Leah Willingham, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

AG: Nonprofit Should Help Manage Opioid Settlement Money

West Virginia’s attorney general and a coalition of cities and counties are calling for the creation of a nonprofit foundation to distribute money obtained through settlements or judgments in opioid-related litigation against pharmaceutical companies.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said all but one of the state’s 55 counties are currently in the midst of litigation against companies over their role in perpetuating the opioid crisis. Lawsuits allege that manufacturers’ conduct led to opioids becoming a common treatment for chronic pain and fueled substance abuse in West Virginia, one of the states that has been hit hardest by opioids.

The city of Huntington and Cabell County brought the three largest U.S. drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen Corp, McKesson Corp and Cardinal Health Inc — to trial last year. Communities are still awaiting a verdict in that case, which was the first lawsuit over the U.S. addiction epidemic to go to trial.

The state is set to go to trial in April against Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc., Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Endo Health Solutions Inc.

“The opioid epidemic is one of the challenges of our time here in West Virginia,” Morrisey said during a Wednesday press conference at the state Capitol. “There’s been a lot of senseless death over many, many years.”

Morrisey said the state’s counties and cities signed on to an agreement calling for the private nonprofit foundation. The foundation will be managed by a board of 11 members: Five would be state appointees and the rest would be local representatives from six different regions of the state. The board members will have expertise in fields like mental health, substance misuse and law enforcement.

An executive director appointed by the attorney general would run day-to-day operations.

As the central organization dedicated to addressing the opioid crisis throughout the state, the foundation would receive 72.5% of each settlement or judgment, 24.5% would be allocated to local governments and 3% would held in escrow by the state.

Many other states already have similar agreements and others have been pushing them. Morrisey said if the counties and the cities of the state don’t reach an agreement on how the money will be allocated, the court gets to decide.

All of the money would be used to address needs related to the opioid crisis.

Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said Wednesday that any money won in litigation will go to new initiatives and program to help fight the opioid epidemic.

“One thing that’s been very, very specific in our minds is that we’re not looking to be reimbursed for what we have expended in the past,” he said.

Williams said there’s a lot of need — need that’s only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is such a broad umbrella,” he said. “You have grandparents who are having to take care of grandchildren. You have children growing up in the midst of adverse childhood experiences that we need to be able to address,” he said. “What we’re seeing is that we have babies that are being born exposed to substances… it is the entire community that’s being affected.”

Bill Allows Unvaccinated W.Va. Workers To Receive Unemployment

West Virginia lawmakers have advanced a proposal that would allow people who leave their jobs because they are denied a religious or medical exemption to the COVID-19 vaccination to receive unemployment benefits.

Republican Sen. Mark Maynard, a sponsor of Senate Bill 576, said Thursday that the legislation was designed with health care workers in mind.

“Our frontline health care workers were required to be in the midst of this battle with COVID in the years 2020 and 2021 without even an option,” he said, speaking on the Senate floor. “When the mandates started rolling in, they had to make a decision,”

A number of West Virginia hospitals have mandated that employees be vaccinated against COVID-19, including two of the largest health care networks: the West Virginia University Health System and Charleston Area Medical Center.

“This piece of legislation merely defends some of those that want to opt out on the vaccination,” Maynard said. “This gives them a little bit of a cushion to figure out what they’re going to do with their life.”

The bill passed the Senate 29-5 and will now be considered by the full House.

Usually, people who quit their jobs aren’t eligible for unemployment, unless they had “good cause” to leave. Maynard said people who are opposed to getting the COVID-19 vaccine for medical or religious reasons should be protected.

Democratic Sen. Stephen Baldwin spoke in support of the bill. He said that when he initially read the legislation, he assumed he would vote against it.

“It seemed just like another politicized COVID bill,” he said.

But as he sat down to read it more thoroughly, Baldwin said he started thinking about it differently.

“I don’t think this bill is about COVID. This bill is about workers’ rights,” he said. “What this bill does is it protects workers to ensure that they have transitional employment support.”

Just over 53% of West Virginia residents are fully vaccinated, according to data from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.

Christian Revival At School Prompts Student Walkout In W.Va.

Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school’s auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students planned to stage a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. School security turned away reporters who tried to cover the demonstration.

“I don’t think any kind of religious official should be hosted in a taxpayer-funded building with the express purpose of trying to convince minors to become baptized after school hours,” Nibert said.

