MaSSSoftech

BOB LEWIS
The Associated Press

(AP) — RICHMOND, Va. - A state attorney general's opinion says Virginia's technology secretary, Leonard Pomata, can't double as the chief of the state's troubled information technology superagency.

Attorney General William C. Mims' opinion, made public late Friday, said the 2003 law that created the Virginia Information Technologies Agency deliberately separated the two positions.

The Information Technology Investment Board made Pomata the interim replacement for dismissed Chief Information Officer Lemuel Stewart in June, just days after Kaine had appointed Pomata to the cabinet post overseeing technology.

That put Pomata in charge of VITA as the agency came under legislative and media scrutiny for complaints of slow, unresponsive service and missed major deadlines for updating and consolidating state government's disparate and far-flung computer systems.

Two legislative panels have also raised questions about VITA's $2.4 billion, 10-year contract with Northrop Grumman, the largest in state history. The General Assembly's investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, is expected to wrap up its two-year examination of VITA, its effect on state agencies from its Northrop Grumman partnership and its relationship with the ITIB by October.

Kaine's press secretary, Gordon Hickey, said the office "has just now seen the opinion and will take the weekend to digest it."

Mims' opinion is advisory only, rendered at the request of Del. Samuel Nixon, who sponsored the legislation creating VITA but has become one of the legislature's most knowledgeable critics of its performance.

The opinion is likely to have little practical effect. Kaine said last week the search for a permanent CIO is in its final stages, and Hickey said Friday that the position would likely be filled in less than a month.

VITA was proposed by former Gov. Mark R. Warner to streamline the communications, information technology and computer systems in dozens of state agencies that had developed independently from one another for decades. Many of them were unable to communicate or share data with systems in other state agencies.

Many of the ideas for integrating the state's computing functions and saving money were contained in a 2002 JLARC report. The report found that having the technology secretary double as the CIO was "a limiting factor" because the CIO was not insulated from the political process. It recommended making the CIO a separate position, Mims noted in his five-page opinion.

The opinion also noted that Pomata had served as a member of the board which appointed him the interim CIO.

"Should the Secretary also serve as CIO, this dual service would require the Board to have a contractual relationship with one of its members," Mims wrote. He added that the state law "prohibits board members, who are state officers, from having personal interest in a contract with their own board."