CRS Report: 97-689 - Environmental Policy: Issues in Federal-State Relations

Specialist in Environmental Policy
Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division

Summary

The topic of devolution, shifting responsibility for governmental programs from the federal level to states and localities, has been much discussed recently by policymakers throughout government. Environmental programs are part of this debate. Proponents of environmental devolution say that shifting intergovernmental responsibilities is critical to recognizing the progress made by states in enhancing their capacities to protect local environmental quality, to resolving long-standing friction due to federal oversight of state programs, and to providing states with the flexibility to achieve cost efficiencies and address the states' priorities.

The Clinton Administration has been pursuing a number of government reinvention efforts, one theme of which is to "empower" state and local governments. The Environmental Protection Agency EPA) has been at the center of many of the Administration's efforts to reinvent government, and reinventing the federal-state partnership has been high on EPA1s agenda. Much of what EPA has done in this regard is through the National Environmental Performance Partnership System (NEPPS). It is a formal agreement between EPA and states to fundamentally reshape their roles and responsibilities in administering the major environmental statutes, give states more flexibility, and reduce federal oversight.

EPA and six states signed pilot agreements to implement NEPPS for FY1996. In FY1997, 30 states have either signed agreements or are working toward them. An important tool in the implementation of NEPPS is the option for states to receive consolidated grants that will allow states to target funds to meet their specific needs. This year, 22 states will receive consolidated grant funding from EPA. At this early stage, it is difficult to assess success or failure of NEPPS, but areas of interest include how programmatically comprehensive the EPA-state agreements are and how EPA and states clarify goals and criteria in the agreements. Among the most difficult, yet important, aspects of implementing NEPPS is federal-state agreement on environmental goals and measures and how the states' programs will be assessed.

Considering the normal tensions present in federal-state relations, coupled with the public attention on implementing NEPPS, it is not surprising that the process has initially been rocky. Recently, there has been increased friction about EPA's policy on state environmental audit laws and a perception by some observers that EPA-state cooperation on enforcement has broken down. One of the most visible areas of recent tension concerns streamlining by EPA of its procedures for approving state regulatory innovation projects. At this point, while these disagreements are highly visible, their long4erm significance is difficult to predict.

Congress' interest in these issues could take several directions. It could be reflected through oversight hearings, for example. Congressional appropriators, who have supported recent efforts by EPA and states, are likely to show continued interest in both the substance of intergovernmental relations and implications for fiscal matters. Finally, Congress might explore statutory changes to facilitate changes in the EPA-state partnership. For now, though, despite frustration that some state officials have expressed, the prospect for congressional action is far from clear.

The discussion among policymakers of devolution - shifting responsibility for governmental programs from the federal level to states and localities - has returned to prominence recently. In particular, proposals to dc-federalize programs that have been centrally managed and administered by the federal government have been widely debated. Particularly during the 104th Congress, there was discussion and some legislative action to shift power to states over broad areas of social policy, including welfare. It continues in the 105th Congress over policies and programs such as job training, highways, and public housing.¹

Environmental programs, too, are being considered in the ongoing discussion of federal and state roles and shifting responsibilities For example, in a 1995 report, the National Academy of Public Administration NAPA) suggested that the Environmental Protection Agency EPA) should give states more decisionmaking authority. Progress in protecting the environment depends on devolving responsibility to the states for administering environmental programs, NAPA observed.² The proponents of environmental devolution cite many reasons to justify shifting program and administrative responsibility. Devolution is critical, they say, to recognizing the progress made by states since the 1970s in enhancing their capacities to protect local environmental quality, to resolving long-standing intergovernmental friction due to federal oversight of state programs, and to providing states with the flexibility to achieve cost efficiencies and address the states' priorities. States argue that if they have the flexibility to pursue cost-effective environmental strategies, the financial gap between environmental program needs and available resources will be eased -- funding and program mandates being a central issue in the federal-state relationship.

