Carol Browner, President Obama's Assistant for Energy and Climate Change, will be speaking in St. Petersburg Friday morning at a Community Roundtable on the BP oil disaster.

Browner, a Florida native who previously worked under Governor Lawton Chiles and headed the EPA under President Bill Clinton, will be appearing at the Enoch Davis Center at 10 a.m.

She has been in the Sunshine State all week meeting with key local officials affected by the disaster, and not the first official in the White House to do so. On Tuesday night, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus came to St.Pete, and next weekend the President himself will spend some downtime in Pensacola.

It's all part of PR offensive on the part of the White House, who have been battered even by Democrats for their lack of concerned focus in the first week of the oil spill (Politico last week described it as the White House "sending their 2012 rescue team to Florida").

Tampa area Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor, who will return next week to Washington as per orders from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to vote on a $26 billion job bill, will also be at tomorrow's meeting.

The Enoch Davis Center is located at 1111 18^th Ave. S., St. Petersburg

This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.