The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee voted on Wednesday to advance the nomination of AccuWeather CEO Barry Lee Myers to be the next administrator of the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The 14-13 vote in favor of Myers’ nomination fell along party lines, with all Republican committee members voting for and all Democrats voting against. The next step will be a full Senate vote for confirmation.
Myers has been part of the leadership at State College-based AccuWeather for decades and in 2007 became CEO. His brother Joel is AccuWeather’s founder, chairman and president, and his brother Evan, a Democratic State College Borough Council member, is chief operating officer. Barry Myers would step down from his AccuWeather role upon confirmation.
President Donald Trump nominated Myers in October to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, a position that holds a dual role as administrator of NOAA, which includes a number of services for weather, ocean and environmental research and information. Among those is the National Weather Service.
At a confirmation hearing in November, some senators raised questions about potential conflicts of interest, since AccuWeather uses National Weather Service data in its work as a private weather forecasting and media company. Myers vowed ‘a complete separation’ from AccuWeather and other industry groups and said he had already established ground rules with his family that they would not discuss NOAA business.
In his opening remarks he said he and his wife “will resign from every company, board and organization that could be in conflict with my new role. We have also agreed to sell all of our ownership interests — shares and options — in AccuWeather and all related companies,” the Washington Post reported.
He also said several times that he does not support restricting free government weather forecasts, according to the Washington Times.
Myers said during questioning that he agrees humans are the main cause of climate change and that ‘I fully support the ability of scientists to do their work unfettered.”
Before Wednesday’s vote to advance Myers’ nomination, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the committee’s ranking Democrat said Myers ‘is clearly knowledgeable about our national weather program’ but remained concerned about potential conflicts of interest because of his ties to AccuWeather.
Nelson said he would be voting against Myers’ nomination ‘but with the hope that Mr. Myers will prove me wrong if he is confirmed.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan replied that Myers had already thoroughly addressed questions about conflicts of interest at the confirmation hearing.
“He was unequivocal on this issue,” Sullivan said, according to The Hill. “As a senator who watched the entire hearing, I’m not sure what else he could have said on the issue of conflict of interest.”
In addition to his role at AccuWeather, Myers was a member of the Penn State Smeal College of Business and Graduate School faculty for 18 years. He has a degree in business administration and economics from Penn State and law degree from Boston University School of Law.
NOAA’s leaders have largely been scientists over the decades since its creation, and though Myers’ background is business-oriented, he has been an advisor to NOAA and five National Weather Service directors and a representative to the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization.
Last year, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) named Myers an AMS Fellow for ‘having made outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial period of years.’
Editor’s note: Barry Myers is the uncle of Dan Myers, owner of StateCollege.com’s parent company, LazerPro Digital Media Group.
