DATE: Friday, October 3, 1997               TAG: 9710030687

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

POLLUTION-SUIT TARGET GAVE GILMORE MONEY

James S. Gilmore III, while attorney general, accepted a $5,000 political donation from Smithfield Foods Inc. at a time when the meatpacker was under investigation for falsifying and destroying state records and polluting the Pagan River.

The contribution, given in February 1995, was sharply criticized Thursday by Common Cause Virginia, a clean-government group that had been unaware of the gift, and by Donald S. Beyer Jr., Gilmore's opponent in next month's election for governor.

Beyer said he knew of the contribution - as well as an earlier one, in 1993, from Smithfield Foods CEO Joseph Luter for $2,000 - and mentioned them during a debate this summer while criticizing Gilmore's environmental record.

``I can tell you that it definitely stinks to us,'' said Julie Holt-Williams, state director of Common Cause. ``It seems a clear violation of the spirit of conflict-of-interest laws and of the public trust.''

Reed Boatright, a spokesman for the Gilmore gubernatorial campaign, said the contribution had no effect on the state's legal case against Smithfield Foods.

``To suggest that somehow a check influenced Gilmore's action, well, the facts would show otherwise,'' Boatright said Thursday.

Gilmore filed a civil lawsuit against Smithfield Foods, the East Coast's largest pork processor, in August 1996. The suit was brought just days after the attorney general's office learned that the U.S. Justice Department was poised to file its own lawsuit against the Norfolk-based meatpacker. Critics have questioned the timing ever since.

The state eventually dropped its case this summer after a key witness was not allowed to testify. Virginia has refiled its suit, accusing the company of violating state pollution regulations more than 22,000 times since 1986.

Also this summer, the Justice Department won a record $12.6 million fine against Smithfield Foods after a five-day trial in Norfolk. The lawsuit was filed, federal officials have said, in part because Virginia had been too slow in cracking down on the $3 billion company, one of the largest private employers in Hampton Roads.

The 1995 contribution ``really raises the unfortunate specter of unfair handling of the case,'' Beyer said Thursday.

Boatright said the $5,000 donation, while made to the ``Jim Gilmore For Attorney General'' fund, was actually part of a 1995 fund-raiser supporting Gilmore's gubernatorial aspirations. Texas Sen. Phil Gramm was the keynote speaker.

Smithfield Foods ``apparently bought a table or something'' to the fund-raiser, Boatright said.

A public spokesman for Smithfield Foods was out of town Thursday. No one else from the company was available to comment.

In July 1994, state environmental officials - including a criminal investigator - discovered that three years' worth of pollution reports were missing from Smithfield Foods. The reports detailed the pollution released into the Pagan River, a Chesapeake Bay tributary, from company sewage plants in Isle of Wight County.

The keeper of those records, Terry Lynn Rettig, is serving a 30-month prison term. He pleaded guilty last winter to falsifying and destroying records and illegally polluting the Pagan.

At the time of the political contribution to Gilmore, officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality were talking to Smithfield Foods about dozens of pollution violations from company plants in 1994 and early 1995. Investigators also were pursuing a criminal probe into falsified reports by Rettig at Smithfield Foods and other sewage plants he managed.

Boatright said the contribution neither altered how Gilmore, as the chief law enforcer in Virginia, oversaw the criminal probe nor changed his position that Smithfield Foods should pay an appropriate penalty.

``Jim does not trade actions for contributions,'' he said. ``He believes that people who support him do so because they admire his positions.'' MEMO: Staff writers Toni Whitt and Ledyard King contributed to this

report. KEYWORDS: ELECTION VIRGINIA GUBERNATORIAL RACE VIRGINIA

PLATFORMS ENVIRONMENT TRACK RECORD

CANDIDATES

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