The mini revival took place last week during COMPASS, a daily, “noninstructional” break in the schedule during which students can study for tests, work on college prep or listen to guest speakers, said Cabell County Schools spokesperson Jedd Flowers.

Flowers said the event was voluntary, organized by the school’s chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He said there was supposed to be a signup sheet for students, but two teachers mistakenly brought their entire class.

“It’s unfortunate that it happened,” Flowers said. “We don’t believe it will ever happen again.”

But in this community of fewer than 50,000 people in southwestern West Virginia, the controversy has ignited a broader conversation about whether religious services — voluntary or not — should be allowed during school hours at all. A group of parents, the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia and other organizations say the answer to this question is also no. They say such events are a clear violation of students’ civil rights.

“It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the District to offer religious leaders unique access to preach and proselytize students during school hours on school property,” Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the separation of church and state, wrote in a letter to the school district. The district cannot “allow its schools to be used as recruiting grounds for churches,” the letter reads.

Last week’s assembly at Huntington High featured a sermon from 25-year-old evangelical preacher Nik Walker of Nik Walker Ministries, who has been leading revivals in the Huntington area for more than two weeks.

During the assemblies, students and their families are encouraged to join evening services at the nearby Christ Temple Church. More than 450 people, including 200 students, have been baptized at the church, according to Walker, who said he was scheduled to go to another public school and nearby Marshall University soon.

Bethany Felinton said her Jewish son was one of the students forced to attend the assembly at Huntington High. She said that when he asked to leave, the teacher told him their classroom door was locked and he couldn’t go. He sat back down in his seat, uncomfortable. Felinton said he felt he couldn’t disobey his teacher.

“It’s a completely unfair and unacceptable situation to put a teenager in,” she said. “I’m not knocking their faith, but there’s a time and place for everything — and in public schools, during the school day, is not the time and place.”

Mays’ father, Herman Mays, agrees.

“They can’t just play this game of, you know, ‘We’re going to choose this time as wiggle room, this gray area where we believe we can insert a church service,’” he said.

Walker said he has never contacted a school about coming to speak; it’s always the students who reach out to his ministry, he said.

“We don’t even have to knock on the door,” he said. “The students, they receive hope here (at Christ Temple Church) and then they want to bring hope to their school or to their classmates.”

Walker, originally from the small town of Mullens, West Virginia, has been traveling the state since he was 17 hosting church meetings at schools. He said he came to Huntington on Jan. 23 with plans to leave three days later but saw a need he felt compelled to address.

Walker said he sees a lot of “hopelessness” in the Huntington area: students struggling with addiction, anxiety and depression.

“When you see regions like this, then you really know they need the Lord,” he said, drinking a cup of hot tea with honey to soothe his throat after a couple of hours of preaching.

Tolsia High School freshman Mckenzie Cassell said she was excited for Walker to come to speak to her and her peers. She attends Christ Temple Church, where she said she is now seeing a lot more young people since Walker started his work in the schools.

“It’s awesome to see a lot of young kids coming,” she said.

Cassell’s guardian, Cindy Cassell said it’s been powerful to see someone make such an impression on young people in town.

“The kids want it and they’re ready for change in the right direction,” she said.

W.Va. Lawmakers Advance Bill To Enhance Voter Fraud Penalty

Republican lawmakers in West Virginia want to increase the penalties for illegal voting in elections.

House Bill 4311 would make it a felony to “knowingly and willfully” vote twice in an election or to reject or alter ballots in an effort to deceive voters. The crime is currently a misdemeanor.

The bill passed the House of Delegates with no opposition on Thursday. Six delegates were absent.

There has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in West Virginia or anywhere else in the U.S., despite false claims by former President Donald Trump that the last federal election was “stolen.” Still, there has been an increased effort by mostly GOP elected officials since the last U.S. election to tighten voting laws.

During discussion of the bill on the House floor, Democratic Del. Mike Pushkin asked if there had been any instances of people being charged for illegal voting.

“We’ve heard testimony of that fact,” said Republican Del. Tom Fast, who was answering questions about the bill. Fast said he heard testimony about cases of illegal voting in the House Judiciary Committee.

Pushkin, who also serves on the House Judiciary Committee, said he had heard no testimony detailing instances of voter fraud. He said it doesn’t exist, and given that, Pushkin said he’s not sure how much effect the bill will have.

“We’re making a stricter penalty on something we haven’t really had any instances of happening, but that’s fine,” he said.

After President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, West Virginia’s Secretary of State Mac Warner said he supported the state’s involvement in a lawsuit challenging electoral results in swing states won by Biden.