In the area of environmental policy, while there are significant federal-state issues, the case is somewhat different from others where devolution is currently of interest. Traditionally, environmental policy is characterized more as cooperative federalism rather than wholly federal or wholly state-local in nature. Cooperative federalism suggests a system of shared responsibilities in which both the state and federal governments fulfill integral, mutually beneficial functions.³ Environmental programs rely on a functioning partnership between levels of government. One writer refers to this as a "single stream of governance in which "each level is related to the other, each needs the other. "⁴ In this interpretation, EPA has the leadership role in establishing national goals, and states have the leadership role in achieving them. These relative roles have not at all times operated smoothly, and some analysts have viewed the federal government's actions more as imposing mandates upon the states, sometimes without funding to implement the mandates.

Congress has been attentive to federal-state relations in environmental policy and has defined and, from time to time, refined their essential roles and responsibilities under each of the federal environmental statutes. Further, Congress has assisted states financially by authorizing and appropriating grants for use in the day-to-day implementation of these federal laws, i.e., to assist states with standard setting, permitting, monitoring, and enforcement. Other funding assists states with the capital costs of projects needed for compliance with some environmental laws, such as municipal wastewater treatment plant construction. Especially recently, Congress has been sensitive to imposing unfunded environmental mandates on states and localities. In the 104th Congress, for example, a measure was enacted (P.L. 104-4) that requires the Senate and House to take a separate, majority vote in order to pass any bill that would impose unfunded mandates of more than $50 million on states and cities or more than $100 million on the private sector.

The Clinton Administration has been pursuing a number of government reinvention efforts since March 1993, with an overall objective of creating a government that works better and costs less. The first product of these efforts, the September 1993 National Performance Review, recommended changes built around such themes as eliminating regulatory overkill, using market mechanisms to solve problems, encouraging efficiency and innovation, and empowering state and local governments. EPA has been at the center of many of the Administration's efforts to reinvent government, and reinventing the federal-state partnership has been high on EPA's agenda. (For more information, see CRS Report 96-283, Reinventing the Environmental Protection Agency and EPA's Water Programs.)

Much of what EPA has done in this regard is through the National Environmental Performance Partnership System NEPPS). NEPPS is a formal agreement between EPA and states to fundamentally reshape their roles, responsibilities, and relationships in administering the major environmental statutes. This report describes the current status of NEPPS, work by EPA and states to develop core performance measures and environmental indicators, and recent evidence of friction between EPA and states, even as they implement a new relationship.

NEPPS was launched in May 1995 by an agreement between EPA and state environmental officials, following 2 years' of discussion about ways to reinvent the EPA-state relationship in order to strengthen the management, efficiency, and effectiveness of the nation's environmental programs. NEPPS is premised on three keys to environmental improvements: focusing on results, achieving productivity gains by allowing innovation by states, and allowing priority-setting.

The performance partnership system is embodied in individual agreements negotiated between states and EPA regional offices. This new direction is intended to allow states more authority to set priorities and tailor implementation. EPA also agrees to allow states greater flexibility to achieve results and reduce oversight of those state environmental programs that demonstrate exceptional performance. The new system replaces annual workplans negotiated between EPA and states with partnership agreements that reflect state priorities and eliminate much of the bureaucracy of the traditional agreement process.⁵ States will have freer rein to pick their own goals and shift resources to priority problems, within the context of national standards and program requirements which still apply.

At the start of the NEPPS process, states and EPA engage in a joint planning and priority-setting dialogue. States assess their environmental conditions and identify critical program issues. EPA also prepares an assessment. Then, through negotiating a Performance Partnership Agreement PPA), the state and EPA work towards an environmental management process that, relative to past efforts, has greater coherence (the agreement is one document, not separate programmatic workplans, as in the past), is more open to the public, and has less federal-state duplication.

EPA and six states signed pilot agreements to implement NEPPS for FYI 996 In FY 1997, the level of participation is increasing significantly; as of June 1997, 29 states had either signed PPAs or were working toward agreements for FY1997. ⁶ The agreements vary considerably in what they cover. More than half of the total include all federal and state environmental programs, while in the remaining states, the PPA covers a more limited set of programs, such as water programs only, or pollution prevention programs only, or federal programs only (excluding state programs that do not involve EPA).

Last year, EPA officials had indicated their hope that all states would enter into PPAs in 1997. Thus, while the number of 1997 PPAs is greater than the number of pilot agreements in 1996, it is smaller than EPA had anticipated.

