Official Lobbying

Lee Wilson points to Port Tobacco at Weanack on the James River, where Waste Management plans to ship up to 3,000 tons of trash a day. (By Jay Paul for The Washington Post)

"When it comes to ethics and campaign finance laws, Virginia might as well be in the old wild, wild West," he said. "Almost anything goes."

State law requires officials to wait a year after leaving office before they can directly lobby the agency they once worked for, and former legislators can't be hired as General Assembly lobbyists for at least a year. Those restrictions have not hampered the trash industry as it lined up a cadre of former state officials to represent its interests in Richmond.

Daniel, 49, the Waste Management lobbyist, is a Richmond native and lawyer who spent 13 years with the state, as a legislative staff attorney in the attorney general's office and finally as secretary of natural resources under Gov. Gerald L. Baliles (D), a post he held until 1990.

Today, Daniel is a lawyer with McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe. He started representing Waste Management within weeks of his departure from state government. His move took place before the revolving-door law was passed.

The lobbying team for Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., the nation's second-largest trash firm, includes H. Benson Dendy III and Phillip F. Abraham, both former aides to Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and Baliles. Dendy served as secretary of the commonwealth when Robb was governor and secretary to the governor's cabinet for Baliles. Abraham was a policy adviser to Robb and Baliles.

Legal matters for Browning-Ferris are handled in part by Patrick A. O'Hare, who from 1982 to 1993 served as senior assistant attorney general and chief of the office's natural resources section.

The chief of the Browning-Ferris team in the last session was Dennis H. Treacy, a former environmental lawyer for the Virginia attorney general. Treacy withdrew his registration as a Browning-Ferris lobbyist March 22, the day before Gilmore named him director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which regulates the trash industry.

At the time Treacy left Browning-Ferris, the firm had an application pending before the Department of Environmental Quality for permission to expand its King and Queen County landfill. After taking over the agency, Treacy appointed three Department of Environmental Quality division directors to make all final decisions on matters related to Browning-Ferris, saying he wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety. The department has since approved the firm's landfill expansion request.

Trash industry leaders say they are glad to have a friend at the state regulatory agency.

"You have someone you can get your viewpoint across with," said J. Victor Arthur III, director of the Virginia Waste Industries Association. "Someone who has an open mind, someone who is willing to listen to all sides of an argument and someone you don't have to introduce yourself to. You already know him."

One Legislator's Land Deal

Five generations of the Gray family had lived in Sussex, running a timber and sawmill operation. By the early 1990s, Gray and his relatives owned more than 100,000 acres across southern Virginia and a large sawmill in Sussex, assets that made them the county's second-largest employer and the state's largest private landowner.

Sussex needed a new courthouse and renovations to its schools and existing landfill but didn't have the money for them. Gray said recently that he met with a county board member privately to talk about possible solutions and settled on trying to find a firm to open a revenue-generating regional landfill in the county.

Gray offered a piece of his land for the landfill project – 700 acres that had recently been cleared of timber, reducing its value to about $500 an acre, by Gray's estimate. Once negotiations over the project had concluded, Gray was offered $4,415 an acre, or $3.1 million, for his family's property.

"After suffering five or six years of money-losing lumber business, it was nice to get a good price," Gray said, adding that the price reflected what other landfill companies had paid for their land.

Opposition to the proposed landfill was intense. About 700 people – or nearly seven percent of the county's residents – packed a public hearing in 1991, most blasting the plan.

Gray said he urged county board members to back the plan and thus avoid what he saw as an inevitable tax increase.

Ultimately, the county board and planning commission approved the Atlantic Waste Disposal Landfill, which now operates round-the-clock, accepting trash from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, the District, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and North Carolina last year.

Gray has since left the Senate, announcing shortly after the landfill vote that he would not run again.

"I am not sure if I would have been reelected if I had chosen to run again," said Gray, 73, who cited his bout with prostate cancer at the time as the reason for his retirement.

James E. Belshan, a soil scientist from Sussex who was elected to the county board after helping lead the charge against the dump, said he still resents Gray's role.

"For generations, people have come to look to the Gray family to help to guide this county," Belshan said. "But in this instance, he decided to do what was in his best interest, and he left us with a trash heap that will linger on forever."

Metro Resource Director Margot Williams contributed to this report.