VITA mess doesn’t compute

Giant tax increase for cops, kids and welfare notwithstanding, could Mark Warner's legacy as governor be summed up with a four-letter word: VITA?

There's something rotten in Chesterfield -- at the headquarters of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, created by Warner as a Price Club for the state to buy and maintain computers and software.

Six years on, VITA is anything but a money-saver. It continues leaking red ink: an additional $6 million.

Another, more troubling reminder: the sudden firing of Lem Stewart as VITA boss, after he complained that Northrop Grumman, hired to supply the state IT services for 10 years, isn't giving taxpayers their $2.3 billion's worth.

For many, the VITA-Northrop Grumman deal -- it's Virginia's richest privatization contract -- is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

This isn't helped by the appearance of secrecy. The day before Stewart got it in the neck, Del. Sam Nixon, R-Chesterfield, one of the legislature's IT experts, wrote the VITA oversight board, reminding it of a legal requirement to operate in the open.

Northrop Grumman is supposed to work for the state. The reverse seems to be the case.

Witness: Northrop Grumman's pick-of-the-litter approach to moving IT workers from public to private payroll; and delays in service, because agencies previously free to act on their own -- and having lost their IT staffs to Northrop Grumman -- must now queue up with Big Mother.

And because Northrop Grumman's contract includes an inflation clause on equipment purchases, the state potentially is on the hook for more money even as agencies complain they are getting less service.

VITA-Northrop Grumman is a story of good intentions and bad execution, complicated by big money, big egos and the cozy relationship between politicians and check-writing businesspeople on whose kindness they depend.

Since 2001, when Warner was elected governor, Northrop Grumman has thrown nearly $809,000 at candidates, statewide officials and legislators. The giving is almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, evidence both parties are complicit in this mess.

Warner cooked up the idea of a mega IT department with his secretary of technology, George Newstrom, now head of Lee Technologies, which feeds at the VITA trough as a Northrop Grumman subcontractor.

A mainframe-type agency would seem antithetical in the hand-held era. But Warner, armed with a report by technology consultant BearingPoint that he refused to make public, argued that Virginia could save $100 million by consolidating computer and software purchasing and maintenance.

Plus, Warner, as a high-tech multimillionaire, had the cred only a net worth of $180 million could buy. Right?

Wrong. In 2003, lawmakers, mostly Republicans, balked. They feared the Warner gambit would disrupt IT operations at big agencies by snatching away their most important technical employees. Perhaps legislators should've trusted their instincts -- before they were dulled by political contributions.

Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or . Watch his video column Thursdays on TimesDispatch.com. Listen to his analysis Fridays at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE (88.9 FM).