An important feature of NEPPS is the option of flexible funding. In the FY 1996 appropriations bill for EPA P.L. 104-134), Congress authorized EPA to award Performance Partnership Grants (PPGs), consolidated state environmental grants, in lieu of traditional grants separately supporting state air, water, hazardous waste, and other programs. Consolidated grants are intended to reduce administrative burdens and improve environmental performance by allowing states and tribes to target funds to meet their specific needs. The objective of PPGs is to focus on results which are oriented to community needs, rather than on regulatory inputs and micromanagement. EPA believes that the major benefit will be to improve the ability of states and tribes to integrate their environmental programs.

Of the 29 Performance Partnership Agreements for FY1997, 14 include PPGs. In addition, seven states have PPGs only,⁷ bringing the total of PPGs for FY1997 to 21.

EPA sees a number of areas that need refinement as NEPPS implementation proceeds⁸. These include:

Assessing NEPPS So Far. At this early stage, it is difficult to assess success or failure of NEPPS, and, given the diversity of states and their local environmental conditions, it may never be fully possible. However, a recent report prepared by the Environmental Law Institute ELI) reviews five of the initial state-federal agreements under NEPPS to focus on whether and how the agreements achieve and measure environmental results, provide flexibility, and provide accountability.⁹ ELI found that NEPPS has resulted In some significant improvements over the pre-existing intergovernmental system. It has opened the process to the public and has produced PPAs that are flexible and tailored to particular circumstances of individual states. Also, the programmatic self-assessments done by states at the beginning of the process appear to be credible and useful to the states and public in identifying what works and what doesn't work in state programs.

ELI also identified several issues of concern, beginning with a lack of public involvement in creating NEPPS and developing individual PPAs. ELI found that because most of the PPAs that it reviewed cover a limited number of media or resource areas, they don't yet fulfill the potential of a comprehensive view of all of a state's environmental programs. Because the agreements are written from the state's perspective, relatively few of the priorities identified by EPA's national program managers are included, raising the question of how EPA will assure that its priorities are implemented nationally. Finally, ELI said there is need for EPA and the states to clarify the goals for PPAs (are they annual workplans or long-term priority-setting documents?), as well as criteria for what issues might be essential and how national priorities will be addressed.

One of the most difficult, yet important, aspects of implementing NEPPS is for the parties to reach agreement on environmental goals and measures and how the states' programs will be assessed and problems corrected. Parties involved with NEPPS have the goal of moving away from traditional program accounting towards a system that assesses environmental results. Performance Partnership Agreements consist of strategic goals and priorities jointly determined by EPA and states, along with environmental and programmatic indicators to evaluate progress and demonstrate accountability by the states. To that end, core performance measures were designed into the NEPPS system to provide a focused set of measurable priorities most important to EPA's national program managers. EPA and state program managers will use core performance measures as tools to track their progress in achieving environmental results by clearly portraying changes in environmental conditions.

In the past, federal and state programs most often were measured by discreet program outcomes (often referred to as "bean counting"). These traditional measures of program outcome typically are discrete quantitative or qualitative measures of activities, such as numbers of permits issued or enforcement actions initiated. while these types of measures are useful administratively, they are of limited value in tracking progress in environmental results. Thus, for some time, environmental managers throughout government have been attempting to emphasize performance results, rather than process and proxies, in order to measure what is happening to ambient air or water quality or ecosystems. To do so requires identifying a common set of national environmental goals and indicators to measure the effectiveness and success of environmental programs. States participating in NEPPS can use core performance measures as a yardstick of success, instead of the traditional activity measures.

