Bush team zeroes in on candidates for top management posts

As George W. Bush heads into the second week of his presidency, the top positions at agencies that affect federal workers remain unfilled. But several names are being floated as potential agency chiefs and key leaders of Bush's government reform effort. On Monday, former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, who advised Bush during the presidential campaign on government management issues, was named to serve on the board that controls the Corporation for National Service. In that position, Goldsmith will work closely with the White House office of faith-based programs that Bush unveiled Monday, but he likely will not receive a governmentwide management reform portfolio. Goldsmith had reached out to members of Congress to lobby the White House to give him such a broader role, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Three top candidates have emerged as potential directors of the Office of Personnel Management. George Nesterczuk, Vice President of Global USA Inc. and a former staff director of the House Government Reform Committee, is mentioned as a possible OPM director by several sources. Nesterczuk, a protégé of Reagan-era OPM chief Donald Devine, has advocated the abolishment of labor-management partnerships.

Sources also point to Ron Bellamy, who served as Bush's appointments director in Texas, and Daniel Moll, deputy staff director of the House Committee on Government Reform, as leading contenders for the OPM slot, along with Ron Sanders, a former Pentagon official who is now chief human resources officer at the Internal Revenue Service.

While the search for an administrator of the General Services Administration is not as far along, sources mention two names that are high on Bush administration's list: Melinda Carmen, daughter of Reagan-era GSA administrator Jerry Carmen, and William Coleman, former Commissoner of GSA's Public Buildings Service during the previous Bush administration.

A partner at the law firm of Carmen & Muss, Carmen is said to have close ties to the White House personnel team led by Clay Johnson. Coleman served as commissoner of the Public Buildings Service from 1989 to 1990.