Trust in government higher, but people generally more positive

By WILL LESTER
Associated Press Writer

April 12, 2000
Web posted at: 5:09 p.m. EDT (2109 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Trust in government as a whole rebounded after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but people still take a much more favorable view of individual government agencies -- except for the Internal Revenue Service, says a poll released Wednesday.

"There's no way a lot of smiling, courteous IRS employees are going to make tax collection popular," said Paul Light, an expert on government reform and director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. "But there's actually good news in this poll about the IRS. People think highly of the employees, they think they're professional, they just don't happen to like the product."

While taxpayers and business tax officers had generally negative views of the tax agency, professional tax preparers felt differently -- with six of 10 viewing the agency in a positive light.

Most agencies are viewed differently by different sets of their customers, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

For example, four of five environmental advocates have a favorable view of the Environmental Protection Agency, and two-thirds of the public felt that way, but only half of the business regulatory officers polled felt positively about the agency.

As for the Social Security Administration, three-fourths of recipients of benefits had a positive view of the agency compared with just over half of the payroll taxpayers.

"Depending on your relationship with the agency, it can make a difference in how you evaluate it," said Mary McIntosh, a Princeton Survey Research Associates analyst who directed the study. "Favorable feelings about an agency vary according to how much people support or oppose the mission of that agency. It really does depend on who you ask."

The Food and Drug Administration was seen favorably by more than four of five medical professionals, business regulatory officials, advocates and the chronically ill.

The Federal Aviation Administration was viewed positively by four of five frequent fliers and two-thirds of pilots, but only six of 10 air traffic controllers.

McIntosh said the tendency is to assume that the generally unfavorable feelings people have about government as a whole spill over to individual agencies, but the poll indicates otherwise.

A separate Pew poll taken in February showed that four of 10 people said they trusted the federal government just about always or most of the time, compared with only about one-fourth of the public who felt that way in November 1998, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment drama.

"A person's overall trust in government is usually related to how the economy is doing, how they feel about Bill Clinton, how they feel about campaign corruption," Light said. "They generally are much more trusting of their mailman, more favorable toward the person who answers the phone at Social Security."

Majorities of every group polled said employees of the five agencies were courteous.

The pollsters surveyed 3,147 people between mid-January and mid-March with error margins ranging from plus or minus 4 percentage points for the 641 individual taxpayers to larger error margins for smaller samples such as those who receive Social Security benefits.

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