Clawback Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Lawmakers Volley Over Best Means Of Medicaid Funding Transparency

Lawmakers said they did not think they could trust the secretaries of the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services to spend the money accordingly, without the line items.

The West Virginia House of Delegates refused to concur with the state Senate’s amendment to Senate Bill 1001 in a late-night session Monday.

Senate Bill 1001 and its counterpart, House Bill 101, aim to restore funding to the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services, focused on the state’s Medicaid and Title IX waiver programs.

Clawback Cuts

According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, the Fiscal Year 2025 budget the legislature passed earlier this year underfunded the state’s Medicaid program by about $150 million.

This included a more than $10 million decrease in the line item in the state’s budget for the intellectual and developmental disabilities waivers, commonly called IDD waivers program.

The program allows people with disabilities to live outside hospitals and institutions by connecting them with resources like home health care workers and financial support.

In response to the cuts, advocates and providers alike have been sounding the alarm after the budget was passed in March.

Gov. Jim Justice said during a press briefing April 17 that he is not to blame for the budget cuts and said he would check and see if there was any way that it could be funded, without bloating the budget.

Lawmakers said the budget cuts were necessary due to a possible federal government clawback of $465 million in COVID-19 relief funding for schools.

Justice announced in April that West Virginia will not face that clawback.

Pressing Costs

Lawmakers said they did not think they could trust the secretaries of the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services to spend the money accordingly, without the line items.

These concerns stem from a line of questioning during an interim meeting in April where Human Services Secretary Cynthia Persily testified that the department used funds from the IDD waiver program to pay for contract nurses and COVID-19 testing.

Before and during the pandemic, Persily testified that the previous Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) administration would use leftover funds to fund what she called “pressing costs.” According to Persily, this was common practice in the department before it was split into three separate departments by an act of the legislature last year.

Lawmakers and Justice now agree, the funding must be restored. Senate Bill 1001 allocates more than $5 million to the Department of Health and $183,437,463 to the Department of Human Services.

These monies would be placed in reserve funds that can be accessed by the agency secretaries when or if the money is needed. However, each chamber wants its own form of oversight over how these additional funds are spent.

An Extraordinary Session

Del. Amy Summers, R-Taylor, amended the bill in the House Finance Committee to require increasing reimbursement rates for companies and their employees providing services for people with disabilities.

“We all know that if we don’t have the workers to take care of individuals in these settings then we will take care of these individuals in state psych hospitals,” Summers said in committee Monday.

The House sent that version over to the Senate where Summers’ amendment was stripped and the Senate reverted it to their plans – Sen. Eric Tarr’s, R-Putnam, original amendment.

“That reserve fund is there so that the quarterly disbursements, if they aren’t enough for any given line that has been cut, they can make a transfer, but the Secretary has to sign off on it,” Tarr told West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “She has to report on the transfers monthly to the joint committee.”

Tarr’s amendment also includes language that requires the unexpended reserve funds be returned to the Treasury by March 31, 2025.

House language to prohibit any funds from being transferred out of the home and community based waiver programs was retained in this version.

When the bill arrived back in the House, delegates from both sides of the aisle expressed outrage at the Senate’s actions.

“So let me get this straight,” Summers said. “Our bill went over, where we had the rates in there, the rate increases for IDD, for TBI, for aged and disabled waiver, for personal care services that went over there. They didn’t like that. But then they made sure they stuck in the amendment that they wanted about, ‘We want all this money to expire to general revenue on March 31.’ And now we’re supposed to take that?”

Del. Michael Hite, R-Berkeley, said the House’s amendments were meant to restore money and direct it to specific funds and services.

“Not just to leave it up to the Department of Human Services, again, to do the right thing,” Hite said. “That was the purpose of our amendments. That’s what we voted on in here. To make sure that they did the right thing, because they have proven over and over again that they don’t do the right thing.”

Del. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, said this was the time to fight, and encouraged his fellow lawmakers to reject the Senate’s amendments.

