Ford Administration Minutes of the Cabinet Meeting

THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON MINUTES OF THE CABINET MEETING WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 1975 The President convened the meeting at 2:10 p.m. He congratulated Secretary Hills for her work in gathering votes to sustain the veto of the Housing Bill. He indicated that all the members of the Cabinet did a good job, and he particularly complimented Jack Marsh and Max Friedersdorf for their efforts. The Presidentnoted that this was the first Cabinet Meeting for Secretary Hathaway, and he welcomed him. He also noted that it was John Scali's last Cabinet Meeting, and he indicated that there would be time at the end of the meeting for Ambassador Scali to make any remarks he felt appropriate. The President then introduced Doug Bennett, the new Director of the White House Personnel Office, to the Members of the Cabinet and indicated that Doug would soon be around to see them in order to explain the functions of his office. The President noted that there had been a number of reports recently of confusion and inconsistency in the operations of different bureaucracies. He was particularly concerned with some articles he had read discussing the contract compliance functions of HEW and the Labor Department and the impact of fund cutoffs in this area. He stressed the need to enforce governmental regulations in the right way. Some people in the bureaucracy, he noted, do not know how to deal with the public. They lack concern or consideration for the positions which individuals find themselves in when they confront a governmental bureaucracy. He then asked Jim Cannon for comments. Jim Cannon noted a report in the previous Saturday's paper which stated that a hospital had been subjected to two conflicting interpretations of regulations, one by HEW, the other by OSHA. OSHA, it appears, required that plastic liners be used in all wastebaskets; HEW inspectors, on the other hand, demanded that such liners be removed because they constituted a potential fire hazard. A second problem involved the cutoff of funds for heart research to a university in the Washington area because the university had not met numerical goals in the equal opportunity area. GERALD R. FORD LERRANY