By David Shepardson
(Reuters) – President Joe Biden is set to nominate a senior lawyer for a U.S. House of Representatives committee to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), along with a lawyer at the agency for another commissioner slot, a source told Reuters.
Biden is expected to announce late on Friday that he intends to nominate Alexander Hoehn-Saric, chief counsel for the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on communications and consumer protection to head the CPSC, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Hoehn-Saric works on legislation and oversight related to product safety, consumer protection, and communications.
The Democratic president also plans to nominate Mary Boyle to the commission, the source said. She is the CPSC’s current executive director and has spent more than a decade at the agency in senior positions.
In December 2019, Senate Democrats said in a report that the CPSC was inappropriately deferential to companies it investigates.
Settlements reached by the commission under Republican then-President Donald Trump “are at odds with traditional recall agreements negotiated by the CPSC,” the Senate Commerce Committee report said.
“Rather than providing consumers with a specific remedy that repairs all impacted products or a refund to remove the dangerous products from homes, these recalls perversely serve as marketing tools to allow the recalling company to sell additional products,” the report found.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