“The lady from the 73rd, offered a great amendment,” Garcia said. “And I talked to somebody from the Senate here a second ago and asked, and they said, ‘Well, that should be up to the discretion of the secretary, whether or not they have the ability to do these provider rate increases, right?’ Well, they haven’t done it. We as a body have the ability to set that policy and say, ‘Yes, you will take that money, and you will fund those, because otherwise, what are we doing here, but trying to find an illusory solution?”

Del. Mark Zatezalo, R-Hancock, said it is the lawmaker’s responsibility to keep promises to their constituents, and by rejecting the Senate’s amendments, they’d be keeping their promises.

“I agree with my colleagues here, we need to stick with our position on this and make sure it gets to where it goes so that we basically are telling people the truth,” Zatezalo said.

Del. Eric Householder, R-Berkeley, disagreed with his colleagues. He said Senate Bill 1001 fulfilled their promise to the people of West Virginia, and lawmakers were putting that at risk.

“I can’t give you any guarantees, whether or not they’re going to recede or not,” Householder said. “You’re gonna put that at risk by having a conference committee, that it’s an unknown. I’m saying that if this bill restores the cuts, we’re better off to concur with the Senate amendment and move on.”

The House voted nearly unanimously to reject the Senate’s amendment and refused to concur, requesting the Senate to recede.

With Federal Clawback Averted, Justice Renews Calls For Health Funding

With fears of a federal COVID-19 relief fund clawback quashed, Gov. Jim Justice urged lawmakers to restore funding to health and human services in West Virginia.

For weeks, the possible federal clawback of $465 million in COVID-19 relief funding for schools has loomed large in West Virginia.

But on Friday Gov. Jim Justice announced the state would not have to return the funds, which the United States Department of Education initially said were not spent according to federal guidelines.

News of the potential clawback threw a wrench into the final weeks of the West Virginia Legislature’s regular session this year. Out of caution, lawmakers ultimately approved a state budget of $4.9 billion — a figure lower than the $5.22 billion budget Justice proposed in January.

In March, Justice announced plans to hold a special legislative session in May to reexamine budget spending. With the specter of the clawback removed, lawmakers are now looking to bulk up the state budget.

And Justice has expressed a particular focus on restoring funding to West Virginia’s health and human resources.

State lawmakers significantly reduced funding for Medicaid services in this year’s regular legislative session.

This included a reduction of nearly $11 million in funding for the state’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) Waiver program, which provides residents with disabilities financial support and at-home health services.

During a virtual press briefing Tuesday, Justice said the dismissal of the federal clawback opens the door for restored funding.

“Where we need to concentrate our efforts right off the get-go is to restore the dollars that we pulled out of the budget … for the most needy of our people,” he said. “We didn’t need to [cut funding], and if we don’t watch out we’re going to get our really needy folks in a real mess.”

Lawmakers who supported the cuts during this year’s regular session said the reductions would increase spending transparency and limit unnecessary expenditures.

But opponents of the budget cuts have expressed concern that the lack of funding could broadly reduce Medicaid services for West Virginia residents, including individuals with disabilities.

In March, Justice announced plans to call a special legislative session before May 14, West Virginia’s primary election. He said reexamining the state budget was a top priority for the prospective session.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers have expressed a preference that the session be held later in May, to coincide with interim meetings at the State Capitol.

As of Tuesday, no date for the special session has been finalized.

Budget Correction Plans Increase After Clawback Averted

House Speaker Roger Hanshaw said the surplus budget revenue pool is in the $700 to $800 million range.

Now that a near half billion-dollar federal clawback is off the table, plans to fatten a skinny state budget are ramping up.

Gov. Jim Justice announced last Friday that West Virginia will not face a clawback of $465 million in COVID-19 money from the U.S. Department of Education. The news alleviated concerns raised by state lawmakers during the final days of the legislative session in March.

Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, said leaders from the executive and legislative branches have continued to regularly meet on setting budget priorities for an expected May special session.

“Before we meet in May,” Hanshaw said. “We will have made some tentative decisions on which of the various spending proposals that we had during the regular session will actually expect to pass into law and then go into our May interim period intending to do those things.”

