Raines leaving as OMB director

Franklin Raines announced today that he will step down from his post as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

President Clinton, in a statement given today at the White House, said he intended to nominate OMB Deputy Director Jack Lew as the new OMB director.

Raines, who has been OMB director since September 1996, will leave OMB May 20 and become chairman designate of Fanny Mae.

In his first month at OMB, Raines got the attention of the federal information technology community with a memo that gave agency heads three weeks to explain whether their fiscal 1998 budget requests for systems met eight decision criteria. Projects that did not satisfy the criteria, which were quickly dubbed "Raines' rules,'' would not be funded.

Trained as a lawyer, Raines has spent his career in government and in the financial industry. He served in OMB during the Carter administration as associate director for economics and government.

Lew worked as policy director for Rep. Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill (D-Mass.), the late speaker of the House, and he has helped to create Clinton's youth service program AmeriCorps.