GSA Chief Battles Against Federal Downsizing Plan : Politics: Roger W. Johnson says proposal to gut agency wouldn’t save as much money as reorganization.

Caught up in a battle with Clinton Administration budget-cutters over how to trim costs at the General Services Administration, agency chief Roger W. Johnson is firing salvos at bureaucrats and politicians, contending they are refusing to abide by the voter mandate from last November’s election to downsize government.

Johnson, former chief executive officer of Western Digital Corp. in Irvine, whose agency has long been viewed as the epitome of costly bureaucratic red tape, has bluntly concluded that “a lot of people (in Washington) still don’t get what went on in this election.”

“From my perspective, there are billions of dollars to be saved here,” said Johnson, the Administration’s highest-ranking Republican. “I am not optimistic we are going to cut it, even with the Republicans here, because the system of government here is so embedded in the status quo.”

The source of Johnson’s current outrage is the Office of Budget and Management’s recent proposal that GSA be almost completely wiped out, even though GSA’s own plan claims to save billions more without such drastic measures.

Excluding President Clinton and Vice President Gore from his criticism, Johnson blames Democrats and Republicans, elected representatives and political appointees, for essentially choosing stylistic rather than substantive changes to appear as though they are heeding voters’ concerns and cutting spending.

The criticism is not uncharacteristic for Johnson, who came to GSA hoping to use his business acumen to help President Clinton “reinvent government,” but instead has been treated at times like an outsider in the ultimate insiders’ game of Washington politics.

Now, with his nerves grated by what he believes is a typically bureaucratic and ineffective response to cutting the size of government, Johnson is voicing his frustrations.

“Many times I think I must be on another planet, or lost my mind,” he said. “I have concluded the latter is not true.”

In an ongoing series of interviews and speeches in Southern California, Johnson is urging business leaders and other voters to “get off your tails and get in the game” of holding Republicans and Democrats accountable for their promises to make government cheaper and more efficient. Johnson is scheduled to speak Wednesday at a forum at Cal State Fullerton’s University Hall, beginning at 10 a.m.

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The GSA’s 17,000 workers manage the government’s car fleet, real estate, computers, and other administrative functions, and oversee about $60 billion in spending each year.

GSA was one of four federal agencies initially targeted for downsizing to help fund President Clinton’s middle-class tax cut. Before the plan was announced last December, GSA had already eliminated about 3,600 positions during the past two years.

The Administration’s plan to effectively abolish GSA, leaving only policy functions and a staff of about 2,000, would save an estimated $1.4 billion over five years--and further the perception that government is being reduced. But GSA’s own proposed reorganization, which counts on OMB’s authorization and on other agencies to cut spending on supplies and equipment, would save $24 billion over the same period, Johnson said.

“Let’s sort of remind each other what the real objective is here,” Johnson said, maintaining that it should be to provide the best service at the lowest cost.

In a letter to OMB Director Alice M. Rivlin in late December, Johnson said it would be “a travesty” to shift GSA functions to employees, to other agencies, or to private companies “without actually accomplishing true savings for the taxpayer.”

Johnson restated his opposition in a follow-up letter two weeks ago, warning that if the proposed work-force reductions were included in the President’s budget to be delivered next week, they could be “misleading at best and untruthful at worst.”

The GSA chief did not want to discuss the details of his letters to Rivlin, adding that she is a “well-intentioned, good person,” nor would he comment on the status of budget negotiations, although he is hopeful his plan survives. GSA employee groups have rallied against abolishing the agency.

An OMB spokesman declined to comment Monday on the budget negotiations.

But while Johnson maintains that his plan would actually save taxpayers more money, his agency’s budget cutting proposals are sometimes viewed on Capitol Hill with skepticism because GSA cannot control how other agencies spend their money.

For example, Johnson said he is contemplating asking other agencies to impose hiring freezes, including vacancies that occur in the future, to save money. He concedes that he cannot order the agencies to follow his lead, “but I can pull back computer purchases.”

More than half of the $24 billion GSA has proposed cutting would come from government-wide spending reductions on computers and telecommunications.

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“Do you know that we don’t even know how many personal computers we bought last year because no one keeps a record?” Johnson said.

Johnson said the commitment to downsize must be made government-wide in order to meet voters’ expectations.

The November election “was not an ideological shift,” Johnson said. “It did not say, ‘We want ultra-conservative Republicans here.’ It said, ‘We want a change. We want government smaller and we want it better.’ ”

The newly empowered Republicans will find, just as President Clinton found, that despite the talk of change, the prevailing pressure is to maintain the status quo, Johnson added.

“I think many people here don’t yet grasp or don’t believe that the people in the country really want what they say they want,” he said.