“Severance agreements are usually a safety net for the employee,” said Don B. Lindner, head of the executive compensation practice at WorldatWork, a professional organization previously known as the American Compensation Association that provides training and certification for compensation and benefits professionals. “It would be unusual to have a severance agreement triggered by a person leaving on a voluntary and positive basis. It’s usually used for a job that has been eliminated or cut back, or a person that’s been asked to leave.”

Image Michael E. Baroody Credit... National Association of Manufacturers

Government ethics experts said people occasionally received a severance payment when they left the private sector for a government job, but it could be problematic when the person was going to a post whose mission was to regulate the former employer. Mr. Baroody’s nomination will be before the Senate Commerce Committee next week. He is opposed not only by consumer groups but also by trial lawyers, firefighters and pediatricians. They have highlighted what they say are repeated actions taken by Mr. Baroody and the association on behalf of companies that have made consumer products less safe.

Mr. Baroody “not only represented the interests of the nation’s manufacturing firms — often in direct opposition to the interest of consumers — but led efforts to weaken the C.P.S.C. and opposed numerous initiatives to protect children and the public from unsafe products,” said Dr. Jay E. Berkelhamer, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a letter opposing the nomination.

In recent years, Mr. Baroody has been involved in legislative efforts to limit the liability of makers of asbestos as companies have faced growing numbers of lawsuits from workers who say they have been exposed to the fire-retardant material. In 2000, he sent a letter on behalf of the association urging Gov. George Pataki of New York to veto legislation that required tobacco companies to make cigarettes that were less likely to cause fires. (The governor signed the measure.)

Hank Cox, a spokesman at the association who has known Mr. Baroody for many years, said Mr. Baroody’s letter opposing the New York legislation “has nothing to do with the efficacy of safe cigarettes” but was more generally opposed to the principle that the states could set safety standards, rather than one national standard.

Mr. Baroody and the association signed a severance agreement in January 2006, nearly a year before he was nominated. It was rewritten in January, after Mr. Baroody was identified in trade publications and Web sites as the leading candidate to head the commission. Neither the White House nor the association would reveal any details of the original or amended agreements.