David J. Hayes

David Hayes
United States Deputy Secretary of the Interior
Incumbent
Assumed office May 22, 2009
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Lynn Scarlett
Personal details
Born	1953 (age 60–61) Rochester, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	University of Notre Dame Stanford University

David J. Hayes is the Deputy Secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration. His nomination was confirmed on May 20, 2009 ^[1] by the United States Senate and he took office on May 22, 2009.^[2] In an earlier confirmation attempt on May 13, Hayes received two Republican votes, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Jon Kyl of Arizona who has worked closely with Hayes in the past, but the 57 yea votes he obtained fell short of the 60 votes required to invoke cloture.^[3] Three Democrats did not vote because of absence and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid switched to a nay vote for strategic reasons forcing the confirmation to fail originally. However, Reid's move to nay allowed the Democrats to bring back the vote to the Senate floor after securing the votes to pass the nomination.^[4]

Hayes served as Counselor to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and then as the Senate-confirmed Deputy Secretary of the Interior, during the Clinton administration (1997–2001). After leaving government, he has served as a Senior Fellow of the World Wildlife Fund, and as a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute (the think tank affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council). He also has practiced environmental and energy law as Global Chairman of the Environment, Land and Resources department at the firm of Latham & Watkins.

During Hayes' first tenure as Deputy Secretary of the Interior, he focused on environmental priorities, including the acquisition and protection of threatened lands (e.g., the Headwaters old-growth redwood forest in Northern California); the restoration of threatened ecosystems (e.g. the Bay-Delta ecosystem restoration project in California); the introduction of modern water management approaches in the west (e.g. the Colorado River initiatives undertaken by the Clinton administration); the negotiation of habitat conservation plans under the Endangered Species Act; energy-related issues associated with federal lands and resources (e.g. oil and gas development, hydropower licensing, etc.); and the settlement of long-standing Indian water and land disputes.

Active in the non-profit field, Hayes served^[5] as the Vice-Chairman of the national conservation group, American Rivers, and he was^[6] a board member of RESOLVE, a non-profit that focuses on problem-solving in the energy and environmental fields. He is the former Chairman of the Board of the Environmental Law Institute.

During the 2007-2008 academic year, Hayes was a Consulting Professor at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment,^[7] where he undertook a special project analyzing the regulatory challenges associated with carbon offsets. His report was published by the Center for American Progress. He is the author of dozens of journal articles on issues related to energy and the environment.

Hayes has been active in Democratic politics in the energy and environmental field. He served on the EPA Transition Team for President-elect Clinton in 1992; acted a special emissary for Vice President Gore to advise the new President of Bolivia on sustainable development issues in 1993 and 1994; was a lead environmental and energy advisor to the Kerry campaign in 2004; and has been actively involved in the Obama campaign.

Hayes is a 1978 graduate of the Stanford Law School, and he is a 1975 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He served^[8][9] as Chairman of the Board of Visitors for the Stanford Law School. Born in Rochester, NY in 1953, Hayes lives in Arlington, VA with his wife Elizabeth Haile Hayes and their three children, Katherine, Stephen, and Molly.

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