Law Reversal Would Help Residents With Disabilities Find Work, Advocates Say

More than one-third of West Virginia adults have some form of disability, according to 2022 estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These range from vision and hearing difficulties to mobility challenges to cognitive disabilities.

Since 1989, West Virginia’s state use program has given residents with disabilities first crack at certain state-requested jobs without facing outside bids — fields like janitorial work and mail processing. But a 2022 state law removed the program’s preferred purchasing status, deprioritizing its participants in the hiring process.

Now, some advocates are urging members of the West Virginia Legislature to reinstate the state use program’s purchasing status so it can help more residents with disabilities get hired. Earlier this year, Del. Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, sponsored House Bill 2107, which would do just that.

Similar bills passed the West Virginia Senate and West Virginia House of Delegates in 2023 and 2024 respectively, but failed to garner support from the other chamber necessary to become law. House Bill 2107 currently awaits review from the House Government Administration Subcommittee, and has not been taken up for a reading on the House floor.

Nita Hobbs is deputy director of the West Virginia Association of Rehabilitation Facilities, which oversees the state use program.

“We connect nonprofits across the state of West Virginia who employ individuals with disabilities with state agencies who buy the services and commodities that they produce,” she said. “We’re helping the economy in West Virginia by putting people to work. Then we’re also getting people off social subsidies.”

Hobbs called the 2022 bill a blow to both the disabled community and the state’s workforce.

“A good example would be someone who might have worked at the same location for 15 years and maybe has autism. They get used to the same schedule over and over again, and they take pride in their work,” she said. “If their job becomes insecure and they don’t have that place to go to work anymore, it can be very unsettling.”

Since the 2022 law took effect, Hobbs said the program has lost out on connecting participants with more than 28,000 paid work hours — equal to the pay for 25 full-time positions. In addition to shrinking the state’s workforce, she worries this could require more residents with disabilities to rely on social services from the state.

“It could actually cost our taxpayers a lot more money if the state use program went away, because you have individuals who are being put to work who might not have been chosen for employment otherwise,” Hobbs said. “So, instead of going and spending money in their local community — becoming taxpayers, becoming self-sufficient — they are then out of work.”

Hobbs visited the State Capitol Tuesday alongside several program advocates to urge lawmakers to support the program and help advance House Bill 2107 through this year’s legislative session. Historically, she said the program has received bipartisan support.

State lawmakers have affirmed the importance of the program and had a “great response” to reinstating its purchasing status, Hobbs said. Still, she and other program advocates are waiting to see that reinstatement take effect.

“This is our third year that we’ve had a similar bill introduced to change the language back to ‘preferred purchasing,’” she said. “What we need this year is to get it on the Government Organization Committee agenda here on the House side to be able to put that bill through to the next step.”