For an administration that loves to boast about its efforts in shrinking the size of the federal workforce, the latest economy move at the Clinton White House is sure to downsize the egos of more than a few perk-conscious aides. Starting this month, only the handful of White House officials, those with the rank of deputy assistant to the President or higher, will be able to order up a sedan when traveling to Capitol Hill. Unless it's an emergency, the rest of the staff must now ride in one of the vans that are part of the five-month-old White House shuttle service to and from the Capitol.
This edict was handed down in an Oct. 22 memo to the hundreds of White House aides, from Virginia M. Apuzzo, the assistant to the President for management and administration. Her memo also announced an expansion of the van pools. Since June, the black Dodge Ram maxi-wagons have been leaving every 15 minutes during working hours from West Executive Ave., the parking area separating the White House from the Old Executive Office Building, in which most presidential aides work.
But this schedule didn't lend itself to the most habitual of commuters to Capitol Hill--Clinton's legislative affairs operatives. Most of them are housed in the East Wing, and they groused about the long trek across the White House to the vans. So now the vans have started keeping the same schedule from East Executive Ave., between the Treasury Department and the White House. "The expanded service does make it easier for legislative affairs to use," Barry Toiv, a deputy White House press secretary, said.
Not that this has stopped all the grumbling. Occasionally, White House aides still have to wait on street corners on the Hill for the return vans to show up. "If they are two minutes late, people complain about them," a mid-level White House aide said. But, he added, "the unvoiced complaint is the indignity of it." The vans do have a cell phone, "but you need to sit in the front seat to use it," he noted. "They're very modest, just a van. . . . The sedans are kind of plush. They look cool."
The van shuttle has allowed the White House to cut back the size of its motor pool almost by half, Toiv said, "to fewer than 20 [sedans] now." Roughly half of the jaunts that White House aides make, he added, are to Capitol Hill.
Special Assistants to the President--"or their equivalents," Toiv said--will still be permitted to commandeer a sedan when making their appointed rounds elsewhere in Washington. Appuzzo's memo encouraged "all staff, including assistants and deputy assistants to the President" to use the shuttle service. But most van regulars don't anticipate a crush of business coming from the West Wing or the corner offices next door.
"I never see any assistants or deputies," said a special assistant to the President who's made many trips by van to Capitol Hill. "Those people who are used to taking cars just tell their secretary, `Get me a car' to go somewhere." What about the lack of high-powered advisers using the vans? "I'm not at all surprised," Toiv said. "Let's just leave it at that."
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