NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton’s Silence on Government Reform Stirs Concern : Politics: Candidate has stressed the need for new approaches in solving urban problems. But in New York, he’s adopted an old-style liberal agenda.

Has Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton lost just his voice in New York--or also part of his message?

That’s what some advocates of government reform--including several in the orbit of Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign--say they are wondering after listening to his discussion of urban issues here.

Since the start of his campaign last year, Clinton has maintained that government must “reinvent” itself by developing non-bureaucratic and market-oriented approaches--from encouraging tenant management of public housing to reducing administrative bureaucracies and decentralizing the delivery of social services.

Such proposals, as Clinton was once eager to point out, cut against the grain of traditional Democratic thought.

But of late, Clinton has downplayed this issue to the point where it has virtually disappeared from his rhetoric in New York--a city that many analysts say they believe epitomizes the need for the types of reforms he had been touting.

Instead, Clinton has used his most visible public appearances--particularly a summit with urban officials last Tuesday--to advance a more traditional liberal agenda: increased federal spending on housing, education, health care and other needs.

While not embracing new federal assistance as unreservedly as his rival in Tuesday’s presidential primary, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., neither has Clinton publicly suggested that dealing with New York’s plethora of problems may require reform at home even more than help from Washington--an omission he said he regretted in an interview with The Times this weekend.

In the interview, Clinton acknowledged that he had not projected his belief that New York City municipal government, like government at all levels, must substantially reform its operations. “I think I do need to probably collect the examples that represent what I think has to be done and talk about it,” he said.

Clinton’s public silence on these questions during his New York campaign speaks volumes about the precarious balancing act he faces in reconciling his urge to move the Democratic Party in new directions with his political reliance on some of the party’s most traditional elements--including public employee unions and minorities.

Referring to Clinton’s dilemma, Will Marshall, one of his advisers and president of the Washington-based Progressive Policy Institute, said: “There is a real opportunity in the citadel of the failures of the old bureaucratic approaches to talk about new ideas. On the other hand, he’s got a lot of support from public employee unions, he’s fighting for his (political) life and he needs support wherever he can get it.”

The closest Clinton has come to hinting at the need for reform was a vague reference Saturday in an appearance before District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees--the bargaining unit for more than half of all New York City employees.

“In the years to come, we’ll have to change what we do,” Clinton told the members of the union, which is among his most significant supporters in New York. “We’ll have to always be looking for ways to be more productive and more efficient.”

But he offered no specifics concerning the changes or productivity gains he expected from the union, which many reformers here criticize for protecting inefficient work rules and bloated payrolls.

This cautious strategy probably helped Clinton minimize explosions as he navigated through the minefield of the New York primary campaign, analysts say. But it could carry the long-term cost of portraying him to crucial swing voters here--whose backing he would need in a general election campaign--as just another Democrat willing to open the checkbook for a city many consider mismanaged and wasteful of tax dollars.

“I think he missed an opportunity,” said New York City Council President Andrew Stein, a leading local advocate of new approaches to confronting urban ills. “I don’t want to be second-guessing, but I think if he would have come in right away and said it’s just not a matter of money but you need major changes and (then) work off of that, I think he would have presented himself as somebody new, instead of somebody who hasn’t defined himself.”

Clinton’s interest in government reform placed him squarely in a movement now gaining influence in cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Inspired largely by the writings of David Osborne--co-author of the new book “Reinventing Government” and a Clinton adviser--reformist mayors have pressed municipal unions to revise rigid work rules, allowed private contractors to bid for providing various city services and endorsed programs that would give parents more flexibility in choosing the schools their children attend.

By common consent within the diffuse network pushing these ideas--which are often described as the “new paradigm” in domestic policy, although Clinton calls his version the “new covenant”--New York is the major city that needs reform the most and has made the least progress toward rethinking its traditional methods.

Over the last decade, for example, New York City added 40,000 new municipal employees--giving it 62 city government workers for every 1,000 residents. That’s more than any major city except Washington and more than four times as many as Los Angeles or Chicago.

Moreover, these employees are covered by a series of union work rules and civil service protections that make it difficult for administrators to reorganize, streamline or sometimes even supervise their operations.

Clinton has not entirely muted his reform agenda here. As in other states, he has called for welfare reform that would require recipients to take public service jobs after two years on assistance rolls.

And in a debate eight days ago, Clinton insisted that concern from public employee unions would not deter him from pushing his plan to allow young people to pay off federal college loans with two years of national service as police officers, teachers or community service workers; some union leaders fear those workers could displace public employee jobs. Brown opposes the idea on those grounds.

For now, Clinton’s promise that such national service workers would supplement, not displace, public employees is good enough for his union supporters, said Stanley W. Hill, executive director of District Council 37.

In the weekend interview with The Times, Clinton insisted that working with, rather than confronting, government employees is the key to revamping the public sector. “A lot of these people, if they had a President . . . or governor . . . who they thought was looking out for them, would become much less resistant to change,” he argued.

Aides offer different explanations for Clinton’s reluctance to offer such a firm statement in any public forum during his New York campaign. One senior adviser said such an approach might make sense as a general election strategy, but the campaign could not afford to send out such a complex and easy-to-misinterpret message while simultaneously struggling with Brown and the aggressive New York City media.

Another senior campaign official said Clinton’s New York state hierarchy--led by veteran liberal activist Harold L. Ickes, a strong supporter of Mayor David N. Dinkins--has forcefully urged the Arkansas governor to avoid rankling the mayor, the municipal unions, black leaders or other established constituencies.