Gale A. Norton Interior Department Established: 1849 2003 Budget: $$10.2 billion Full-time Employees: 70,000 Norton's Salary: $171,900 Web Site: www.doi.gov Overall Grade: B- Back To Overview And Other Cabinet Grades

National Journal
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Friday, Jan. 24, 2003

During President Clinton's administration, the Department of the Interior earned a reputation for expanding protection of federal wildlands. All of that has changed under President Bush, whose Interior Department is becoming increasingly known for speeding up approval of oil and gas drilling leases and other development on the 507 million acres it controls.

At the helm of the department is Secretary Gale A. Norton, 48, who was appointed because of her pro-development leanings, her Western credentials -- she served for eight years as Colorado's attorney general -- and her comparative lack of negative political baggage. When Bush nominated Norton for the job, environmentalists attacked her as "James Watt in a skirt," because she had previously worked with Watt, the controversial Ronald Reagan-era Interior secretary. But Norton has proved to be far more complicated -- not nearly as easy to pigeonhole or target as that label implied. For one thing, she's much more adept than the talkative Watt at avoiding negative publicity.

Norton's standard stump speech advocates "cooperative conservation" programs, under which states and local property owners can preserve wildlands. She's also championed local control of federal lands, although only where that would dovetail with the Bush administration's desires. For example, Interior wants to ignore California state officials' opposition to allowing more oil drilling off California's coast. But the department bowed to local demands to curb oil exploration off the coast of Florida, where the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, opposes drilling and at the time appeared to face a tough re-election battle.

The major challenge for Norton's department has been the century-old accounting morass at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which continues to sap her department's time and resources. Norton has been a disappointment to rural conservatives and pro-market activists who backed her nomination and expected her to aggressively rewrite federal land-use controls.

Nonetheless, Norton is a valuable part of the Bush team, helping to minimize public controversy in an inherently controversial realm. She hasn't initiated a raft of major new Interior Department policies, but she's been an unflagging team player. An essentially shy person, Norton keeps a low public profile. When she has emerged, she's provided President Bush with an intelligent, pleasant and unapologetic face for his federal land-use policy. Under Norton's guidance, "this department has done well at taking positions that are very conservative and James Watt-like and putting a nonthreatening face on them," said John Leshy, Interior Department solicitor during the Clinton administration. "They're politically shrewd."

Inside Influence Grade: C
Norton, one of the last Cabinet members appointed, was a surprising choice for secretary of the Interior. Although she was part of the environmental advisory team for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Norton doesn't have strong political ties to Bush. And she's unlikely to become part of his inner circle. She readily admits that she's not apt to call up the president to discuss land-use policy -- or anything else. Conservatives complain that she's less talented at internal White House political maneuvering than her predecessor, Bruce Babbitt.

Norton did not play a major role in developing the White House's national energy policy, even though it emphasizes expanding oil and gas exploration on lands she controls. Likewise, the president's "Healthy Forests Initiative," which in the name of preventing catastrophic forest fires calls for greatly expanded thinning in national forests, was largely the brainchild of the Forest Service, which is part of the Agriculture Department. But in both cases, Norton gladly backed the administration proposals.

Norton has established a moderate public persona by promoting cooperative agreements to protect wildlands and endangered species. Unlike Watt, who was prone to making inflammatory public statements, Norton has built a positive public image and is a reliable team player for the Bush White House.

Hill Clout Grade: C
During her first two years on the job, Norton has not led the charge in any major legislative battle. The White House took the lead when Congress debated Bush's proposal to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which falls within the Interior Department's jurisdiction. Norton merely appeared at Republican press conferences in support of the drilling proposal. And in the area of forest management, Norton did not play a key role in congressional efforts to negotiate a compromise modeled after the president's forest-thinning proposal.

Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill say that Norton's Interior Department has been less than open and accessible to them. Early in her tenure, Norton shut down unofficial communications between Interior Department staffers and Congress -- a move that did not engender good feelings among lawmakers. When the Democrats took control of the Senate in 2001, some Cabinet secretaries made courtesy calls to meet the new Democratic committee chairmen with jurisdiction over their departments. Norton, however, did not.

