Gov. Jan Brewer's new top environmental aide is a former official of a big mining company, making his appointment unpopular among environmentalists while drawing support from business groups.
The new natural-resources policy adviser is Kevin Kinsall, who worked for Phoenix-based Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and its predecessor Phelps Dodge for 17 years. He left at the end of 2008 and became a business consultant on taxation and government issues.
At Freeport, his last job was director of state and local government relations. Kinsall was an aide in the Arizona Senate from 1988 to 1990, performing various jobs, including special assistant to the Senate majority leader.
"Mr. Kinsall is a highly respected professional, who not only maintained a very successful career with one of Arizona's top employers but he also was a respected former member of the legislative staff," said Paul Senseman, Brewer's spokesman. "The governor is very pleased to add Mr. Kinsall's level of experience and good reputation to her team as our state strives to recover from the devastating fiscal management of the previous administration."
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Rep. Nancy Young Wright, a Tucson Demo-crat, said she would have preferred someone more neutral, with a scientific background. With an economy dependent on tourism, it's important to have someone in this job who will try to protect the air and water from pollution, and make sure polluters and not the public pay to clean the pollution, she said.
"The governor is cutting out the middle man," said Sierra Club lobbyist Sandy Bahr. "The mining industry will have direct access instead of indirect access to the administration."
Kinsall referred a Star reporter's questions to Senseman.
Kinsall is the third Brewer staffer with a recent connection to the mining industry. Senseman worked as a lobbyist for a firm representing Resolution Copper Co. and three dozen other clients. The governor's top policy adviser, Richard Bark, previously worked at a Phoenix law firm whose 60 environment-division clients included Freeport. Both started with Brewer in early 2009.
"Out of an abundance of caution," Senseman and Bark have stayed out of discussions of mining issues to avoid a perception of undue influence, Senseman said.
While Kinsall will work on natural-resource issues including mining in general, "I would anticipate he wouldn't work on a specific project" that he had worked on for Freeport and felt uncomfortable about, Brewer's spokesman said.
If a more general mining bill comes to the Legislature next year, "It's too hard to speculate exactly what he will do. … It's a matter of whether he would feel comfortable doing it," Senseman said.
Legally, no restriction exists on administration officials' working on issues affecting former employers.
Kinsall has been board chairman of the Arizona Tax Research Association and sat on the boards of the Arizona Tax Research Foundation, the Arizona Mining Association, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Arizonans for Electric Choice and Competition and the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce.
When someone such as Kinsall, who has worked at the Legislature, enters a governor's staff, "your job is to carry out the agenda of the elected officials," not just that of industry, said Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "Given the importance of the mining industry in the state's economy, I'd certainly look at (Kinsall's background) as a positive."
Last month, Brewer signed into law a mining-industry-backed bill that is aimed at streamlining permitting. It will require legislative approval for new environmental rules for mining that are more strict than federal rules. The bill creates a State Mining Advisory Council whose membership would be dominated by industry representatives. Environmentalists opposed the bill.
Contact reporter Tony Davis at tdavis@azstarnet.com or 806-7746.
