LATimes

Heating a Potato at the Cheneys Energy: Partisan flames build over an effort to get the Navy to foot vice president's utility bill.

EDWIN CHEN, TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, energy czar of the Bush administration, wants the Navy to bear the full brunt of the escalating utility bills at his government-provided Victorian mansion--a request that touched off a partisan furor Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Citing "fluctuating and unpredictable" utility costs, the White House is asking the Navy, which owns and administers the 33-room Embassy Row house, to foot the entire bill.

If Congress approves--and a GOP-controlled House committee gave its blessings Tuesday--it would free Cheney from having to pay a projected $142,590 this year out of the current $300,000-a-year budget for the vice presidential mansion, which is on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Such a new payment scheme, if approved, would cause the Cheney residence budget to diminish by $43,500--the current appropriation for utility bills, according to the vice president's top aides.

Either way, taxpayers end up subsidizing Cheney's gas and electric bills--a tradition that predates this administration. But at a time when most Americans also are facing higher energy bills, the proposed funding shift looms as a political liability for Cheney and the Bush White House.

Senior Cheney staffers played down the funding shift request, characterizing it as the completion of a simple accounting change begun under the Clinton-Gore administration. They noted that the Cheneys are consuming less energy than the Gores, who had several teenage children living at the house during their tenure.

"Cheney had zero to do with this," said Mary Matalin, counselor to the vice president. "The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are not sitting at their breakfast table determining how these accounts are handled."

But Democrats refused to cooperate. Some continued sniping even after the House Appropriations Committee approved the funding transfer on a straight party-line vote.

Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego), who represents a district with a large Navy presence, urged his constituents to send their utility bills to the Navy as well.

"Wouldn't it be nice if the seniors on fixed incomes, the working families and small businesses across the country had that option?" Filner fumed.

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the administration's request "shows a staggering insensitivity to the economic hardships facing working families."

The funding flap may prove sensitive for the Bush administration in part because polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believes that Bush and Cheney--both former energy company executives--favor Big Business over Joe Six-Pack.

At the same time, the request may reinforce the image among some that the Bush administration is out of touch with common concerns--in much the same way that a $200 haircut aboard Air Force One damaged Bill Clinton's populist image early in his first term.

Cheney has also been on the defensive on energy issues since April, when he seemed to denigrate conservation, saying: "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." The vice president has been backpedaling ever since, most recently Monday afternoon in Philadelphia amid a renewed administration effort to sell Bush's long-term energy strategy.

This is not the first time that energy consumption at the century-old vice presidential mansion had become a political football.

During the Clinton-Gore years, Republican appropriators paid for a meter to monitor energy use at the 11,000-square-foot house--about the time that Gore had installed various state-of-the-art energy devices, some of which actually increased costs, according to Bush administration officials who spoke Tuesday on background.

One such feature keeps the hot water in the pipes throughout the house hot--so that even faucets far removed from water heaters instantly produce hot water, said one White House aide. For that reason, at least in part, the house's energy bills rose from $83,811 in fiscal year 1999 to $136,465 in fiscal year 2000, according to House Appropriations Committee documents.

John Scofield, a spokesman for Republicans on the panel, said energy consumption at the vice president's mansion is down by an estimated 30% with the Cheneys as occupants, as compared with a like period with the Gores as occupants.

"We've reduced consumption and thereby costs," Matalin said. "But costs are still high."

In addition to paying utility bills, the residence budget pays for official entertainment, household supplies, cleaning and transportation costs, said Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for the vice president.

The House Appropriations Committee also rejected a Democratic attempt Tuesday to bar corporations and individual donors from providing free and unlimited "consumable items, or funds for them" at official functions at the mansion.

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2001