Consumer Chief Jump-Starts Agency : Regulations: Ann Brown focuses the safety commission on protecting children by negotiating with the manufacturers.

One of Ann Brown’s first acts as the government’s chief product-safety regulator was to telephone a woman whose young daughter strangled when her coat drawstring became stuck in a playground slide.

Four months later, the girl’s mother, Thelma Sibley, stood beside Brown when the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that 21 makers of children’s garments had agreed to replace the potentially hazardous strings with buttons, zippers, snaps and Velcro.

Sibley said she was surprised the issue had been dealt with so quickly; her only child died that January at age 5. She was told that agency staff knew of the problem for some time, but hadn’t formally presented it to the commission.

The issue was one of Brown’s priorities after taking over as the commission’s chairwoman in March, 1994.

“Maybe if Ann Brown had been there sooner, my daughter would be alive today,” Sibley, an automotive worker from Ann Arbor, Mich., said in an interview.

Brown’s work on the drawstring and other issues in her first year as head of the independent regulatory agency has helped shake it from a slumber that some critics say was induced by years of Republican presidents.

But whether she continues the activist role begun under President Clinton depends now on a Republican-controlled Congress that’s cutting spending across government. Brown doesn’t believe her agency will be a target.

“I think that product safety, particularly the safety of children, cuts across party lines,” the longtime consumer advocate said in an interview in her office outside Washington. The job is her first in government.

“Even the most anti-regulatory at heart feel that they want to keep our children safe. Our issue is very, very important,” she added.

But Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing the agency’s budget, said cuts were likely.

“It’s very likely that her agency will participate in the belt-tightening that will be necessary for all of . . . (the) agencies” under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction, Lewis said.

The agency’s budget has been reduced substantially over the past 15 years. Its staff of 486 is down from a high of 978 in 1979 and its $42 million budget is about the same size as 20 years ago, Brown said.

Congress is debating legislation that would require regulatory agencies to analyze the costs and risks of the rules they impose on business. Brown says her agency already is doing that.

“I think we are the little reinvented agency that people already want their government to be,” she said.

She chooses to negotiate with industry rather than regulate it, since the latter process is costly, time-consuming and often lands in court without solving the original problem, she said.

The agreement with the makers of children’s clothing is one example. Another agreement with industry eliminated the loop from most window blind cords, which are blamed for at least 12 child strangulations a year.

The CPSC has authority over 15,000 consumer products.

The commission also has worked with industry to obtain 300 voluntary product recalls for items ranging from lead-tainted crayons to defective metal bunk beds and faulty coffee makers. Included was the largest clothing recall ever--of 250,000 sheer rayon Indian-made skirts deemed dangerously flammable.

The three-member panel has been minus a commissioner since October.

“Given that limitation, she’s done a great job of using the chairman’s position as a bully pulpit and as a pro-consumer forum,” said Bill Wood, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s consumer education director.

The Toy Manufacturers of America and the National Assn. of Manufacturers, whose members are regulated by the CPSC, have criticized Brown’s motives and fondness for publicity. But officials of both industry organizations were more cautious in talking to The Associated Press.

“The NAM just really isn’t in the role of speaking on the performance of agencies,” said David Rohn, an executive director of the 13,500-member association.

Alan Hassenfeld, chairman and chief executive officer of Hasbro Inc., one of the country’s largest toy manufacturers, said that, while he has disagreed with Brown, “I’ve found her more than anything else to be very fair.”

“Very passionate about what they believe in” was the way Nancy Meier, a Nike clothing manager who participated in the July, 1994, drawstrings news conference, described Brown and her staff. “It’s refreshing,” she said.

Besides fending off proposed budget cuts, Brown’s priorities include continuing the focus on child protection issues and calling attention to fire hazards and sports-related injuries.

“People in this country want less regulation . . . but what they really want is good, effective government,” she said. “That’s what we’re trying to do here. We are not frivolous. We’re serious about safety.”

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Profile: Ann Brown

Title: Chairwoman, Consumer Product Safety Commission

Education: George Washington University, BA, 1959

Previous jobs: Vice president, Consumer Federation of America, 1979-1994; board chairman, Public Voice, 1983-1994; national and local chairman, Consumer Affairs Committee, Americans for Democratic Action, 1972-1994

Family: Husband, Donald. Two daughters. Three grandchildren.

Quote: “We figured out that we cost an American family 44 cents per year to keep people safe in their homes. It’s less than a pack of Life Savers and we really do save lives.”

Source: Associated Press