U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz blasted President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a “questionable choice” who has a conflict of interest with the agency he has been nominated to run.

On Thursday, Trump nominated Barry Myers, CEO of a private weather company AccuWeather, as undersecretary of commerce and head of NOAA, which oversees the National Weather Service. Myers has criticized the weather service in congressional testimony.

In a statement, Schatz said, “As the CEO of AccuWeather, Barry Myers views NOAA as a direct competitor that provides high-quality forecasts for free.”

The Hawaii Democrat said Myers “is in the vanguard of corporate business interests that seek to undermine the National Weather Service’s ability to do anything other than provide free data and weather models to private companies like his, which then turn around and sell their forecasts.”

Myers told the House Science Committee last year that he had problems with the way NOAA keeps some data private and how it works with competing weather firms.

“American weather companies are now becoming the focal point for weather information in many of the countries around the world. The No. 1 mobile weather source in Europe is an American one — AccuWeather. We estimate that AccuWeather information is on about 1.5 billion or more devices globally,” he said.

Schatz said, “Mr. Myers will have to work very hard to persuade me that he will run NOAA for the public good — instead of trying to run it out of the business of saving lives and property and protecting our national security with its weather forecasts. Since Mr. Myers and his two brothers own and operate AccuWeather, he will also need to explain why his service as NOAA administrator will not violate conflict of interest rules and regulations.”

“I will keep an open mind throughout our Senate review of his nomination, but I am disappointed that this administration would nominate someone with Mr. Myers’ controversial views on the National Weather Service, especially given the potential for conflicts of interest involving his family and his scant qualifications to run the rest of the agency,” Schatz said.

But private meteorologist Mike Smith, who sold his firm to Myers and has worked for him, said Myers “knows weather science inside and out.”

And Ryan Maue of Weather.us said, “Myers will bring that Big Data acumen to NOAA and likely accelerate a process that has slowly been underway: more private-sector collaboration with satellite data, weather models and other information services. Government-sponsored satellite programs are hugely expensive and constantly under threat of cost-cutting during budget crises.”