Well before NEPPS was initiated, states and EPA had been developing environmental indicators, using varying processes with varying degrees of formality. Many (but not all) states have been working on systems or strategies for environmental indicators as part of strategic planning and/or environmental management processes. These projects typically evaluate whether specific environmental indicators can be used as substitutes for existing measures of program success to illustrate the real status of the environment through actual conditions of air, water, land, and wildlife. In some states, this is a formal and statewide effort. In others, there are individual efforts in specific programs only. Many states have by now developed "state of the environment" reports with factual information but not indicators, per Sc. Even among some states that are early participants in NEPPS, development of indicator systems has lagged the states' efforts to pursue flexibility and innovation. ¹⁰

EPA has been working on indicators in several ways, as well. First, some individual program offices have for a long time published data that report trends in environmental conditions, such as air quality, hazardous waste, and water quality data. In 1996, the Office of Water published its first "Environmental Indicators of Water Quality in the United States," an effort to both report trends and assess the effectiveness of programs in meeting national environmental goals for water. This report identifies several water quality objectives (e.g., conserve and enhance public health), along with specific indicators that can be used to evaluate progress towards the goal (e.g., data on population served by drinking water systems with one or more violations of health-based requirements).

EPA also has worked with states on environmental indicators. Several years ago EPA initiated the State Environmental Goals and Indicators Project, a cooperative agreement between EPA and the Florida Center for Public Management FCPM) at Florida State University. Its purpose is to ensure the effective participation of state environmental agendas in the development of environmental goals and indicators. In 1995, FCPM produced a list of 17 initial indicators that could be used to support environmental results relevant to Performance Partnership Agreements (see Appendix to this report). Indicators on that initial list met several other criteria, as well, including 1) the indicator was national in scope and could be consistently displayed at the state level; 2) the indicator currently existed and was available to the states; and 3) it met other essential criteria, such as the indicator is measurable, is important and relevant to a desired goal or issue, and consists of data collected over a sufficient period of time to allow analysis of trends.

Work by EPA and states is continuing to refine the indicators, as well as a framework for core performance measures, of which the indicators are part. In the context of NEPPS, a number of key terms which constitute this framework are related, as can be illustrated by examples developed by EPA.¹¹

An EPA-state workgroup is devoting considerable attention to refining the core performance measures for future-year PPAs. EPA's goal is to narrow the framework to about 10 environmental and programmatic indicators each for about five major program areas. Indicators fall into one of three broad categories. First are those for which adequate data are available now and can be used to support the indicator without significant additional cost considerations. Second are indicators which are presently feasible and could be made available if some barrier were overcome, such as cost or analytical complexity. Third are prospective indicators for which there is no reasonable prospect of development without extraordinary resource investment; these are designs only, for now. One issue being debated is the extent to which indicators in the second and third groups should be listed with core performance measures, as a means of accommodating EPA efforts to establish new data collection processes.

At the same time, there is a hierarchy of indicators, ranging from some which do not reflect environmental measures but for which data are readily available (such as administrative actions by federal or state agencies), to others which have value in describing environmental trends but the general quality of data may be less consistent (such as changes in ecosystem health). Clearly, another issue is which indicators to select from the hierarchy of possibilities.

In May, EPA and states issued a draft statement outlining core performance measures to be used during FY 1998. Performance measures are further along for some programs (water, air, waste, and pollution prevention) than others (enforcement), and it is expected that all will be refined over time. ¹²

From EPA's perspective, another important reason for developing environmental indicators is the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), which is intended to provide for the establishment of strategic planning and performance measurement by the federal government. It requires all federal agencies to prepare, by 1999, annual reports presenting outcome measures showing results of their programs. EPA expects that its indicator and outcome reporting activities will be useful in preparing national outcome data reports in association with GPRA requirements.

Considering the normal tensions present in federal-state relations, coupled with the high public visibility of implementing NEPPS, it is not surprising that the process has experienced ups and downs over the last two years. The federal-state partnership has not always been harmonious, and there is ample history of friction over the desire of states to implement national programs flexibly according to their own priorities, versus EPA's need to oversee national programs and account for federal funds provided to states. EPA's actions are often perceived by states as micromanaging and second-guessing.

