THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION : Most Approve of Selection to Head EPA : Cabinet: Florida business people are mostly positive, but some fear Carol Browner might favor a regulatory policy that lacks flexibility.

Businesses generally applauded President-elect Bill Clinton’s choice of Carol Browner, chief of Florida’s Department of Environmental Regulation, to be the next administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Some are concerned, however, that Browner might favor traditional so-called command-and-control regulatory policies over rules that incorporate market incentives for their enforcement. Most regulated businesses prefer the flexibility that such incentives can bring in meeting environmental standards.

Still, business people who have worked with her give her high marks.

“She’s an outstanding selection,” said Alex Rangos, executive vice president of Chambers Development Co., a Pennsylvania-based waste-management company that operates one of Florida’s largest landfills.

“We have found the (department) in Florida to be very efficient, very cooperative,” Rangos said Friday after the announcement. “The main thing is, they seem to be able to generate responses pretty quickly for a regulatory agency.”

Several Florida business leaders, who have dealt with Browner since she took over that state’s environmental regulatory agency not quite two years ago, were among the most positive, citing Browner’s competence and fairness in administering Florida’s environmental laws, which are among the most demanding in the country.

“First and foremost, she’s a very competent and capable administrator,” said Bobby F. McKown, executive vice president of Florida Citrus Mutual, the largest agricultural cooperative in the state, with more than 12,000 grower members. McKown’s organization has been under Browner’s regulatory scrutiny over farmers’ use of pesticides, underground gasoline storage tanks, ground water standards and dredge-and-fill operations.

“She’s tough,” McKown said. He said the cooperative didn’t win every battle, “but we were able to work through the process, and that’s very important in these situations.”

Even a longtime critic of the Florida environmental agency gave Browner a strong tribute in the St. Petersburg Times. “Overall, I think she’s interjected a marvelous new sense of direction for the department,” said Gloria Rains, director of Florida’s statewide environmental organization ManaSota 88.

Still, that sense of direction went overboard for some. And they have seen little evidence that Browner favors such market incentives as the EPA’s acid rain pollution credit trading system or a similar plan to lower air emissions in Southern California.

“I can’t say that I’ve seen much in the way of market incentives come out of that agency for years,” said Ross McWilliams, a Tallahassee environmental consultant who advises government agencies, developers and environmental groups on surface water, dredge-and-fill and wetlands issues.

“I found her . . . fairly stringent in the application of the law and, in some cases, she may have exceeded what the law provided for,” McWilliams said.

Yet others found her regulatory philosophy harder to pin down.

“She’s a relatively pragmatic person,” said one executive who declined to be named. “If she needs the help of industry, she can work with industry, and if she doesn’t, she can resort to command and control. She is not that easily pigeonholed.”

Many also expressed a hope that Browner can live up to Clinton’s campaign promise to streamline the federal regulatory process.

“In his Earth Day speech, the President-elect said we need a more flexible, results-oriented system for protecting our environment,” said Jeffrey C. Van, a spokesman for the Chemical Manufacturers Assn.

Van said Clinton promised a system that “will reduce compliance costs and shrink the regulatory bureaucracies and enlist the support of more voluntary activities, and we couldn’t agree more. So we’re very ready and very eager to work with Ms. Browner in helping her to achieve the President-elect’s goals.”