Pace of Clinton Appointments Not E-G-Gs-actly Swift : Shortage of top managers brings complaints from Capitol Hill. White House puts stress on diversity.

Making appointments in the Clinton Administration has turned out to be a delicate process, something like walking on E-G-Gs.

That’s the White House acronym for the type of diversity being sought for appointments. The President has insisted that qualifications for top posts include Ethnicity, Gender and Geographical factors.

Largely because of the E-G-G principle, authorities say, the pace of presidential appointments has gone more slowly than it might. In fact, were it not for a rush of appointments Clinton made during the last week of April--the final week of his first 100 days--he would be lagging behind most recent presidents.

As it is, by the 100-day mark, Clinton had nominated 172 people, enough to fill about one-third of the top jobs in his Administration. By contrast, former President Ronald Reagan had nominated 152 at the same point in his presidency and George Bush had named 96.

“By any measure, we’re doing a fairly good job,” Clinton told reporters as he announced the nominations late last month. And, for a change, “one-third of them are women,” he said.

Even so, the shortage of top managers has brought a number of complaints from Capitol Hill, where committee chairmen and their staff assistants cannot find officials responsible for making policy and budget decisions.

At the Labor Department, that means Secretary Robert B. Reich has had to sign off on almost everything as the only confirmed appointee. Circumstances are identical at the Justice Department. Only Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has been confirmed.

C. Calvin MacKenzie, an authority on presidential personnel policies at Colby College in Waterville, Me., said the vacancies tend to blunt an administration’s effectiveness.

“When you come to Washington full of promise as Clinton did, you need to get your team in place to start delivering,” MacKenzie said. “But in most departments, no one has been there to testify about budget matters.”

But if Clinton got off to a slow start, “I really don’t attribute this to incompetence,” MacKenzie said. “The job is much bigger than it used to be. There are a whole lot more positions to fill.”

Thirty years ago, during the John F. Kennedy Administration, the number of sub-Cabinet positions--assistant secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries--totaled only 100, MacKenzie said.

“These are the important management positions where the rubber hits the road,” he said. “There has been such a substantial growth in government that Clinton will have to fill about 500 of them.”

MacKenzie added that “on top of this, Clinton has imposed his own new E-G-G formula to achieve more diversity.”

As one Administration official acknowledged: “If we wanted to rely on the usual white boys in Washington, we would be done by now.”

For instance, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner recently gave the White House a list of names to fill seven positions. It was held up, as were lists from some other Cabinet members, officials said.

The problem: Browner’s highly qualified candidates were “all white, liberal and Western,” as one official put it. The diversity pool, however, is said to be small in the environmental movement because minorities have not been as active there as in other fields.

New governmental ethics regulations and financial disclosure requirements also have made appointments a more daunting task, MacKenzie and others said.

Presidential scholar James Pfiffner cited “the Zoe Baird problem” as having added “a whole new dimension” to the appointment process because it had the effect of requiring the FBI to probe more deeply into the personal lives and finances of candidates.

Baird, Clinton’s first choice to be attorney general, withdrew amid disclosures that she and her husband had knowingly hired an illegal alien as a domestic servant.

There is another factor slowing appointments: personal involvement by the Clintons.

Clinton and his wife, Hillary, are personally signing off on most choices--a factor that has caused added delay, especially in view of the President’s propensity to take his time and to change his mind on such matters, officials said.

A Republican congressional source, requesting anonymity, said: “this White House is holding onto the process tighter than any other administration I can remember. They’re insisting on making the decisions themselves, not leaving it to Cabinet members.”

Appointments Made in First 100 Days

BILL CLINTON: 172

GEORGE BUSH: 96

RONALD REAGAN: 152