Environmental Audit Laws. One area of friction is EPA policy on state environmental audit laws. About 20 states have enacted laws intended to encourage industrial facilities to voluntarily perform audits as a means of fostering environmental compliance. A number of them grant immunity for most violations found through voluntary compliance checks that then are reported to regulators and are remedied quickly. Some also protect audit reports from being introduced as evidence in courts. EPA, which has a policy of encouraging voluntary audits, has raised concerns that some of these laws interfere with the enforcement authority that states need to implement federal environmental laws. Because of this, EPA has threatened to withhold granting authority to some of the states to administer federally delegated enforcement programs under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and others. The agency is seeking change to portions of the state laws that it believes do not meet minimum requirements. While some states have recently agreed to amend their laws (e.g., Texas and Idaho), discussions continue between federal and state officials elsewhere Michigan). (For more information, see CRS Report 96-332 ENR, Environmental Audit Privilege: State Laws and Federal Policy)

Enforcement. A related issue is federal-state disagreements over enforcement issues. Enforcement is a key area of environmental policy in which federal and state governments share responsibilities: states have primary responsibility under most federal programs, and the majority of enforcement actions are taken by states, but EPA retains authority to assist states, when asked, and to act against polluters without being asked, when a state fails to act. Recent tension was triggered in part by an EPA Inspector General's report that was critical of Pennsylvania for failing to report significant clean air violations to EPA. Some observers said that this was largely a case of misunderstanding between the agencies about what is a serious violation and what circumstances justify certain types of penalties. The differences were aggravated, however, when EPA subsequently launched a nationwide review to determine whether other states were deficient in carrying out enforcement responsibilities, and state officials asserted that EPA's actions were more political than substantive.¹³

Enforcement tensions also have increased as a result of several instances of EPA "overfiling" an enforcement case, that is, acting on violations that previously were the subject of state enforcement action. Federal officials (EPA and Department of Justice) say that overfiling occurs rarely (a fact confirmed by a survey by the Environmental Council of States), but is defensible when it does occur. Many states, however, believe that cooperation and partnership in enforcement have broken down generally because EPA falls to consult with states or respect their primary responsibility. The topic of federal-state relationships over environmental enforcement was the subject of a June 10 oversight hearing by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Regulatory Innovations. One of the most visible areas of recent tension between EPA and state environmental officials concerns streamlining EPA approval of state regulatory innovation projects

Beginning in the fall of 1996, state and EPA officials cooperated to draft an agreement that would commit both sides to a series of principles for implementing regulatory innovation projects and creating a new process for reviewing those projects at the state and federal level. States and EPA acknowledge that one of the important objectives of NEPPS was to overcome the difficulty that states had experienced when they sought to innovate, such as regulating multi-media pollution problems. Both recognized that the time and resources involved in negotiating approval of innovations outside of normal programmatic approaches was stifling. To overcome these problems, a task force of EPA, represented by the EPA Reinvention Team, and state officials, represented by the Environmental Council of States(ECOS), worked on how to encourage innovative approaches within the context of NEPPS. ECOS officials hope that the agreement can apply to a variety of innovative projects, such as Project XL and the Common Sense Initiative (CSI), as well. Project XL and CSI are EPA's flagship regulatory reinvention initiatives. The former is a program to give selected entities (mainly industries) an opportunity to test new approaches for meeting environmental goals through sitespecific agreements. The latter is similar but focuses on efforts to streamline and revise the regulatory environment affecting six major industry sectors.

In February 1997, EPA and the states circulated a draft agreement for comment. It outlined a process that EPA and states would follow to make decisions on certain types of regulatory innovation proposals and identified a number of principles that would apply, such as innovations must seek more efficient and/or effective ways of achieving goals, and they must be based on agreed-upon goals and objectives with results that can be reliably measured. It proposed a means of classifying regulatory innovation proposals with review and approval procedures for each.

EPA, because it has been heavily criticized for inadequate public involvement in other of the agency's reinvention projects, such as Project XL, sought wide comment on the draft proposal. States, too, wanted to avoid the problems with other stakeholders that have troubled Project XL and CSI discussions. A meeting with various stakeholder groups was held in February 1997, and at that meeting environmental group representatives raised a number of concerns. In particular, they were said to he uneasy about the move away from the accountability of traditional environmental programs. Some saw the draft as overemphasizing flexibility rather than results. They were critical of what they viewed as insufficient requirement that innovating facilities agree to "beyond-compliance commitments" that exceed current standards or requirements in exchange for regulatory flexibility or other innovation.

