From the New York Times:

Bush Nominee to Get Payment From Old Job

By STEPHEN LABATON

Published: May 16, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 15 — A senior lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers nominated by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission will receive a $150,000 departing payment from the association when he takes his new government job, which involves enforcing consumer laws against members of the association.

The lobbyist, Michael E. Baroody, wrote recently to the commission’s general counsel that the severance was an “extraordinary payment” under a federal ethics rule, requiring him to remove himself from agency matters involving the association for two years. Under the rule, a payment is “extraordinary” if an employer grants it after learning that the employee is being considered for a government position and it is not part of an established compensation or benefits program.

Mr. Baroody said in the letter that the payment would not prevent him from considering matters involving individual companies that are members of the manufacturers’ association, many of whom are defendants in agency proceedings over defective products or have other business before the commission. Nor would it preclude him from involvement with smaller trade groups like those representing makers of home appliances and children’s products that have alliances with the association.

As chairman of the commission, Mr. Baroody’s salary would be $154,600. With the severance payment and an additional lump sum of $44,571 for unused leave time, Mr. Baroody would receive $349,171 this year. That amount, which excludes Mr. Baroody’s pension and retirement payments, nearly matches the $344,607 salary that Mr. Baroody earned as the second-highest-paid executive at the association last year.

The nomination of Mr. Baroody, executive vice president at the association, has provoked heavy criticism from Democrats and consumer groups. He is the latest in a line of industry officials and lobbyists to be given senior jobs by Mr. Bush at federal safety agencies that oversee matters like workplace and mine safety and transportation as the administration has sought to roll back hundreds of regulations that businesses viewed as excessive.

As a major trade organization for the largest companies in the country, the National Association of Manufacturers often has issues before the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It recently prevailed on the agency, for instance, to relax the requirements for when companies must notify the agency about defective products. The White House, Mr. Baroody and the commission would not make available the letter that Mr. Baroody wrote describing the $150,000 payment. A copy was provided by a Democratic Congressional aide who found it in Mr. Baroody’s nomination file in the Senate.

A spokeswoman for the White House, Emily Lawrimore, said the administration was satisfied that Mr. Baroody “has taken the steps necessary to avoid any conflict of interest in the event he is confirmed.”

Ms. Lawrimore said Mr. Baroody’s letter had been approved by government ethics lawyers. “Mr. Baroody has proven leadership abilities and over three decades of experience with labor policy, manufacturing and safety issues,” Ms. Lawrimore said, “and we believe he will be a valuable advocate on behalf of American consumers.”

Experts in executive compensation said it was unusual for someone to be paid under a severance agreement for voluntarily leaving to take a top position at another organization.

“Severance agreements are usually a safety net for the employee,” said Don B. Lindner, head of the executive compensation practice at WorldatWork, a professional organization previously known as the American Compensation Association that provides training and certification for compensation and benefits professionals. “It would be unusual to have a severance agreement triggered by a person leaving on a voluntary and positive basis. It’s usually used for a job that has been eliminated or cut back, or a person that’s been asked to leave.”

Government ethics experts said people occasionally received a severance payment when they left the private sector for a government job, but it could be problematic when the person was going to a post whose mission was to regulate the former employer. Mr. Baroody’s nomination will be before the Senate Commerce Committee next week. He is opposed not only by consumer groups but also by trial lawyers, firefighters and pediatricians. They have highlighted what they say are repeated actions taken by Mr. Baroody and the association on behalf of companies that have made consumer products less safe.

Mr. Baroody “not only represented the interests of the nation’s manufacturing firms — often in direct opposition to the interest of consumers — but led efforts to weaken the C.P.S.C. and opposed numerous initiatives to protect children and the public from unsafe products,” said Dr. Jay E. Berkelhamer, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a letter opposing the nomination.

In recent years, Mr. Baroody has been involved in legislative efforts to limit the liability of makers of asbestos as companies have faced growing numbers of lawsuits from workers who say they have been exposed to the fire-retardant material. In 2000, he sent a letter on behalf of the association urging Gov. George Pataki of New York to veto legislation that required tobacco companies to make cigarettes that were less likely to cause fires. (The governor signed the measure.)

Hank Cox, a spokesman at the association who has known Mr. Baroody for many years, said Mr. Baroody’s letter opposing the New York legislation “has nothing to do with the efficacy of safe cigarettes” but was more generally opposed to the principle that the states could set safety standards, rather than one national standard.

Mr. Baroody and the association signed a severance agreement in January 2006, nearly a year before he was nominated. It was rewritten in January, after Mr. Baroody was identified in trade publications and Web sites as the leading candidate to head the commission. Neither the White House nor the association would reveal any details of the original or amended agreements.

Ms. Lawrimore, the White House spokeswoman, said the revisions had to do with “the timing of his service, not the amount of his severance.” She would not elaborate, saying, “It’s personal financial information, and we don’t normally discuss that.” In an e-mail message, Mr. Baroody declined to comment.

Mr. Baroody’s nomination has been delayed by Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida. Several Democratic senators, including John Kerry of Massachusetts, Barbara Boxer of California and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, have raised concerns about the nomination, and Mr. Nelson has said he will vote against it.

“He’s just not the person to have at the head of the organization responsible for the safety of products coming out,” Mr. Nelson said. “He’s represented a bunch of these companies that are making these products that will be very much in front of that body. That’s like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

Other officials said they would not be surprised if Mr. Bush, as he has done for other nominees that Democrats have found objectionable, bypassed the Senate and appointed Mr. Baroody to the commission during a Congressional recess.

Since January, the agency, which enforces consumer product laws and is responsible for making sure that companies recall or fix products that have safety problems, has been paralyzed because of the failure of the White House to appoint a chairman. Its lack of a quorum has prevented the agency from writing rules or issuing civil penalties.

William Brock, a labor secretary in the Reagan administration who worked with Mr. Baroody in the Labor Department and when the two were senior officials at the Republican National Committee, said Mr. Baroody had been a vigorous regulator who helped adopt a number of workplace safety rules and beat back efforts by more conservative officials to trim affirmative action regulations.

“He has as much intellectual depth and integrity as anyone I’ve met in government over the decades,” Mr. Brock said.