Hanshaw said budget priorities begin with fulfilling certain ongoing state obligations.

“Like our public defender system, for example,” Hanshaw said. “It’s one of those every year where we have to pass a supplemental appropriation that lets us continue to meet our obligations of the justice system, funding the public defenders at a level that meets constitutional expectations.

Hanshaw said the surplus revenue pool is in the $700 to $800 million range. He said the budget meetings including state health officials highlight the priority issue of restoring several million dollars in health-related Medicaid funds.

“How do we make sure we’re maximizing federal dollars?” Hanshaw said. How do we make sure we’re maximizing our matching funds? We just had to delay it by about a month and a half this year.”

Hanshaw says legislators are watching possible federal changes in childcare funding to assess state budget input.

There’s a federal U.S. Department of Labor rule,” Hanshaw said. “I believe it is working its way through the federal system right now, that will have a big impact on that. A rule that would compel funding for childcare agencies on the basis of paying on an enrollment versus attendance model. We need some finality on that from the federal government before we can be certain just exactly how much we can allocate and the manner in which we allocated.”

In his State of the State Address, Justice proposed $50 million for a West Virginia State University agricultural lab. Hanshaw said that has been a state government priority for a long time. He expects it to be addressed in the Special Session.

“We need to get the Department of Agriculture in some new facilities,” Hanshaw said. “That’s well known. For many years, we’ve worked with the commissioner and with the President of WVSU, President Cage and his team there. That’s a shared priority for everybody.”

Hanshaw also expects long term EMS viability, and pay raises for non-uniformed corrections workers to be on Justice’s special session call, likely to be during held the May 19-21 interim legislative meetings

“It makes sense that we would utilize the time that people have already allocated to be here in the Capitol,” Hanshaw said.

No $465M COVID-19 Education Funds Clawback Justice Says

Gov. Jim Justice announced Friday that West Virginia will not face a clawback of $465 million in COVID-19 money from the U.S. Department of Education, alleviating concerns raised by state lawmakers during the final days of the legislative session in March.

The Republican governor said in a statement that federal officials approved the state’s application for a waiver for the money, which was a portion of the more than a billion dollars in federal aid the state received to help support students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In order to receive the money, the state needed to keep funding education at the same or a higher level than before the pandemic. In other words, the federal money could supplement existing state investment in education but not replace it.

For federal spending packages passed in 2020 and 2021, that meant a dollar-for-dollar match. For 2022 and 2023, the federal government examined the percentage of each state’s total budget being spent on education.

Those regulations were waived for West Virginia in 2022. As lawmakers worked to finish the state budget in March at the close of the session, the state had not been approved for a waiver for 2023.

The question threw the state’s budget process into disarray and caused uncertainty in the days before the 60-day legislative session, with lawmakers saying they would pass a “skinny budget” and reconvene to address unfinished business in May, when the financial situation is clearer.

Justice said then that his office was negotiating with the federal government and that he expected a positive resolution, citing funds dedicated to school service and teacher pay raises each year since 2018 — when school employees went on strike over conditions in schools.

On Friday, he praised the federal government’s decision, and he said he was never concerned the waiver wouldn’t be approved.
“This announcement came as no surprise and was never a real issue,” Justice said.

He also said the state has dedicated money to building projects and putting teaching aides in classrooms to improve math and reading skills. The state said it spent $8,464 per K-12 pupil in 2024, compared with $7,510 during Justice’s first year as governor in 2017, according to documents submitted to the federal government.

But because state spending increased overall — from $4.9 billion in 2017 to $6.2 billion in 2023 — the percentage marked for education decreased. The key metric eliciting pause from the federal government was an 8% decrease in the education piece of the budget pie — from 51% in 2017 to 43% last year.

Justice said the state’s investment in education speaks for itself: State leaders also approved $150 million for the state’s School Building Authority in the state budget for the fiscal year starting in July.

