Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 60

SATURDAY 10 Cover story Gardebring: The PCA's tough, young boss L. ,71 NSPs nuclear plants, hazardous chemical waste and Reserve Mining Co. Her associates say she has developed vastly more confidence than she had in the early months of her tenure. They say she now feels secure enough in her job that she doesn't feel compelled to put her personal stamp on every issue to prove her competence. "This is a neat job.

I want to enjoy it for a while. I'm getting to the point now where I can affect the agency the way I want to. I don't want a more complicated job than this yet." Despite her new-found love for the job, there still are problems. Her enthusiasm for the details of administration is perhaps reflected in the way she sorts papers: throwing them on the floor. She still depends on her close associates for expertise in greasing the bureaucratic i Sandra Gardebring "I think she likes to feel she's part of the club, accepted by those with the power." Some of Gardebring's associates believe she is more concerned with protecting her political future than following any kind of consistent environmental philosophy.

They cite her careful, respectful arm's-length relationship with Perpich and her close counsel with Peter Gove, her predecessor at the PCA, who is now a top aide to Sen. Wendell Anderson, D-Minn. "This job is not part of a personal mission. I don't see it as a stepping stone to politics or anything else, Gardebring says. "I didn't talk to Peter much in the beginning.

I wanted to feel that I was doing the job myself. Now I talk to him often about a number of things. But I am not at all Involved with Anderson or his campaign." Gardebring recently turned down an offer trt ItfTAmf tha tnn fHprfll 0nvimnmn. Coatnned from page 8 rial expressions border on exaggeration; her eyebrows travel almost an inch, and not always in tandem, when she reacts or makes a point in conversation. Her thoughts are complete, her words deliberate, her voice modulated, her features constantly shifting in time with her logic: to argue one-on-one with Garde-bring is to feel ensnared.

Associates praise her poise in battle. "I've seen her pushed and I've never seen her blow her cool," says state Rep. Gerry Sikorski, DFL-Stillwater. "She retains her analytical approach even under barrages of questioning." Gardebring says one of the hardest lessons of her job has been to keep her volatile emotions under rein. Her colleagues tell of instances when she would leave the room in the midst of intense argument, cry profusely, return, and give in.

"I used to get very upset, visibly upset. I get mad very "easily, lose my temper, and blow off steam. But it's over in a few minutes and I forget it. I think, though, that I've learned not to take everything so personally. I make the soundest decision I can make, and any attacks are not attacks on me.

"I don't rise and fall as a person on those decisions." "She has set do coherent goals for the agency. People are constantly uncertain about the direction the agency is moving. She is a lousy administrator." There were no attacks on Gardebring when Perpich appointed her in January 1977. In fact, there was very little public notice of her. She was an unknown with no enemies in or out of state government.

The environmentalists and the polluters were quiet, waiting and watching. For the most part, they still are. It has taken Gardebring a long time to get on track. She has been on the job for 18 months, but for at least 12 of those months, she has fought a number of professional and personal problems in asserting control over the PCA. The first and most obvious problems were her age and sex.

A building full of leisure-suited Minnesota engineers in white shoes and belts were not exactly thrilled to have a young, outspoken woman telling them what to do. And Gardebring found it difficult to do just that. "I lacked confidence to challenge the staff. I'm scared of them to a certain extent. I mean, many of them are men who are old enough to be my father.

If I asserted my authority more, they would feel more comfortable and so would Lacking any experience in supervising more than a few people, she also had trouble dealing with former close friends in the agency who were now her employees. Could she maintain those relationships or should she put distance between herself and her friends in order to make better decisions? She ended up doing both, according to her associates. Within the formal organization of the PCA, Gardebring set up her own palace guard. She surrounded herself with a small circle of confidants and used them as buffer between her and the staff. She also has relied heavily on them in areas where she is particularly inexperienced.

PCA staff report critical of the project and argued that NSP should be allowed to begin work on the project before an environmental impact review was finished. "There's always tome mixing of private and professional life in a job like hers. But at the point when it starts to affect the agency, then it's a matter of greater concern." Gardebring is criticized by many on her staff even by some in her inner circle for regularly dating one of her advisers, John Klaus, who is responsible for many crucial budget and spending decisions within the agency. Some of the critics are concerned that Gardebring will be unduly influenced by the staffer, whose ability to advise her they question. Others feel that Klaus gains some clout in the agency because of his relationship with Gardebring.

