Report Card: Three Bad Marks

EPA gets critiqued; Watt attacked; a Commerce official probed

If governing is an imperfect art form at best, then Government bureaucrats are in a way consummate artists. Imperfection, of course, is a matter of degree. But last week, at three federal agencies, some choice examples of Imperfection's art were on display.

Protect and Serve Troubles at the Environmental Protection Agency seem only to compound. Two internal reports came to light last week that are not likely to assuage public worries about how well the EPA is protecting the environment. One, commissioned two months ago, is an in-house EPA review of the $1.6 billion hazardous-waste cleanup program known as Superfund. Its conclusion: philosophical conflicts about bureaucratic strategies and efficiencies led to major problems. Infighting between headquarters and regional offices, said the report, effectively stopped the program from going forward. It cast official bickering over procedures and a preoccupation in Washington with saving money in terms of a classic bureaucratic foul-up. Stated the report: "Far from the ideal of top-down management, the program has endured something more akin to management by hung jury."

In addition, the study argued that a more realistic cost effectiveness would be achieved by using the Superfund as it was intended--for rapid cleanup of conditions threatening lives and health. Declared the report: "In sum, with control, not action, the watchword for Superfund, the regions and the program have suffered."

The second EPA report summarized a probe of the work of a private testing firm responsible for evaluating the health and safety hazards of some 212 chemicals, primarily pesticides and herbicides, during the '70s. The study concluded that there had been a pattern of sloppy and fraudulent testing procedures by the firm, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, of Northbrook, Ill.

The agency subsequently ordered a review of all chemicals tested after EPA investigators in 1976 first discovered problems with the firm's work. The Justice Department was then asked to investigate. Four former employees of Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories are currently on trial in Chicago's federal district court on charges of submitting false study reports to the Government on four chemicals. Said an EPA spokesman in Washington: "We don't want to frighten anybody. Many of these chemicals are supported by other tests. We're trying to find out just which ones they are."

Interior's Wrong Designs The Interior Department, under feisty Ideologue James Watt, always seems to be in trouble with Congress. On Monday in Lynchburg, Va., Secretary of the Interior Watt addressed the graduating class at Liberty Baptist College, founded by the Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell. Said Watt: "We have seen government used by the enemies of liberty and freedom here in America, God's chosen place." But back in Washington, critics charged that Watt's Interior Department was proving all too charitable, in a most unsaintly way, to private industry.

The second Government report in three weeks charged that Watt had shortchanged the taxpayers on a coal-leasing deal with the nation's energy industry in the Powder River Basin area of Montana and Wyoming. It was the largest lease of federal coal reserves ever (1.6 billion tons). Watt aides had dismissed the earlier report, done by the Democratic staff of the House Appropriations Subcommittee, as a "deceitful political document." But this week's official assessment was prepared by the General Accounting Office, headed by Reagan Appointee Charles Bowsher, the Comptroller General. The GAO's central finding: the Government obtained some $100 million less than fair-market value. The Democrats had estimated that Watt had shortchanged taxpayers by $60 million.

The GAO report questioned "the reasonableness of the department's methods" and urged Watt to postpone further coal leasing. At hearings before the subcommittee on the Interior, Chairman Sidney Yates, Illinois Democrat, charged that the Secretary's plunging ahead in the current soft market was tantamount to a giveaway. Replied Watt: "Congressman Yates believes in central economic planning. We believe in the free market."

That may be, but the controversy over Watt's coal-and offshore-leasing program worries even high-level Interior Department aides. Says one: "This whole fair-market thing could bring Watt down; it could destroy him." But according to Watt, "Every time I increase the hatred of those who oppose me, those on the other side who support me are even more willing to lay down their lives."

A Little Too Commercial At the Department of Commerce, Deputy Secretary Guy Fiske resigned last week. As the department's No. 2 person, he was in charge of negotiating the proposed sale of the Government's $1.6 billion weather and earth-resources satellites to the private Communications Satellite Corp. (Comsat), which was also the inspiration for the plan. The price was clearly a bargain: $300 million.

At the same time, Fiske held at least four meetings with Comsat officials to discuss becoming an executive with the corporation. The Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade, which develops policy options for the President, had earlier recommended against selling the satellites. But at the urging of Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, it reversed itself about five months after Fiske arrived at Commerce. While he insists that there was "no impropriety" in his dealings with Comsat officials, the FBI began investigating Fiske's role in the affair. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.