ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601080010
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
A former U.S. Justice Department lawyer and Republican congressional staffer who was involved in the Waco hearings will step into the number-two position at the state Department of Environmental Quality on Monday.
T. March Bell was hired before Christmas, shortly after a legislative audit revealed low morale and political interference in the agency. Bell's job as chief deputy to the director apparently is a new position, said Tom Hopkins, assistant secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, which oversees the DEQ.
Bell did not return phone messages left Friday at his residence in Annandale.
DEQ officials declined to comment until Monday.
Until a week ago, Bell worked for Rep. Bill Zeliff, R-N.H., chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee which held hearings on the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian religious sect compound in Waco, Texas.
For a few days last July, just prior to the hearings, Bell was drawn into a brief national controversy when it was discovered that the National Rifle Association had paid for experts to assist House Republican investigators in analyzing weapons used during the siege.
Democrats claimed the NRA, an ardent critic of government agents who regulate firearms, improperly influenced the inquiry into the government's handling of the raid.
Zeliff hired Bell in April to focus specifically on the Waco hearings, according to one of the congressman's aides who asked not to be named. The aide said Bell worked for the past eight years in the U.S. Justice Department on various issues, including child exploitation and bankruptcy. Bell also worked in 1984 for the Charlottesville-based Rutherford Institute, a religious freedom advocacy group, and later worked as a political consultant for Americans for Pat Robertson.
The aide did not recall Bell's mentioning any involvement with environmental issues, but added that Bell is experienced as a "high-level, intense investigator looking into major issues" of management and bureaucratic problems.
On Dec. 11, the state's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, a bipartisan government watchdog group, released a study that showed 89 percent of DEQ employees disagreed that "morale is good," and that 57 percent were concerned about possible retaliation if they upset a polluter.
The report also found that some job applicants were asked if they could recite the guiding principles of Gov. George Allen's administration.
DEQ Director Peter Schmidt, a former executive in a Charlottesville concrete business, blasted the report as slanted to present the Allen administration in a poor light. He also said the agency, formed from merging four separate agencies in mid-1993, has been undergoing a reorganization that is bound to affect morale.
In turn, Democratic lawmakers took offense that anyone would question the objectivity of the review commission, a bipartisan group of state legislators founded 20 years ago to provide the General Assembly with independent studies on the efficiency and effectiveness of state programs.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB