A Newsom appointee to a California board that oversees toxic and hazardous materials is also, as of this spring, a paid lobbyist for companies with business before environmental regulators, CalMatters reports, and environmental groups say that is a conflict he cannot straddle.
The appointment and the second job
Rhys Williams was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to the Board of Environmental Safety in January, after serving as the governor's deputy chief of staff, a role that paid him about $200,000 a year. The board seat is part-time and pays $93,135.
Four months later, in May, Williams began working as a lobbyist for Axiom Advisors. The firm's clients include Clean Harbors, a hazardous-waste management company; GKN Aerospace, a manufacturer tied to a chemical incident in Orange County in May; and the California Building Industry Association, all of them entities whose interests can run through environmental regulators.
The tension is not hard to see: a board that regulates hazardous materials, and a board member who is separately paid to advocate for companies in the hazardous-materials business.
The two accounts
Environmental groups want him off the board. "It does not bode well for impartiality or for upholding the stated mission of the Board of Environmental Safety," said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, one of several organizations calling for Williams to resign.
Newsom's office defends the arrangement and says it is bounded. Williams, the office says, does not take on clients with matters before the board, and has agreed to recuse himself from anything involving Axiom. In that telling, the walls are in place and the appointment is clean.
What is actually in dispute
It is worth separating what is contested from what is not. Legal experts consulted for the reporting confirmed the appointment is lawful, so this is not an allegation that Williams broke a rule. The dispute is about appearance and trust. As ethics scholar Frank Zerunyan framed it, the broader concern is public confidence in the board's impartiality, whether a regulator moonlighting as an industry lobbyist can be seen as neutral, even if he formally steps aside from his own firm's cases.
That is the harder question a recusal does not fully answer. A board member shapes the environment in which every matter is decided, the questions asked, the tone set, the priorities weighed, not only the specific votes he abstains from. Whether that is disqualifying or manageable is a judgment call, and reasonable people, including the governor's office and the groups demanding a resignation, land on opposite sides of it. The Herald lays out the facts and the two positions, and will report whether Williams stays, steps down, or the board changes its rules.