"I think I have now managed to separate my personal and professional life. It has been raised as an issue and I have looked at it reasonably and looked at what I do. I can make good decisions independent of my strong relationships within the agency." At the same time the fledgling director was struggling with personnel and personal problems within the agency, her marriage to a chemical company salesman was crumbling. There were months of days, she says, when the weight of her personal problems made going to work seem almost impossible. "The first year (as PCA director) was not fun for me.

I was not doing the job as well as I could, primarily because of my personal problems. I had no energy, no motivation." During this period, her first year in office, she was gone much of the time-sometimes three or four days a week to this conference or that workshop or that commission meeting. The agency languished directionless for much of that time and many on the PCA staff still resent Gardebring's aloofness. But since her divorce in December, things have steadily improved for Gardebring. She says she has thought a lot about what it means to have a high-pressure, high-profile job and still try to include other people in your life.

"My pursuits, my career, led to competition between me and my husband. I always made more money than him, my job was always one that society holds in higher status than his. "Being a public figure meant that there were times, semisocial gatherings, when he had to compete for my attention and when everyone would ask 'Who is that man? "Some men are scared away by the power associated with a job like mine. But I don't think it's impossible for someone in a position like mine to have strong relationships." Her friends say Gardebring is now in much better shape personally and professionally than she was six months ago. She has moved away from the hit-and-miss approach of her first year in office and is trying to chart the course of the agency for more than a week in advance.

She is picking her enemies, picking her fights for their impact, and leaving less important matters to the staff. In recent months, she has focused her attention and that of the public, qn a few major targets: such as budgeting and other administrative duties. Thus, a few friends were anointed as advisers and others found that they had to make an appointment to say hello. The system did not always work. A major report on the health effects of a proposed power plant was prepared by the PCA staff but Gardebring was not aware of its contents because her adviser usually responsible for that area was preoccupied for months with legislative issues.

When the day arrived for the scheduled release of the report, it was too late for Gardebring to hold it up without embarrassing the agency. "She has no environmentalist philosophy. She wants the environmentalists screaming on one side and industry screaming on the other." Gardebring calls herself an environmentalist, but her job has made her more of a referee than a flag-waving activist. "I have no party line on every issue. When industry comes in, I don't think they're necessarily right or wrong.

I don't set up the decision beforehand. "I can't be completely neutral, though. If I am, then one side is not represented, I don't represent pollution control overall. It's perfectly appropriate for me to be an advocate of strong enforcement." Environmental activists in the state have grown somewhat impatient with Gardebring's in-house administrative wrestling at the PCA. They want her to become much more of a publicly visible enforcer of environmental laws.

They resent her philosophy, wnich they believe puts them in an arena with industries usually much better armed with money and manpower. "Environmentalists expect the laws to be administered," says Rod Loper, president of Clear Air-Clear Water, one of the most influential environmental groups in the state. "We shouldn't have to be bird-dogging the agencies day after day, trying to get them to enforce the law and keep them from making deals or agreements to get around the law." The incident that most irritated state environmentalists was Gardebring's support of an exemption from the law for an NSP power-plapt She, 'Ignored, a tal official in the midwest, saying she didn't feel ready. But she says she is always looking. She is now under consideration for a job on President Carter's legal staff.

"Her life is In large measure consumed by her job. She has to protect the little private time she has for herself." Another long day for Gardebring. She leaves her office in a rush late in the afternoon, heading for a conference in the far western suburbs. Her car breaks down on the freeway: a snapped fan belt. A young man stops and offers her a ride to a gas station.

When the car is repaired and she roars into the conference center about an hour late, she wonders why she has this job anyway. But when she spots a group of conference participants some distance away, she is visibly and instantly transformed. As those attending the conference recognize her, she is swept into their conversations. The frazzled edges of the day smooth out, the smile appears, the voice lilts cheerily. She kisses a male friend.

Professional acquaintances flock to her. She basks in their attention and is the life of the party..