DATE: Saturday, August 2, 1997              TAG: 9708020310

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  174 lines

DEQ DEFENDS LATEST ORGANIZATIONAL SHAKEUP BUT CRITICS CALL IT A POLITICAL MOVE THAT WILL WEAKEN ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality opened for business on April 1, 1993 - April Fool's Day, as several critics note wryly.

It was designed to simplify and streamline a splintered bureaucracy that monitors and issues pollution permits to thousands of businesses and industries from Tidewater to the Blue Ridge.

Since its inception, though, DEQ has gone through four organizational makeovers, three directors, a round of layoffs and downsizing - and now, a federal probe into whether it's capable of safeguarding Virginia's air, water and soil.

The impetus for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency probe is yet another makeover plan, which officially took effect Friday.

Announced June 2 in a five-paragraph press release, the latest restructuring is being pursued in the name of efficiency and decentralization.

But critics, including business leaders and environmentalists, see the changes differently. They fear permit delays, poor decisions and generally a weaker, less scientifically based system for protecting natural resources.

``If this wasn't our environment we're talking about, a lot of this stuff would be funny; it's that weird,'' said Joseph H. Maroon, executive director of Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia.

Added one DEQ employee, who insisted on anonymity: ``No one can get their work done; we sit around the proverbial water cooler and wonder what - or, more importantly, who - is going to be the next one to go.''

The main component of the plan is this: 20 senior managers have been removed from their posts at DEQ headquarters in Richmond, including the chiefs of air-pollution control, water-pollution control and hazardous-waste regulation.

But this was not a mass firing. As of Friday, all but one of the laid-off administrators had been rehired, according to a revised personnel list released this week.

However, these managers and enforcement officers will show up for work Monday with different jobs and different duties, many outside their field of expertise. Some analysts who concentrated solely on water pollution, for example, now are being told to oversee air problems as well.

Lawmakers also have complained about a potential ``brain drain'' at the agency. One prime example might be Martin Ferguson, who for more than 20 years has tracked and regulated water pollution: Ferguson now is manager of grants.

Asked how switching hats among some of the most seasoned staffers will enhance agency performance, DEQ director Thomas L. Hopkins told state lawmakers at a recent hearing: ``We made a determination that they were qualified.''

Such responses have left many interest groups and politicians asking basic questions: Why is this being done? And why now, just months before the election of a new governor and a new administration?

``I think it's all a big question mark,'' said Hugh D. Keogh, president of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, normally a steadfast supporter of Gov. George F. Allen and his pro-business policies. ``We still have real concerns about the agency . . . and its ability to respond to business and industry in a timely, even-handed way.''

Keogh said he and other business leaders were to meet with DEQ officials in the governor's office Friday to try to get some ``clarity'' on the issue.

Since its announcement, the plan has sparked all sorts of theories about its ``real'' motivation. But whatever the reasons for it, environmentalists have argued, a drive for better environmental protection was not one of them.

``Have you ever noticed that they never say this plan will improve our ability to preserve our natural resources?'' asked Deanna Sampson, director of the Virginia Conservation Network, and a former DEQ employee. ``It's all politics to them, all personalities and who's allied with whom.''

Hopkins and several close advisers, who co-authored the plan, have insisted that the restructuring is about management philosophy.

Where policies and pollution permits once were decided at headquarters, the Allen administration has largely shifted those powers and personnel to the six regional offices around the state, including one in Virginia Beach.

The changes, they have said, put the finishing touches on their new decentralized system, bringing government closer to the people and businesses it affects.

But no senior managers are being shifted to the regions. And because experts at DEQ headquarters are being given new tasks they have little experience with, critics say, government performance may get worse, not better.

In an interview Thursday, Hopkins said he would not have undertaken the reorganization at all had the General Assembly left his department alone.

``I had no intention of restructuring the agency until we were told that we had to eliminate eight key positions,'' Hopkins said.

He was referring to funding cuts, approved by the General Assembly this year, for eight jobs that a state watchdog agency had deemed redundant.

One of those positions, the ``outreach coordinator,'' was held by a friend of Hopkins' who had never met with an environmental or civic group in the months he was with DEQ, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission determined.