Soon after that meeting, EPA Deputy Administrator Fred Hansen wrote to ECOS officials to withdraw the draft agreement. Upon further review, he said, it had become clear that, while Administrator Carol Browner and he had intended that the process cover only minor changes to interpretations issues jointly administered by EPA and states, the draft covered more significant changes and thus was outside the scope of what the agency envisioned. States, in turn, were angered by EPA's actions and questioned the agency's commitment to an improved federal-state partnership and reinventing environmental regulation, in particular. Following publicity about these events, the EPA Administrator and Deputy Administrator met with ECOS members, in an attempt to restore relations among the parties. They agreed to participate in quarterly meetings with ECOS in the future and to try to overcome the disagreements over state regulatory innovations.¹⁴

Beyond the public statements on the desire to resolve the dispute, participants recognize that several fundamental issues require resolution. EPA's position is that an agreement should cover only reform projects that are less complex, are widely supported and do not compromise public involvement, and can be implemented quickly. EPA had been insisting that projects should guarantee environmental improvements, but agency officials have recently moved towards giving more flexibility on this issue. States believe that efficiency can be a stand-alone goal and that innovative projects should not need to demonstrate unproved environmental performance. The challenge is to bridge the differences and define which types of state reinvention proposals could be expedited and which more complex proposals could be tested or developed through policy dialogue. In the view of environmentalists, an equally important challenge is to ensure that the principle of striving for more progress to achieve environmental goals not be lost in the process of striving for flexibility and innovation.

Significance of These Events. At this point, the long-term significance of these recent events is difficult to predict. In the past, disputes between EPA and states have been less visible, generally involving state officials with responsibility for specific media programs. Now, though, with heightened visibility of NEPPS and the involvement of ECOS, which represents the highest level state environmental officials, problems are likely to draw more attention. Likewise, in such an environment, changing the status quo (such as varying traditional environmental programs) could be perceived as more troubling to such stakeholders as environmentalists.

Some who have been skeptical about EPA's commitment to improving federal-state relations now speculate on whether the dispute over regulatory innovation will possibly lead to EPA measures to end to innovations and flexibility generally and a permanent rift in the federal-state partnership. While it is too early to tell, such a view seems unlikely to prevail. With shared responsibilities being integral to all of the federal environmental laws, and with much at q,take for all parties to succeed with NEPPS, it seems more likely that federal and state officials will work to solve whatever problems now exist.

Congress1 involvement with these issues could take several directions. At one level, congressional interest could be manifested through oversight hearings such as the one on enforcement issues held by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June. More specifically, congressional appropriators, who have supported recent efforts by EPA and states, including the consolidated grants process, are likely to show continued interest in both the substance of intergovernmental relations and implications for fiscal matters.

Congressional interest could be reflected in action on statute-specific legislation, as well. For example, states have been lobbying for greater control over the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program. In particular, states are seeking more authority over the selection of appropriate cleanup remedies for Superfund sites. Superfund reauthorization legislation considered in the 104th Congress would have permitted states to seek either full or partial program delegation of program authority, while EPA's role would be limited to financial auditing and a narrow authority to take power back from the states if they do not carry out the law. Superfund reauthorization is again an environmental priority in the 105th Congress, and federal-state roles are again on the agenda. for information, see CRS Issue Brief 97025, Superfund Reauthorization Issues in the 105th Congress.)

Finally, Congress might explore statutory changes to establish changes in the EPA-state partnership, such as proposals to define and shape state regulatory innovation projects or broader proposals concerning criteria applicable to NEPPS agreements. Some state officials, frustrated by the recent disagreements with EPA, contend that legislation is required to remove barriers to meaningful innovative strategies. If states believe that reasonable reforms are being delayed or derailed by a burdensome EPA review process, they may seek federal legislation

For now, state officials are divided on whether to pursue legislation that would affirm and expand their authority to undertake regulatory innovations, especially while dialogue with EPA continues. Despite frustration that some have expressed, the need for legislation is disputed, and some are concerned that federal legislation on regulatory reinvention projects could become overly prescriptive. A related question is whether there is need for legislation to spell out the NEPPS process. Some federal and state officials believe that congressional endorsement of NEPPS would be useful, but here, too, they are concerned about the possibility of detailed requirements being imposed. Others express the view that NEPPS is all about the relations between states and EPA, and they doubt that there is a useful role for federal legislation concerning that relationship. Views on these issues are likely to evolve, along with the federal-state relationship to carry out environmental policy.

In 1995 the State Environmental Goals and Indicators Project developed an initial group of 17 prospective indicators for use in structuring EPA-state Performance Partnership Agreements. They are the basis for continuing discussions between EPA and states on core performance measures to be incorporated in PPAs.

¹ For further discussion, see CRS Issue Brief 97021, Federalism Issues in the 105th Congress. Debate over the sharing Of power and responsibility between the federal, state, and local governments is not new, of course: it began when the framers of the U.S. Constitution met in the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. Nor is recurrence of the debate only recent. Power in a wide range of functions migrated to the center at several points in U.S. history, notably the 1930s and 1960s. Then, in the 1970s, the Nixon and Ford Administrations sought to more effectively manage the intergovernmental grant system through revenue sharing and program consolidation. In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration stimulated debate on the appropriate roles of federal, state, and local government.

² National Academy of Public Administrators. Setting Priorities, Getting Results, A New Direction for EPA. April 1995. 221 p. Other recommendations concerning devolution from EPA to the states have come from diverse policy groups such as the National Environmental Policy Institute (Integrating Environmental Policy, A Blueprint for 21st Century Environmentalism, Fall 1996), the Progressive Foundation's Center for Innovation & the Environment (second Generation-A New Strategy for Environmental Protection, April 1996), and the Political Economy Research Center, PERC (Environmental Federalism: Thinking Smaller, December 1996)

³ Patton, Vickie L. "A Balanced Partnership." The Environmental Forum, vol.13, no. 3, May/June 1996. pp.16-22.

⁴Lepkowski, Will. "Government seeks new balance in environmental protection." Chemical & Engineering News, Oct. 30,1995. p.44.

⁵ In the past, EPA-state agreements generally were highly program-specific and were intended primarily to serve as grant agreements between the parties. They emphasized state performance of specific program activities, such as permits to be issued or industrial facilities to be inspected, as a way to hold states accountable for federal funds or other assistance received. The newer agreements under NEPPS are very different: most attempt in a single document to fully describe the state's activities, goals, and objectives for its environmental programs. Most identify strategic priorities (e.g., preventing pollution, reducing toxic releases, improving customer service) to replace the media-specific framework previously implemented. EPA has not issued guidance on preparing PPAs, nor has it attempted to impose uniformity on the process. Hence, the agreement documents vary widely in content and emphasis, reflecting individual state assessments and priorities, along with joint EPA-state commitments on resources, shared activities, and national and state-specific goals.

⁶ Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

⁸ Presentation by Shelley Metzenbaum, former EPA Associate Administrator for Regional Operations and State/Local Relations, Environmental Law Institute, Washington, DC, March 18, 1997

⁹ Environmental Law Institute. An Independent Review of the State-Federal Partnership Agreements for 1996. 1996. 1 vol.

¹⁰ More detailed information, including summaries of state environmental indicator initiatives, is available on thc Internet via http://www.fsu.edu/~cpm/segip.html

¹² States, EPA Near Framework Agreement on Measuring Environmental Performance." Daily Environment Reporter, May 27, 1997, pp. AA-1-AA-2. "ECOS Promotes Change from 'Beans' to Environmental Performance Measures. "ECOStates Online, June 9, 1997, http://sso.org/ecos.news.htm

¹³ "EPA/ECOS Form Committee to Ease Simmering Enforcement Disputes." Inside EPA, Jan.31, 1997. pp.2-3.

¹⁴ "Draft State-USEPA Deal Sets Principles and Process for Innovation," State Environmental Monitor, Feb.14, 1997, 14 p. "Hansen Derails Draft USPEA-State Pact on Reg Reinvention," State Environmental Monitor, Mar. 3, 1997, pp. 34. "State Commissioners Blast USEPA Call on Draft Reinvention Plan," State Environmental Monitor, Mar. 3, 1997, pp. 15-1 6. "States give EPA their bottom line on regulatory reform deal," Inside EPA, May 30, 1997, pp. 11-12.

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