In testimony before Congress, Norton has been "unflappable," according to Democrats who have tried to provoke debate over the Bush administration's radical shift away from traditional federal land-use policies. Lawmakers say they've had good relations with Norton's key aides on Capitol Hill. But Democrats and Republicans say they tend to look to the White House and elsewhere in the administration, not to Norton, for guidance on federal-lands issues.

Norton may become more active on legislative issues this year, now that the Republicans control the Senate as well as the House. For example, the Interior Department could play a significant role in the expected debate over possible changes that would make the Endangered Species Act less of an impediment to development and to military maneuvers.

Political Imperatives Grade: B
Norton has followed the directives in the president's national energy plan to open more lands to development and to ease controls on the commercial interests that use federal lands. Along the way, she's built an excellent relationship with the oil, coal and timber industries. The secretary has also been responsive to the politics of the administration, pushing Interior initiatives to restore Florida's Everglades National Park -- a high priority for Gov. Bush -- and to repair federal facilities at the national parks. "I don't know how many leaking sewers we've got, but that's been a major emphasis of our effort," she said. "My husband joked when we went to Yellowstone last year that we did the sewer tour."

Not surprisingly, Norton is not loved by the environmental community. She has done little to reach out to environmental groups, which have been highly critical of her policies. But she also hasn't taken many bold steps that could put her in the bull's-eye of environmental attacks. Instead, she uses the less-visible regulatory process to ease government controls on industry. Rather than reach out to the skeptical mainstream "green" groups, Norton has formed alliances with narrowly focused conservation groups, such as the Nature Conservancy, which buys wildlands or the development rights on ecologically important property.

Norton's low-key approach has led to grumbling among rural Bush supporters and property-rights advocates, who oppose more federal ownership of Western lands. They also want bolder action on easing grazing regulations and endangered species restrictions. "It's the Big Oil and mining companies that she listens to," complained Mike Hardiman, Washington lobbyist for the American Land Rights Association. "She seems to be running the department the way you run a law firm: Big bucks get you in the door."

Running The Department Grade: C
Through no fault of her own, Norton has gotten sucked into the quagmire surrounding the Bureau of Indian Affairs Trust Fund, which has absorbed a surprising amount of her department's energy. American Indians claim that over the past century, the federal government has squandered billions of dollars in oil, gas and timber royalties from their tribal lands. Both Norton and her top deputy, J. Steven Griles, have been distracted by the trust fund problems, which have resulted in Norton's being found in contempt of court and in the department's being forced to shut down its Web site for more than two months. Department officials are trying to reorganize the bureau and conduct a historical accounting of trust accounts to solve the problem, but Indian groups doubt the actions will be sufficient.

Beyond the trust fund headaches, insiders say, Norton mishandled last year's water crisis at Oregon's Klamath River, where a drought exacerbated the water wars between farmers and wildlife groups. Her handling of that crisis resulted in a massive salmon kill. Environmentalists also criticize Norton for allowing expanded use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, although some Interior career staffers give her credit for crafting a compromise.

The White House made sure it could press its pro-industry agenda at Interior by filling many of the department's top slots with industry lawyers or trusted conservatives. As a result, this department, which once had an aggressive land-preservation focus, has quickly shifted to an ambitious land-development agenda. In response, environmental groups have filed a host of lawsuits challenging departmental decisions and, in some cases, tying regulators' hands.

Behind the scenes, Norton's top aides have been actively monitoring career staffers to make sure that preliminary scientific assessments err on the side of industry, if they err at all. That second-guessing by political appointees has disillusioned and demoralized some of the department's career scientists and lawyers. In early 2002, for example, Norton forced the U.S. Geological Survey to reconsider a study indicating that drilling in Alaska's wildlife refuge would substantially harm wildlife. The revised study predicted that the impact of drilling would be minimal.

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