Cisneros Is Latest to Quit Clinton Cabinet

Henry G. Cisneros resigned Thursday as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, leaving President Clinton with the seventh Cabinet vacancy he must fill as he embarks on his second term.

One of the nation’s most successful Latino politicians, Cisneros has said for weeks that financial pressures are squeezing him with two children in college and his legal bills mounting from an investigation by an independent counsel of possible false statements he made to the FBI.

In a letter to Clinton, Cisneros said he was honored to “have worked the last four years to advance your hopes for America’s communities.” But he said, “I have concluded that I cannot ask to be considered for service in the next four years.”

Cisneros told reporters that he had personally informed the president, who is traveling in Asia, and that Clinton “understood the decision I have made.” Cisneros will stay on until Clinton is inaugurated in January, a HUD spokesman said.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry responded that “the president thanks Secretary Cisneros for the outstanding work he’s done at HUD and for being a good friend.”

Many believe that the 49-year-old Texan turned the ugly duckling of federal bureaucracies, saddled with 1.4 million units of public housing, into a laboratory of reinvented government.

Rep. Rick A. Lazio of New York, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee on housing and community opportunity, released a statement late Thursday saying that Cisneros “stood out as an articulate reformer who cared.” Cisneros was “clearly the finest of President Clinton’s Cabinet appointments” and was “a person of substance and of class,” Lazio said.

A man whose political instincts the president often relied on, Cisneros campaigned among the nation’s growing Latino population and was an avid promoter of the Citizenship USA program. That effort naturalized 1.2 million legal immigrants as U.S. citizens--in many cases, just in time to vote in the presidential election.

Republican critics have charged that many of those should have been disqualified from citizenship because of criminal backgrounds.

During his tenure at HUD, Cisneros presided over the demolition of thousands of decaying apartments in high-rise buildings. He worked on new programs to build better low-income housing and sought to “unleash market forces,” as he put it, by giving rent vouchers to public housing tenants.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) said that Cisneros “took that agency from the throes of disrepute and bureaucratic morass to a high level of respectability. He sought ways for low-income residents to become first-time homeowners. He was undoubtedly the most qualified secretary ever to head that department, and I will miss him greatly.”

At the same time, the former San Antonio mayor managed repeatedly to turn back Republican demands to disband his department and reached agreement with GOP leaders for his reforms in public housing programs. He presided over three rounds of cutbacks that shrank the HUD budget by 20%--from $25 billion a year to $20 billion.

A private investment advisor after serving as San Antonio’s mayor, Cisneros had earned up to $300,000 annually before taking the Cabinet post with a salary of $148,400.

But during his tenure, his own financial pressures grew worse.

Beginning last year, legal bills mounted as a court-appointed independent counsel investigated whether he had lied to FBI agents in 1992 about payments to a former mistress, Linda Medlar.

Cisneros had publicly acknowledged his affair with Medlar, an aide when he was mayor, and that he had been paying her support for some time after their relationship ended in late 1989. But apparently out of concern that his nomination could be harmed if he acknowledged the full extent of his payments--reported to be $150,000 to $200,000--Cisneros greatly understated the figure to FBI agents who were assigned to check his credentials.

Secret tape recordings made by Medlar revealed the discrepancy, and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno sought appointment of an independent counsel to determine if Cisneros’ statements constituted perjury. That investigation still is ongoing although Cisneros has denied any wrongdoing.