Reagan Fills Two Vacancies on Federal Home Loan Bank Board

President Reagan said Friday that he was making two recess appointments to the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, an agency that has lacked a quorum to make policy decisions for the last three weeks.

Reagan said he was using his power to temporarily bypass the Senate confirmation process and immediately put Lee Henkel Jr. and Lawrence J. White on the board, which regulates the nation’s savings and loan industry.

Henkel, an Atlanta attorney and businessman, will succeed Donald I. Hovde. White, an economics professor at New York University’s graduate school of business, replaces Mary A. Grigsby.

Hovde and Grigsby announced plans to leave the board last spring, but the White House was unable to decide on their replacements before the two resigned. That left Edwin J. Gray, chairman of the bank board, as the only member of the three-member board.

The agency continued to function, but was unable to take any action requiring a board vote. That meant the board for three weeks was powerless to close the doors of failed savings and loan associations or perform a variety of its other customary duties.

Henkel and White will be able to serve on the board until the Senate takes up their nominations. If confirmed by the Senate, they will serve four-year terms.