Warner, a Republican, made an appearance at a “March for Trump” rally in Charleston after the election, where he appeared to be holding up a “Stop the Steal” sign.

Pushkin said if the intent is to restore people’s faith in their elections, he will support it.

“But I would go as far as saying if we really want to restore faith in our elections, maybe the chief election officer of the state should probably refrain from standing on the steps of the Capitol with a ‘Stop the Steal sign,'” he said.

In an email to The Associated Press on Thursday, Warner said House Bill 4311 was legislation he requested to “continue our nationally recognized and bipartisan efforts to eliminate barriers to the ballot box for all West Virginia voters.”

“Confidence in West Virginia elections has never been higher because of our interest in transparent, safe and secure elections,” he said.

In response to Pushkin’s comments, he said: “Political attacks should be saved for the campaign trail.”

Warner said his office is prohibited by law from discussing any ongoing election fraud investigations.

Mike Queen, Warner’s deputy chief of staff, pointed to news releases on the Secretary of State’s website that include an unlawful voter registration case in Kanawha County and a former Morgantown resident who admitted to falsifying signatures in his bid to become a City Council candidate.

An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

Prior to the November 2020 election, Warner defended the election process in the state, calling it “safe, secure and fair” after Trump said a West Virginia mail carrier was “selling ballots.”

Postal worker Thomas Cooper pleaded guilty in July 2020 to attempted election fraud and injury to the mail after changing five ballot requests from Democrat to Republican. He also altered three other ballot applications by circling the word “Republican” in a different color ink than what was used on the forms, according to Warner’s office.

The attempted fraud was a “unique circumstance where a postal carrier altered absentee ballot applications, not ballots,” Warner said in a statement at the time.

Warner said: “Voters should be confident that this election will be safe, secure, and fair.”

Elections-related court cases in West Virginia over the decades have been dominated by elected officials, not citizens.

In the 1980s, a state-federal task force secured more than two dozen election-related convictions in Mingo County, including a former sheriff, a county commissioner, a school board president and a Democratic Party chairman.

In neighboring Logan County in the 1990s, two state legislators, the county assessor and a circuit judge, among others, went to jail on corruption charges that included vote-buying. And in 2004, Logan County’s sheriff and a city police chief resigned and pleaded guilty to exchanging money for votes.

In 2012, a former sheriff and county clerk in Lincoln County pleaded guilty to charges that they attempted to flood the county’s 2010 Democratic primary with fraudulent absentee ballots.

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Associated Press reporter John Raby contributed to this report.

W.Va. Lawmakers Take Up The Teaching Of Race And Identity

West Virginia lawmakers waded into the teaching of race and identity in schools on Thursday as a measure to ban the teaching that one group is superior to another took the first step toward becoming state law.

The words “critical race theory” were not said once during the more than 1 and 1/2 hour meeting of the House Education Committee on Thursday, but the debate echoed themes touted by conservatives in other states and national media under that label in recent months. The bill’s sponsors said they were concerned that schools are trying to rewrite American history and convince some children that they are inferior or superior to others.

Critical race theory is an obscure academic theory based on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society. It has emerged as a hot-button issue in recent months, but there is little to no evidence that it has been taught to K-12 public school students. Efforts to restrict its teaching have caused confusion in states where similar laws have passed about whether teaching on such things as the lingering impact of slavery are acceptable in public school classrooms.

Lead sponsor Chris Pritt, a white Republican from Kanawha County, said he has not heard of any such lessons being taught in West Virginia. But he said he wants to be “proactive” at “addressing any kind of problems we could potentially have.”

“We have had instances throughout the country where certain concepts are being taught in schools along the lines that certain individuals based inherently on their race, national origin and so forth, are inherently superior or inherently inferior and we do not want those concepts to be taught in our schools,” he said.

Pritt said multiple times that he is concerned about “clear examples” of ”instances around the country where there are certain issues that are cropping up,” but he was unable to describe specific instances in detail.

“Clearly, you can teach history, you can teach facts,” Pritt said. “Certain divisive concepts, such as ‘one race being inherently inferior or superior’ certain ideas like that, that are contrary to our principles as a country, we shouldn’t be teaching.”

Democratic. Del. Sean Hornbuckle, who is Black, said his main concern about the bill is that there haven’t been any formal complaints that the kind of teaching described by Pritt is happening in West Virginia.