While reshaping DEQ in light of the eight lost employees, Hopkins said, he and a small circle of upper managers started to look deeper.

``So while we were at it, I said, `Heck, let's do this right.' And we're still tinkering with it,'' he said.

The plan originally cut 29 positions. Then it was 30. Now, after pressure from interest groups, the federal government and state politicians, the plan abolishes 26 positions and creates 30 new ones.

The whole restructuring - including the hiring of additional staff and the placement of old managers in new positions - is expected to be completed by Sept. 1, said DEQ spokesman Bill Hayden.

``That's not really a deadline, but we're trying to get it all done by then,'' Hayden said.

The vague deadlines and changing numbers give critics ammunition that the plan was never really thought out in advance but was instead a knee-jerk reaction to cuts by the General Assembly.

``I think the original intent was to get rid of some career bureaucrats while also getting a chance to stick it to the legislature,'' said Maroon, the state director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. ``Then they got caught and now we're seeing the results - chaos.''

Albert Pollard, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, was more direct in his assessment: Agency leaders were angry at the General Assembly and ``wanted to show them who's boss. And now it's blown up in their face.''

Noticeably absent from the controversy has been Hopkins' boss, Becky Norton Dunlop, the secretary of natural resources, who oversees not only DEQ but state fisheries, wildlife and conservation agencies.

Most critics, however, see Dunlop as the driving force behind the restructuring, pointing to her past behavior as an administrator in the U.S. Interior Department in the Reagan and Bush administrations.

``Her fingerprints are all over this,'' said Del. W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., D-Warsaw. ``This is coming entirely from her. She's the one who makes the decisions over there.''

Dunlop was forced to resign from the Interior Department in 1989 under pressure from Congress after a series of internal personnel moves that angered Democrats and Republicans alike.

She was accused of trying to place political allies with little expertise into positions traditionally held by career bureaucrats and specialists.

While at the Interior Department, for example, Dunlop tried to name political appointees as superintendents of Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, according to previous published reports of her days in Washington.

She was forced out of her post in May 1989 when a senator threatened to delay any more votes on Interior Department nominees until Dunlop quit. She did.

Louisiana Sen. J. Bennett Johnson apparently had seen enough after learning that Dunlop had ``exiled'' a 27-year career parks manager to an audio-visual center in West Virginia.

That manager, Denis Galvin, is now the acting director of the National Park Service.

``Becky Dunlop has tried to politicize every agency she's ever been involved with; she tries to bring in friends and allies who ascribe to her view of the world,'' said Murphy. ``She's been doing the same thing here. And to me, this restructuring speaks in part to this pattern.''

Dunlop has yet to comment publicly on the restructuring, and did not attend a hearing on this and other environmental issues called by House Speaker Thomas W. Moss Jr., D-Norfolk. She declined to be interviewed for this story.

``She had nothing really to do with the restructuring,'' said a spokesman for Dunlop, referring questions to the DEQ.

The federal probe into the DEQ is reviewing whether the restructuring will inhibit the state from adequately running regulatory programs for air, water and waste.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that if necessary it might take over those state programs - a step the EPA has never taken in the mid-Atlantic region, said spokeswoman Ruth Podems.

Podems said Pennsylvania attempted to decentralize its air-pollution program, much like Virginia's effort. That move led to local-level criticism of weak enforcement, inconsistent treatment of businesses, and an EPA inquiry, Podems said.

Pennsylvania's new structure was allowed to stand, she said, but the state and the EPA have set clearer guidelines on pollution limits and enforcement.

``That whole experience with Pennsylvania is one reason we're concerned about Virginia,'' Podems said. ``You just don't want to see enforcement and compliance slip.''

Hopkins, meanwhile, remains confident of his plan.

``I simply want to do what's right,'' he said. ``The legislators who question me, I like to think they're acting in good faith, and I try to work with them.

``But I don't think they really truly accept or understand the fact that I don't have an agenda. And I don't have a political mission. I'm going to do what's right until they say I leave.''

MEMO: Staff writer Laura LaFay contributed to this story.

KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

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