June 18, 2010

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By Product Safety Letter staff

CPSC June 18 confirmed an earlier PSL story that Compliance and Field Operation Director Gib Mullan will be assigned to work at Customs and Border Protection (CBP). He starts June 21.

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Mullan’s assignment technically will not be a detail to CBP, but rather, he will be detailed to CPSC’s Office of the Executive Director and assigned to do a CBP special project. PSL had raised the question (PSL, 5/31/10, p. 1) of whether detailing him to Customs would be an effective removal. Removal of a Compliance director requires a commission vote.

As PSL also reported, Jay Howell, who now leads CPSC’s Office of Hazard Identification and Reduction, will serve as acting Compliance director. To aid Howell, who is not a lawyer, Neal Cohen will be detailed from the General Counsel’s office as his special assistant.

On the question of a permanent replacement for Mullan, CPSC public affairs director Scott Wolfson said there were “no further announcements at this time.”

Wolfson said, “Gib has a great deal of expertise in the areas of foreign manufacturing, import safety, and port enforcement. Chairman [Inez] Tenenbaum wants to continue to build on the momentum that the agency has with CBP after recently signing a new agreement [PSL, 5/3/10, p. 1] to gain access to CTAC and their database of import manifests … By bringing more senior resources to the table and working on a daily basis with the expert staff at CBP, CPSC is demonstrating its commitment to making import safety a priority issue for the agency and for the consumer.”