EPA Choice Has Network of Strong Allies : Nominee: Carol Browner brings positive reviews in environmental causes, but has limited administrative experience.

The Clinton Administration’s choice for environmental protection chief comes to her job with powerful allies, generally good reviews and a resume showing little experience as an administrator.

Carol Browner spent four years as a Capitol Hill aide, two as head of Florida’s Department of Environmental Regulation. She may become head of the Environmental Protection Agency before she turns 37 years old. “She’s a quick study,” one fan, Wilderness Society president George T. Frampton, said Friday.

Described as blunt-spoken and committed to the environmental cause, Browner found influential sponsors in her four years on Capitol Hill. First was then-Sen. Lawton Chiles (now Florida’s Democratic governor), for whom she worked as a legislative aide from 1986 to 1988.

Then there was Sen. Al Gore, for whom she worked as a legislative aide from 1986 to 1991. Gore picked her last month to head his transition staff, and was her chief sponsor for the EPA job.

Gore “relies on her judgment, and trusts her knowledge,” said one aide who worked with the two. “There’s a very strong relationship there.”

But not all her reviews are raves. Jon Shebel, president of Associated Industries of Florida, a business group, says Browner seems to view “people who come before her as criminals trying to pollute.”

While acknowledging that she is “brilliant,” he says her administrative inexperience has been apparent. “She’d be a great staff person, but she needs some interpersonal skills,” he said.

Her only experience as an administrator has come in the last 23 months, since Chiles named her head of the 400-employee Florida Department of Environmental Regulation. Heading that agency--the nation’s second-largest state environmental department--she has won praise for making progress on several tough issues, while improving department morale despite a tight budget.

“She’s intelligent, tenacious--a worthy adversary,” said William Boyd, an attorney whose law firm represents utilities, developers and other Florida business interests.

Notable among her accomplishments in Florida was her settlement of a longstanding dispute between federal and state authorities over which level of government was responsible for protecting the Everglades’ fragile ecology. As part of the settlement, the state admitted its responsibility and agreed to turn thousands of acres of farmland back into marsh to filter pollutants.

At the agency, Browner has pushed through a gas-tax increase to pay for the cleanup of ruptured underground gas-station storage tanks. In 1991, her agency stepped up enforcement actions against polluters by 15% and doubled the amount of money it took in in fines.

Browner, a Miami native, brought her views to Washington when the Bush Administration proposed rules that would have eased development restrictions on wetlands. Complaining that Florida had already lost 9.3 million acres of wetlands, she told a House committee last February that the federal government’s proposed formula for identifying wetlands was ill-conceived.

“We are stunned that the federal government propose something with so many errors in it,” she said.

Casey Gluckman, an attorney for several Florida environmental groups, said Washington’s gain would be Florida’s loss.

“She’s done a lot more at DER with less (money)” said Gluckman. “And she’s always realized that she has to be practical.”

Gluckman described Browner’s style as direct, and sometimes blunt. “Occasionally she can be abrupt with people who don’t agree with her.”

Browner, who has never worked in the private sector, had her first contact with government as an intern at the Florida Legislature in 1979. She graduated from the University of Florida and the University of Florida Law School.

Her husband, Michael Podhorzer, works for Citizen Action, a liberal Washington group that employed Browner as an associate editor from 1983 to 1986. Browner likes to bicycle and jog, and has one son, Zachary, 5.

In her remarks at Clinton’s press conference Friday, Browner said she was fortunate to have been “inspired” by Gov. Chiles, “and to be moved and encouraged by Al Gore’s vision of environmental sanity, and generosity of spirit.”

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT: Panel recommends new tax policies to stimulate “green” research and development. A25