WASHINGTON – A coalition of state environmental officials, including Maine Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Martha Kirkpatrick, are asking the new Bush-Cheney administration to expand the federal-state dialogue on environmental issues.

The wish list includes enhanced funding to protect environmental infrastructure at the federal and state levels, funding for scientific support to better monitor pollution and more targeted research and development activities.

The coalition of officials called on the incoming administration to focus on strengthening the federal-state partnership role by reforming oversight of regional offices and inspector general reviews to focus on “broad indicators of success” and to clarify the meaning of delegation and oversight roles.

The letter by the Environmental Council of the States, as the coalition of environmental officials is known, was sent to Vice President-elect Dick Cheney in his capacity as chairman of the administration’s transition.

More than 70 percent of federal environmental laws are enforced by states under delegations-of-authority and virtually all environmental monitoring (94 percent, says the group) is managed by the states.

“Given the pre-eminent role the states play in implementing federal environmental laws,” the letter said, “we believe our top priority is adequate federal support of both the basic state delegated programs and equally important, adequate federal support for improved data collection and management; better monitoring of the environment and pollution sources; targeted research and development; better performance measures, including environmental indicators, and innovative ways to achieve and go beyond compliance.”

The letter was co-signed by 42 heads of state environmental commissions. Other issues that Kirkpatrick and her colleagues are pressing include the appointment of senior environmental personnel with extensive backgrounds in state environmental issues.

State experience has been prominent in the early picks for jobs in the Bush-Cheney administration that have an impact on the environment. New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman has been selected as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton has been tapped as the designee to head the Interior Department.

The state officials have a long list of requests to press the administration on, including:

. Support for efforts on Capitol Hill to achieve reauthorization of key environmental statutes, including development of a generic authorizing statute for EPA;

. Increasing the emphasis within EPA to support state-led watershed, air shed and other geographically-focused activities;

. Assuring that federal facilities and public lands are a model for environmental compliance and innovation;

. Increasing the EPA focus on international environmental issues;

. Increasing the focus on environmental impacts on smaller communities; and

. Setting up a science board independent of the EPA to review controversial scientific issues for an independent analysis.

The environmental officials say they have achieved greater input over the past five years in providing input to the EPA, but it would like that input to be taken “more seriously,” particularly within regional fiefdoms.

“We want early and meaningful involvement of states in major decisions which affect us,” the letter said.

Other signatories from New England include Arthur Rocque Jr., commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection; Jan Reitsma, director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management; Robert Durand, secretary of environmental affairs for the Massachusetts Office of Environmental Affairs; and Scott Johnstone, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.