35 



Because of the importance of this proposal, I would ask you, are 

 you familiar with the Great Lakes Initiative, with the Great Lakes 

 Critical Programs Act of 1990? Are you familiar with that particu- 

 lar situation where these proposed draft regulations are sitting on 

 an 0MB staffer's desk somewhere? 



Ms. Browner. Senator, I am very familiar both with the pro- 

 gram — I have received, I think, two briefings, now — and also with 

 the fact that the role has been at OMB. If I might just explain how 

 I think the relationship with OMB is developing in this Adminis- 

 tration, I think it will be a very different one than in prior Admin- 

 istrations. 



You are probably aware that OMB sent out a memo shortly after 

 the President's inauguration asking the new agency heads to 

 review rules that were somewhere in the pipeline between an 

 agency and on the desk of a staffer at OMB. The first group of 

 rules we looked at included 32 rules. Within 10 days, all of them 

 were moved out. I think that is a record for OMB, and they are 

 doing that without all of their people in place. So I am very opti- 

 mistic that we are going to see a more responsive, a more timely 

 OMB. They seem very committed. 



The rule that you make reference to was captured in a second 

 group of rules that we were asked — they broke them into different 

 categories, depending on whether they were proposed and whether 

 they had been signed by the prior Administrator. That rule is in 

 the second grouping. We are working on it right now and will be 

 discussing that with OMB in the not too distant future. Hopefully 

 we will be able to begin a process whereby we not only meet our 

 statutory deadlines in terms of rule-making responsibilities, but 

 also overcome and get behind us the far too many court-imposed 

 deadlines we now find ourselves, as an agency, dealing with. 



Senator Levin. Those court-imposed deadlines in many instances 

 are the result of the agency not acting on their own. I happen to 

 agree with you. It is far better that the agency act on its own 

 promptly without the requirement that we set a statutory date. 

 But those dates frequently come from frustration. 



Ms. Browner. Right. I have no argument with the people who 

 have sought the use of the courts to get the agency to do what the 

 agency was told to do by Congress. I would just hope that in this 

 Administration we can turn that around and instead of spending 

 our time in court litigating a new date, spend our time meeting the 

 original date. 



Senator Levin. There are two programs that EPA has funded or 

 has helped fund in the center of the Great Lakes that very much 

 relate to environmental protection. One is called the Consortium 

 for International Earth Science Information Network, the acronym 

 is CIESIN, and this has to do with the dissemination of environ- 

 mental data collected by the Federal Government, particularly rel- 

 ative to global change information. 



The second program that I want to ask you about is called the 

 Center for Ecology Research and Training, which has the EPA[s 

 first supercomputer, and it is the only one in the world that is 

 dedicated solely to environmental science. 



Both of these are important, not just to EPA's broader programs, 

 but particularly to the Great Lakes. 



