Faces of 2009: Lemuel C. Stewart Jr.

WHY YOU KNOW HIM: VITA's governing board fired Stewart in June after he recommended that Virginia withhold a $14 million monthly payment to Northrop Grumman. WHAT'S NEW: Lem Stewart wasn't always down on Northrop Grumman. As Virginia's $189,000-a-year computer chief, he was among the most enthusiastic advocates of the switch to a privately run information-technology network. He laced reports to his overseers with accolades for the defense and systems-management giant.

By: | Times-Dispatch
Published: December 29, 2009

As Virginia's $189,000-a-year computer chief, he was among the most enthusiastic advocates of the switch to a privately run information-technology network. He laced reports to his overseers with accolades for the defense and systems-management giant.

But from fall 2008 until spring 2009, Stewart's tune changed -- particularly as his employer, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, and Northrop Grumman realized the company would miss a June 30, 2009, deadline to refit more than 80 depart ments with new computers and other high-tech gear.

In June, Stewart, who once ran VITA's forebear, the state Department of Information Technology, recommended that Virginia withhold a $14 million monthly payment to Northrop Grumman as punishment for the continuing delays as well as spotty service and incomplete billing.

The VITA governing board, whose members include allies of Northrop Grumman, balked and -- instead of bringing the California-based company to heel -- fired Stewart.

Overnight, Stewart, who refuses requests for interviews, came to be seen -- because of a burst of bold-face newspaper headlines -- as a bottom line-oriented whistleblower worried that the financially struggling state's 10-year, $2.3 billion contract with Northrop Grumman had become a boondoggle.

But Stewart, a five-figure-a-month consultant to VITA until the end of December, may have contributed to it -- perhaps unintentionally.

For example, the General Assembly's investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, which spent two years monitoring VITA-NG, noted that Stewart blocked, for unspecified computer-security reasons, the purchase of software for a food-stamp program that cost roughly one-third of Northrop Grumman's version.

The controversy roiling Virginia's pact with Northrop Grumman is expected to spill into the term of Republican Bob McDonnell, the third consecutive governor to face an issue that was sold by industry lobbyists and pro-privatization politicians as a money-saver but may be proving otherwise.

-- Jeff E. Schapiro