Former McCrory official takes Senate job

Tom Reeder, who was a high-ranking official in the state’s environmental agency until the new administration took over this year, has landed a job in Senate Leader Phil Berger’s office.

Reeder is now a policy adviser. His salary will be $99,500 a year, which is a drop from the nearly $130,000 he made at the Department of Environmental Quality as the assistant secretary.

Reeder is a familiar figure at the General Assembly, where he frequently updated lawmakers on environmental issues, particularly the state’s response to the coal ash spill in the Dan River in 2014, as well as how to clean up Falls Lake and Jordan Lake.

He was also known as the official who made it clear to the agency that the Republican-led General Assembly considered environmental regulators overly aggressive.

The department has taken off on a new course with the election of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who has appointed a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official to run the agency.

This story was originally published March 22, 2017 at 2:25 PM with the headline "Former McCrory official takes Senate job."