ASHINGTON - Several state environmental officials who have struggled fiercely against tougher federal air pollution regulations plan to meet next week with top executives of polluting industries to discuss how those standards might be changed if George W. Bush, the Republican governor of Texas, wins the presidency.
The event is being organized by Michigan's top environmental official, who reports to Governor John Engler, a key Bush ally. He had planned to allow utility company officials to help defray the costs of the meeting in Detroit, but later scrapped the idea.
The meeting's organizers said they're not trying to advise Bush exclusively or to burnish his environmental record, which many activists say is too pro-industry. Instead, they said, they hope to fashion more business-friendly environmental policies for the next administration with the help of state officials who are sympathetic to industry complaints of heavy-handedness by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Bob Fenech, a vice president of Consumers Energy, a large Michigan utility involved in the gathering, said the participants will present their recommendations to whoever wins in November: Bush or Vice President Gore.
''But if it's a Republican administration, they have a more open perspective on these issues than the Democrats, especially given the way we've been treated'' by the Clinton-era EPA, Fenech said.
Bush campaign spokesman Dan Bartlett said Wednesday, ''The first we ever heard of this meeting was yesterday,'' when the campaign received a call from the Detroit News, which disclosed the planned meeting in Wednesday's editions.
The industry executives originally planned to meet with environmental officials from as many as 17 state governments for the daylong April 27 session. Russell Harding, who heads the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, later decided business and state officials should meet separately in the same hotel, then join for a session at the end.
Those scheduled to attend include representatives of the Edison Electric Institute, whose president, Tom Kuhn, is a major Bush campaign fund-raiser. Several generally pro-Bush trade associations also plan to attend, including groups representing the paper and forestry sector, petroleum products and automakers General Motors and Toyota.
Harding, a Republican who has fought the EPA for years over what he considers its burdensome air pollution rules, invited representatives of 17 other states to the meeting. They include Robert Huston, Bush's appointee to head Texas's environmental agency; and James Seif, Pennsylvania's top environmental official, who was appointed by Bush ally Governor Tom Ridge. News accounts have said Seif is an adviser to the Bush campaign.
