The mayor, police chief and former clerk of a West Virginia city have been charged with embezzlement.
Criminal complaints filed Friday in Nicholas County charged Richwood Mayor Chris Drennen, police chief Lloyd Allen Cogar and former clerk Abigail McClung.
The filings come hours before the state auditor is to release findings of an investigation into misuse of public funds in the city.
The complaint says Drennen was paid about $45,000 extra without council approval to help the city recover from a massive 2016 flood. At the time, Drennen oversaw Richwood’s finances as the city’s recorder.
Cogar is accused of using government purchasing cards in personal transactions.
Authorities also say McClung wrongly paid herself for unused vacation time.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the three had attorneys. A city spokeswoman declined to comment.
A three-judge panel in West Virginia has approved a city council’s request to remove Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber from office.
News outlets report the judges dismissed several of the Richwood council’s allegations, but agreed Baber used city funds to reimburse personal power and cellphone bills and misused his city purchasing card.
Baber says he had not read the panel’s findings in detail but criticized the council for wasting time and money on what he called a “witch hunt.” Baber led Richwood in the wake of the June 2016, flood, garnering attention to the community’s recovery efforts.
The judicial panel said Friday that Baber’s actions were “the epitome of an improper abuse of one’s political position.” The panel was established by the state Supreme Court and led by Fayette Circuit Judge Paul Blake Jr.
The mayor of a West Virginia town has sued the city council for putting him on paid administrative leave and preventing him from doing his job while he is being investigated by state auditors.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber filed the lawsuit on Monday. The city council had previously asked Baber to resign because of some undocumented purchases found on his government credit card. Baber refused, and the council voted to remove him.
Baber’s lawsuit says the council did not have the authority to remove him as mayor. It also says the council broke the law when they asked him to resign during a meeting that was closed to the public.
Councilman Charles Toussieng told the newspaper the council did not do anything wrong.
FEMA– the Federal Emergency Management Agency– is well known for its individual housing assistance program- a federal program that helps homeowners and renters who have lost their housing and belongings in natural disasters, but the agency has another program that helps states and local governments rebuild.
The application deadline for FEMA’s public assistance program was Monday and many small communities throughout the state are dependent on those funds after June’s historic flooding.
Richwood, W.Va.
In the Cherry River just outside of Richwood, a concrete dam creates a small waterfall. The water flows over the dam, down massive, sand colored rocks and fills two crystal clear swimming holes. The scene is idyllic, but the sound is not so ideal.
Behind the dam is a massive metal pipe that served as the intake for Richwood’s public drinking water system. But that pipe was damaged in late June when heavy rains caused large rocks to rush down the river. Those waters later flooded many parts of Richwood. Now, a temporary pump sits next to one swimming hole, pumping water to the city’s taps.
“We’re going to get another one that’s boxed,” Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber explained over the noise of the pump, “and also that might take us through the winter because this one won’t and we’re not sure how fast we’re going to get this fixed up here on the intake.”
Baber estimates his town in total suffered more than $15 million in damage to public infrastructure and government buildings, but the loss of both the Richwood Middle and High Schools will make the total much higher.
Clendenin, W.Va.
But it’s not just Richwood that suffered millions of dollars in damage to public infrastructure. Gary Bledsoe is the Mayor of Clendenin in Kanawha County.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Clendenin Mayor Gary Bledsoe speaks with FEMA PIO Tom Kempton just a week after heavy rains caused historic flooding in his town.
“It could be pushing as high as $2 million. It’s well over a million now with just what we’ve turned in so far,” Bledsoe said.
That money will be needed for repairs to road slips, the restoration of its community rec center, and rehabilitation of the first floor of city hall. For now, the mayor’s office is in a garage around the corner.
FEMA’s Public Assistance Program
Communities like Richwood and Clendenin can’t pay for those repairs on their own, though. Both mayors say after June’s floods they’re not sure how they’re even going to make payroll through the end of the year, let alone replace a $250,000 rec center. That’s where FEMA’s Public Assistance program comes in.
“Public Assistance is to repair the public infrastructure, those large items that particularly in this disaster such as schools, bridges, roads, the infrastructure that’s been so severely hit in this state because of the flooding,” FEMA Public Information Officer Tom Kempton explained.
