People who live in glass houses shouldn t throw stones, and that goes double for politicians. Hypocrisy is one of the governing profession s deadliest sins, so Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerry Connolly should probably have thought twice about throwing stones at his opponent, former EPA chief of staff Gary Baise. At least two Connolly campaign brochures accuse Baise of being the Washington attorney corporate polluters call when they want to find a way around environmental laws. But the mailings don t mention Connolly s past as a paid consultant for World Resources, Co., a Tysons Corner firm that found its own way around environmental laws. WR is owned by Peter Halpin, son of West*Group developer Gerry Halpin. In 2003, Connolly was criticized for voting for zoning variances requested by West*Group without revealing he had also worked for WR, even though both companies shared the same address, and Halpin s father (and former West*Group vice president Kathryn Maclane) were listed as WR directors on forms filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. WR is described as a recycling firm, but documents obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Arizona Dept. of Environmental Quality are a bit more specific about what the company recycles. Hint: it isn t newspapers and soda cans. WR recycles heavy metal bearing sludges that in sufficient concentration produce hydrogen cyanide a highly toxic gas often listed as a chemical warfare agent. Manufacturers pay WR a lot of money to take this nasty stuff off their hands. The company also imports tons of sludge from other countries into the U.S. for processing. In 2002, eight months after Connolly worked for the company, the EPA finally granted WR s 1999 request for a special variance that exempted the sludge from the agency s definition of hazardous waste despite numerous public objections, summarized in the Federal Register, that EPA s assessment of risks did not ensure protection of human health and the environment. The variance exempted WR from having to follow strict federal regulations governing the shipping of toxic waste, an obvious financial advantage for the self-described largest recycler of metal-bearing wastewater treatment sludges in the world. The waiver was granted even though WR had previously been warned by Arizona Environmental Quality officials for failing to declare concentrated galvanic sludge (then still considered hazmat) on its shipping manifests. What did Connolly do for World Resources to earn in excess of $10,000 as reported on his financial disclosure forms at the time? Connolly wouldn t tell us whether he was directly involved in lobbying for the variance, and several calls to Peter Halpin were not returned. But Halpin must have been happy with his former consultant s work. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, WR donated $10,000 on Dec. 19, 2006 and another $10,000 on Feb. 28, 2007 to Connolly s reelection campaign. So despite his carefully cultivated image as Mr. Greenjeans, Connolly himself once worked for a multi-million-dollar company that successfully lobbied for a special environmental exemption the same thing he s now attacking Baise for doing. Maybe that s why the chairman doesn t dare list World Resources on his official Fairfax County biography. Illegal? No. Hypocritical? You bet.