Senators cool to OMB nominee Katzen

Senators cool to OMB nominee Katzen

ksaldarini@govexec.com

Two members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday gave a cool reception to the nomination of Sally Katzen to serve as the next deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.

Katzen, currently deputy director of the National Economic Council and former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at OMB, would succeed G. Edward DeSeve, who resigned in March. Deidre Lee, administrator of OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, is currently the agency's acting deputy director for management.

Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., chairman of the committee, voiced doubts that Katzen recognized the severity of management problems within federal agencies. Thompson recently intensified his efforts to make agencies tackle mismanaged programs. On Aug. 17, he sent letters to agency heads outlining their trouble areas and asking them to focus on management problems and the Government Performance and Results Act.

In a pre-hearing questionnaire, Katzen wrote that she was encouraged by the progress that agencies have made in tackling such issues over the past few years.

"I am increasingly concerned about how our government operates and I'm not sure you agree with me that there's a problem," Thompson said to Katzen.

Katzen said she was simply trying to emphasize the positive.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said Katzen was not aggressive enough to force change from within. "Your approach is not the one I believe we need to have at OMB," Voinovich said. "I'm going to do what I can to make sure you are not [confirmed] to this position."

Voinovich focused on an incident from Katzen's tenure at OIRA in which she rewrote an executive order on federalism and released it without first consulting state and local government stakeholders. Katzen admitted that the incident was "a regrettable mistake." The Senate passed revised legislation on federalism in August.

Katzen's lone advocate at the hearing, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., praised her character and past record of civil service. "Few people come before us who are so well prepared for the position to which she's been nominated," he said.

Katzen served as OIRA administrator from June 1993 to February 1998, longer than any previous OIRA chief. In that role she pushed to open up the regulation-making process and urged agencies to make their rules more results-oriented, rather than focusing on penalties and processes. She has also led the government's initial effort to tackle the year 2000 computer problem and oversaw the implementation of the 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act. In her Michigan law school days, Katzen was one of the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of a major law review journal.

If nominated, Katzen said her first priority would be to better integrate the M and B sides of OMB. "Management and budget go hand-in-hand," she said. "We need a better merger."

Katzen also said she would tackle the issues the Clinton administration has identified as its priority management objectives. And she pledged to pay more attention to human capital issues. Agencies need to do serious work to determine if government has the right skill sets that it needs, she said.

Thompson now must decide whether to send Katzen's nomination to the full committee for a vote. If the committee approved Katzen, Senate leaders would then have to decide whether to schedule a vote of the full Senate on the nomination. DeSeve's nomination never made it to the Senate floor. He resigned March 31 to become a partner in the consulting firm KPMG LLP.