So far, the total damage to roads and bridges in flood affected counties is estimated at more than $54 million by the Department of Transportation.
The West Virginia School Building Authority says a new high school costs around $30 million and a new middle or elementary school from $5-10 million. At least five schools in two counties have been closed as a result of the storm.
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Cleaning equipment sits outside the entrance to Richwood High School which will not reopen this fall.
Kempton explained it’s these types of infrastructure and public needs that will quickly escalate the total price of recovery. Through the public assistance program, FEMA will pay 75 percent of the cost for public projects. Normally, the state matches with 25 percent, but Governor Tomblin has asked the federal government to bump the match up to 90/10.
Tomblin representatives said last week total damage estimates must reach more than $250 million before FEMA will grant the higher matching rate, but Kempton said West Virginia’s economic climate will also play a role in that decision.
“If you look at the kind of damage within, say Kanawha County where they have a large range of very expensive projects, schools that have been pretty much destroyed, those are going to be prioritized and does the county have that match?” he said.
“Can the county come up with 35 percent of the cost to redo all those facilities? That’d be very difficult for even a wealthy county to do.”
Restoration
Many of the flood affected communities were struggling with insufficient infrastructure and public buildings before the storm. Mayor Baber said that was certainly the case with his sewer system.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber surveys the damage to a home a hillside collapsed into after heavy rains.
FEMA has been clear- they will pay to restore damaged infrastructure, leaving communities with something equal to what they had before, but Baber worries that won’t be enough.
“What does that mean when you’ve got a system that’s so antiquated? I mean, we’re putting patches on patches on patches so this is hard to know what’s going to happen here,” Baber said.
“We’ve reached the point where I just don’t know how many more patches we can put on patches. How many more band aids can you put on band aids when you’re hemorrhaging?”
The deadline for communities to file for public assistance through FEMA was Monday, August 8.
State revenue officials say even if West Virginia does not receive the 90/10 match from FEMA for those projects, there is enough cash in the Rainy Day Fund to help struggling communities recover.
Among the candidates for the Second District congressional seat is Bob Henry Baber. He’s the candidate from the Mountain Party.
Bob Henry Baber is an employee at Glenville State University, working with them to raise funds, but he’s not new to the political arena. The one time Mayor of Richwood threw his hat in the ring during the 2010 special election for governor and made a run for U.S. Senate in 2012, both times with the backing of West Virginia’s Mountain Party. He received 20,000 votes in his run for the United States Senate in 2012.
And he’s hoping he can spice up another race this year. Baber says his platform is simple: to represent the state and its people. That includes representing the state’s resources which he says are constantly being taken from West Virginians with no plan for the future. In particular, he’s concerned about mountain top removal and hydraulic fracturing.
Aside from environmental issues, Baber has taken a strong stance on social issues as well, like legalizing marijuana in West Virginia. Although it’s a state issue not relevant yet to the federal office he hopes to fill, Baber says it’s a chance for West Virginia to be out in front of a legal change he thinks is inevitable.
Baber knows his chances for winning are slim, but calls it a victory in itself to be on the ballot. He measures a successful race in being able to help shape the political agenda for the state.
Baber says his run is truly a grass roots effort to speak for the people in the state he feels go underrepresented.
But the test of his candidacy will be how many of those folks head to the polls to speak for him.
It’s looking unlikely that West Virginia’s two main contenders for an open U.S. Senate seat will debate again before Election Day.
Republican Shelley Moore Capito won’t attend a West Virginia Public Broadcasting debate Friday. Democrat Natalie Tennant, Libertarian John Buckley, Bob Henry Baber of the Mountain Party and Phil Hudok of the Constitution Party will participate.
Capito’s campaign said the congresswoman will be on her previously scheduled bus tour.
Capito and Tennant, West Virginia’s secretary of state, debated last Tuesday in Charleston. Third-party candidates weren’t involved.
The two met for a West Virginia Chamber of Commerce candidate forum at The Greenbrier in late August.
They are seeking retiring Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s seat.
The Friday morning debate will air in the evening.
