Comings and Goings

Every Wednesday on GovExec.com, Comings and Goings announces the arrivals and departures of top federal managers and executives. To submit an announcement, e-mail it to webmaster@govexec.com or fax it to 202-739-8511.

C O M I N G S

The Senate has confirmed Sallyanne Harper to be the Environmental Protection Agency's chief financial officer. Harper has been acting CFO since July 1995, before which she spent three years as deputy CFO. Prior to her tenure at EPA, Harper served as a procurement and contracting officer with the Navy for 10 years. She is secretary-treasurer of the Chief Financial Officers Council.

Mark A. Abramson will be heading up the new PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government. Abramson, who founded government consulting firm Leadership Inc., and was the first president of the Council for Excellence in Government, will serve as the endowment's executive director. The endowment will award grants to academics, non-profit organizations, journalists and government executives to study methods and models for making government work better. Abramson is also a public administration professor at George Mason University and a contributing editor to Government Executive.

President Clinton is nominating John D. Hawke Jr., the Treasury Department's undersecretary for domestic finance, as Comptroller of the Currency. Hawke, a former Georgetown University law professor and senior partner at the Washington law firm of Arnold and Porter, would replace acting Comptroller Julie Williams, who has filled the position since Eugene Ludwig left the office last spring.

EPA lawyer Larry Sperling is heading south to be the United States' environmental attache to Mexico. The position was created in 1990 and is held by EPA career employees. Sperling has been with EPA since 1991. He has worked on numerous international environmental agreements, including provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Also at EPA, President Clinton has nominated J. Charles Fox to serve as assistant administrator for water. Fox, now the EPA's associate administrator and chief reinventor, would replace Robert Perciasepe, who would become assistant administrator for air and radiation.

President Clinton's pick for commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services is Patricia T. Montoya. Montoya is currently an HHS regional director in Dallas.

Senior management at the Army's Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) at Fort Monmouth, N.J., is going through some changes. First, CECOM Commander Maj. Gen. Gerard P. Brohm appointed Raoul C. Cordeaux to fill the new position of assistant commander for information operations. Cordeaux had been CECOM's director of corporate information and deputy chief of staff for information management. Senior manager Martin J. Burger has assumed Cordeaux's former position. In addition, James R. Wagner will become an executive in CECOM's Research, Development and Engineering Center. He was previously the Software Engineering Center's deputy director. Edward C. Thomas will fill Wagner's shoes in that position. Richard E. Kelly, who had been director of personnel and training, succeeds Thomas as director of planning, analysis and integration for the command. Completing the shuffle, deputy personnel director Deborah Devlin will take over the personnel office as acting director.

G O I N G S

Coleta Brueck, a 24-year veteran of the Internal Revenue Service who most recently served as a senior consultant with LEADS Corp., a federal consulting firm, has been tapped to head a tax system modernization program for the District of Columbia. Brueck will be director of integrated tax systems for the city.

Federal Election Commission staff director John Surina is leaving the commission after 15 years to head the Agriculture Department's new ethics office.

Former assistant commissioner for patents Lawrence Goffney, who also held several other top positions at the Patent and Trademark Office, has set up shop at the Washington office of Dallas-based Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Goffney is a patent holder himself; he invented a scalp massager and light-up hubcaps.

The Energy Department's Romulo L. Diaz, Jr., may be heading over to the Environmental Protection Agency. Diaz has been director of DOE's Office of Regulatory Coordination since 1995. President Clinton has nominated him as assistant administrator for administration and resources management at EPA. Diaz has been with DOE since 1972.