“We’re fishing for something that’s just not here in this state,” he said. “We’re looking at issues that nobody can point to where they’re even coming from across the country. It just seems like a lot of rhetoric, a lot of political posturing.”

The bill passed through the House Education Committee on party lines and will now head to the Judiciary Committee.

Dubbed “The Anti-Stereotyping Act” by its sponsors, the bill dictates that public and charter schools can’t “promote, embrace, or endorse stereotypes” based on race, sex, ethnicity, religion or national origin. It says schools cannot compel students or staff to believe that “one race, sex, ethnicity, religion, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior to another.”

The bill also states that people of a certain identity should not be “blamed for actions committed in the past by other members” of the same identity.

The bill dictates that public and charter schools must disclose on their websites training, instructional or curricular materials “on all matters of nondiscrimination, diversity, equity, inclusion, race, ethnicity, sex, or bias.”

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia took to Twitter to encourage residents to contact members of the committee to tell them to “vote NO on this latest attempt to stifle free speech in our classrooms.”

“Politicians are again trying to make the classroom their battlefield,” the ACLU tweeted. “This bill is designed to intimidate teachers from discussing diversity and equity.”

Also on Twitter, Kanawha County Democrat Kayla Young called the bill “diet CRT” on Thursday and said after the GOP-led committee vote that “the rubber stamp strikes again.”

About 4 percent of West Virginia’s 1.8 million residents are Black.

During a legislative hearing in September, deputy state schools Superintendent Michele Blatt said West Virginia education standards do not encompass critical race theory.

W.Va. Democrats Propose Bill To Repeal Abortion Restrictions

Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill to repeal all abortion restrictions in West Virginia, a move that comes amid efforts in the Republican-led legislature to further restrict access to the procedure.

During a news conference at the state Capitol on Monday, the bill’s co-sponsor Del. Danielle Walker, a mother who previously had an abortion, described abortion restrictions as “a barrier to safe, affordable, accessible health care.”

“It is racist. Sit in that uncomfortable moment,” said Walker, the only Black woman in the West Virginia Legislature. Walker, who represents Monongalia County, added, “It affects people of color tremendously. It affects our neighbors in rural communities. It affects low-income wage-earning West Virginians, and it upsets me to my core.”

House Bill 4382 would repeal the mandatory 24-hour waiting period and counseling for abortion patients; West Virginia’s 20-week abortion ban; restrictions on dilation and evacuation — the most commonly used abortion method in the second trimester of abortion; the “born-alive” bill, which penalizes physicians who don’t provide medical care to a baby born after an abortion attempt; the state’s telehealth ban on medication abortion and criminal penalties for abortion.

Katie Quinonez, executive director of Women’s Health Center of West Virginia — the state’s sole facility providing abortions — said the state’s current policies are “harmful and discriminatory” and it’s time for them to go.

“This is the first time such a momentous bill has been introduced in West Virginia, a bill that removes politicians from the exam room,” she said. “It affirms a pregnant person’s bodily autonomy and recognizes abortion as a normal, common, safe and necessary part of reproductive health care, and that is worth celebrating.”

The bill’s chances of advancing in the Republican-dominated Legislature are slim. Conservative lawmakers have already introduced a bill this session to ban abortion after 15 weeks. The proposal is nearly identical to the Mississippi law currently under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. It would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks except in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality.

Missy Ciccarello, chapter president of the Kanawha and Putnam Counties of West Virginians For Life, attended the news conference holding a sign in the shape of a heart depicting a pregnant mother and her baby. The sign read, “Love Them Both.” Ciccarello said her greatest hope is that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared a nationwide right to abortion.

She said she was motivated to fight to restrict access to abortion after seeing her mother go through a miscarriage when Ciccarello was only 9 years old. Her mother was 20 weeks pregnant at the time. She said her mother didn’t have a choice when she lost her child but other people do.

“We want abortion to be unthinkable in West Virginia, and across the United States,” she said.

Her organization recently raised $200,000 in a month and a half to purchase a vacant lot across the street from the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia. She said that to her, it was a sign that the state’s residents want abortion banned.

But Walker said people in West Virginia want and deserve abortion access.

“I will not be quiet because this is what West Virginians want,” she said. “No shame should be allowed here, there or anywhere, but especially in the doctor’s office.”

The bill’s lead sponsor, Monongalia County Democratic Del. Evan Hansen said, “enough is enough,” of rolling back protections that should be guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

“There are so many restrictions in state code that people’s constitutional right to abortion is severely restricted,” he said.