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Subject: For Federal Workers, New Day Is Here; Appointees Reorder Lives; Civil Servants
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 05:01:45 EST
Message-ID: <52.1992Nov5.050145@AmeriCast.com>

For Federal Workers, New Day Is Here; Appointees Reorder Lives;
Civil Servants Brace for Upheaval on Job<By Brooke A. Masters and
John F. Harris=Washington Post Staff Writers=

As Bill Clinton's roll to victory rolled him out of a job,
Charles Powers assured his two sons that they would stay in their
Alexandria town house. They would still go to Burgundy Farm Coun-
try Day School, where Alex, 13, had been elected seventh-grade
class president that same day.

Though millions of voters answered Clinton's call for change, few
will feel it as quickly or acutely as people such as Powers, a
political appointee in the Department of Transportation, or Lisa
Gagnon, a staff member for defeated Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.).

Even career bureaucrats, who will stay to serve the new appoin-
tees, woke up yesterday anticipating upheaval in their lives. Da-
vid Cohen, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency
for the last 12 years, went to work knowing he will have a job in
January - but which job? New day, new ballgame, new bosses.

"I said, 'When you accept a political position, you know there
could be change. Life goes on. There is a future,' " Powers said,
recalling his conversation with Alex and Gregory, 9.  "I made
them understand that it's a real honor to have served the
president." Powers and his wife, Rosalind Silverstone, both New
Yorkers, moved here in 1972 when he was stationed at the Pentagon
by the Air Force. After stints at a local television station, a
public relations firm and a U.S. senator's office, Powers worked
as a press official in the Treasury Department under James A.
Baker III.

After Bush's 1988 victory, Powers went back to the private sec-
tor, to the Tobacco Institute, but last year he took another job
in the federal government at the Federal Housing Finance Board.
He moved to Transportation this summer.

"You take some risks in life to do things for other people, your
president (and) your country," he said.

Powers said that he and his family considered moving to Maine at
the end of his Treasury job, but that this time moving is out of
the question.

"Alexandria is our home," he said yesterday. "The kids are in
school, and my wife has built up a practice" as a clinical social
worker in Baileys Crossroads. "You have to have confidence and
hope something interesting will turn up."

Though the uncertainty will be hard on his sons, Powers said, "I
think it will make them better kids. They should know nothing in
life is guaranteed and sometimes things don't work out . . . .
Sometimes kids who live in comfortable circumstances don't under-
stand that."

Career bureaucrats enjoy the certainty of a paycheck, but not the
uncertainty of changes over which they have little control.

"The career people who have worked very closely at the top may or
may not be doing the same thing with the new team," said Cohen,
who as a 17-year EPA employee remembers the transition from Car-
ter to Reagan in 1980.  "It's very possible my role will change."

Cohen's neutral tone suggests that he accepts the prospect with
equanimity: It goes with the territory.  "Nonetheless," he said,
"it's a very anxious period for a lot of people.  "Bureaucracies
require a lot of nuturing and leadership," Cohen said. "It's very
important for people to know how they'll be organized and what
type of personalities they'll be dealing with."

Cohen said he is optimistic because he believes that his current
boss, EPA Administrator William Reilly, is respected by the
Clinton-Gore crowd. Still, he knows there will be a period of
bureaucratic limbo in which major policy decisions will be de-
layed and rumor and gossip about the transition will be the new
currency.

"There will be a lot of elevator talk," said Cohen, recalling the
last time. "Every little sentence becomes unduly meaningful."

The talk, in fact, already has started, and some of it involves
the inevitable frustration of breaking in the new regime. New ap-
pointees, regardless of party, "will always try to reinvent the
wheel," one 20-year federal employee said yesterday with a laugh.

The changes can be big, involving the fate of an entire program,
or trivial, such as figuring out which salutations the new boss
prefers on correspondence. The acclimation of appointee to
bureaucrat - and vice versa - can take months.  Lisa Gagnon, 29,
had different concerns when she woke up yesterday morning with a
mortgage on her Mitchellville home and no job. Fortunately, her
husband, David Thibault, is a television producer for Channel 7
and less dependent on voters.

Although her boss had been trailing in the polls for months, Gag-
non, Seymour's deputy press secretary, had resisted making other
plans. "I didn't want to jinx the process," she said.

But Tuesday night, as she sat home watching the returns and nurs-
ing a case of bronchitis, she realized that she no longer had the
luxury of superstition.

"My husband called me at 11 (p.m.) from work and said, 'Sorry,
kid,' " Gagnon said. "I'm really surprised. I didn't believe the
people of California would elect two liberals from the northern
part of the state."

So yesterday, Gagnon said, she walked into her office on the
third floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to find the
staff already packing. Seymour was appointed to fill an unexpired
term, so his staff members must be out of their quarters as soon
as his opponent, Dianne Feinstein, is ready to move in. They no
longer can answer mail or phone calls from constituents, and
their paychecks stop at the end of this month.

"When I took this job (last year), I realized it might expire,"
Gagnon said. "It's politics . . . . You can't expect to be on the
winning team all the time."

Gagnon moved to Washington from her home state of New Hampshire
when her husband took a job with then-Rep. Judd Gregg (R), and
they stayed in this area after Gregg won the New Hampshire
governor's race.

"I got into politics and discovered I loved it," said Gagnon, a
former radio reporter who worked for 3 1/2 years at the Senate
Republican Conference.  Yesterday, she began the painful process
of cleaning out her desk. Along with photographs, GOP memorabilia
and countless business cards, Gagnon realized she also had col-
lected three staple removers.

Gagnon is planning to apply for press jobs elsewhere on the Hill,
including one with Gregg, now a newly elected senator from New
Hampshire. "I saw the governor . . . at the (Republican) conven-
tion and we were joking about (a job), but I was still pretty
confident about Senator Seymour, so I didn't take it that seri-
ously." Now she must. "We will be a dual-income couple again
soon," she said. "We're just going to keep on moving."<02:43 11-
05C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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