' says Flint Mayor Dayne Walling. Given Flint's economic trouble, with unemployment at 25.5% in October, 'time is our enemy,' Mr. Walling says.
Mr. Montgomery says decisions about policy and allocation of funds rest with government agencies, not him. But local officials who have benefited from his help call him a powerful advocate."
