Cathy Stepp, this region’s unlikely No. 2 administrator at the EPA, dislikes regulations — and transparency

Donald Trump’s surprise factory pumped out a local mystery in August when the White House appointed Cathy Stepp to a top position at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 7 headquarters in Lenexa. Stepp is well known in Wisconsin, where she has taken sharp stances against environmental regulation. But what’s she doing here?

Over the summer, the Trump administration said Stepp’s title would be acting director, and that she would help carry out the EPA’s agenda in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. And when the White House appointed a top regional administrator, Stepp would become that person’s second-in-command. This came to pass in early October, when the White House appointed Jim Gulliford, a former EPA chief during President George W. Bush’s term. Gulliford has spent more than three decades working in the environmental field. Stepp has no similar qualifications on her résumé, and it’s unclear why she has been summoned to the agency as a political appointee to a job that did not previously exist — at a time when Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA secretary, is asking for an unprecedented 31 percent reduction of his annual budget.