In his first day on the job, the new boss of Virginia’s computer agency huddled with top managers and readied for a sit-down with officials of the giant company criticized for spotty service to the state. George F. Coulter met for about an hour with senior officials of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency at the Chester headquarters it shares with embattled contractor Northrop Grumman.

Virginia government is reaching to industry for a new computer boss to set right the troubled changeover to a privately run information-technology network under Northrop Grumman. George F. Coulter succeeds Lemuel C. “Lem” Stewart Jr., a state government veteran who was fired in June after proposing to withhold a $14 million monthly payment to Northrop Grumman as punishment for poor service and incomplete billing.

House Republicans want technology secretary who is interim chief information officer to resign one of the two posts, but Leonard M. Pomata says he will continue until the job is filled.

The Kaine administration’s quick fix for guiding the troubled Virginia information technology agency - allowing the secretary of technology to simultaneously serve as interim computer czar - is illegal, the attorney general ruled yesterday. William C. Mims, the state’s top lawyer, said the dual roles for Leonard M. “Len” Pomata violate a law that separates the jobs of technology secretary and chief information officer in order to shield the CIO from politics.

Weeks before their dispute exploded in public, the state’s then-computer chief and his bosses quarreled via e-mail over paying the giant contractor millions of dollars despite continuing delays in fulfilling a $2.3 billion contract.

The acting head of Virginia’s embattled computer agency is praising employees for “doing heavy lifting” and urging them to ignore critics. Leonard M. “Len” Pomata yesterday met with about 100 employees of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency at its Chesterfield County headquarters. Other workers listened by phone conference call, as did a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who was supplied the numerical pass code. Some employees submitted questions to Pomata by e-mail.

There might be a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation as to why Lemuel Stewart Jr. was sacked from his position as head of the Virginia Information Technology Agency—mere hours after he questioned whether $2.3 billion IT contractor Northrop Grumman is meeting the terms of its contract—and replaced by Secretary of Techonology Len Pomata, who reportedly disputed Stewart’s take on Northrop Grumman. But it still looks fishy.

Virginia’s computer czar was fired hours after he questioned a multimillion-dollar monthly bill from the giant company that the state is paying $2.3 billion for informationtechnology services.