SBA Makes History With $150 Million Funding

The state’s School Building Authority made history on Wednesday supplementing needy school districts statewide while bringing about a potential end to concerns over a nearly half billion-dollar federal clawback.

The state’s School Building Authority made history on Wednesday supplementing needy school districts statewide while bringing about a potential end to concerns about a nearly half billion-dollar federal clawback.

Applause cascaded through the unusually packed School Building Authority (SBA) meeting when Gov. Jim Justice announced $150 million in funding. This money, recently approved by the legislature, is in addition to the $111 million already designated for 2024 school construction projects.

Usually the SBA has to make limited funding decisions on which school district can replace failing infrastructure, enhance school safety protocols, or upgrade education technology. This is the first time in its history the SBA could say yes to every school district request.

Authority executive director Andy Neptune said school district superintendents who thought their requests had been rejected were elated.

SBA Executive Director Andy Neptune reads off school districts with project funding approved. *Photo by Randy Yohe/West Virginia Public Broadcasting.*

“To be able to give the money, the finance that we’re going to give to them today, to get their projects done, I know is a big burden lifted off of them from the personal conversations that I’ve had with them,” Neptune said.

Sitting in to chair the meeting, Justice told the story of a Berkeley County grade schooler’s reaction on Tuesday to learning he was getting a new school building. The student told Justice, “Thanks for making me feel happy.” Justice also said the $150 million, coupled with other state education funding, will help see a U.S. Department of Education waiver granted. He said that will remove the threat of a near half billion-dollar federal clawback regarding state education spending during the pandemic.

“That’s not going to happen,” Justice said. “There’s not going to be a clawback, unless people go back on their word and everything. And I feel all the assurances that that’s not going to happen.”

The bonus dollars also let the SBA approve major improvements and needs projects rejected in the past funding cycle.

For a listing of SBA school district project requests granted at today’s meeting, click here,

Education Funding Boosted, Promised Programs Cut In State Budget

Much of the debate in the House of Delegates Tuesday morning focused on satisfying a potential $465 million federal clawback regarding the state’s spending on education. When it came to the budget debate, some promised program funding that was not education related, fell by the wayside.

Much of the debate in the House of Delegates Tuesday morning focused on satisfying a potential $465 million federal “clawback” regarding the state’s spending on education. When it came to the budget debate, some promised program funding that was not education related fell by the wayside.

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, wanted to make the reason behind passing Senate Bill 701 perfectly clear. The bill Supplements and amends appropriations to the Department of Education, School Construction Fund.

The bill appropriates $150 million to the School Building Authority, satisfying all the reconstruction requests made by state school districts.

Criss said the allocation intentionally goes toward satisfying the executive branch goal of showing in-kind state education funding to waive a potential $465 million-dollar federal clawback. The issue came up last week over concerns that the state did not spend enough money on education to match federal covid money.

“There are HVAC projects,” Criss said. “There were actually maybe two or three actual new schools involved in the projects, some roof projects, but cumulative, it was $150 million. And that these dollars will help, from what the governor’s office explained, would help towards the negotiations with the federal Department of Education”

The bill passed 94-2 and now goes to the governor.

Debate on the House Budget Bill 4025 began with a series of amendments proposed by Democrats.

Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, asked that the governor’s request for a $50 million agriculture lab at West Virginia State University be funded from budget back-end surplus money.

“This is needed. This will benefit us,” Rowe said. “I just can’t tell you how much it will lift West Virginia State into a new level of research and delivery of agricultural services throughout southern West Virginia.”

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, proposed an amendment to allocate $44 million from surplus budget funds for child care programs. The same programs were championed early on by Republican leadership and promised by Gov. Jim Justice.

“Last week, the federal government mandated that we do enrollment versus attendance to pay for child care,” Young said. “There is funding proposed with the federal government, but we all know they’re not so fast to do anything. And our child care centers are in desperate need of this money to keep maintaining, having all their services and keeping all the slots open.”

Concerned over balancing monies being poured into education, House Finance Committee Co-Chair Del. John Hardy, R-Berkeley, urged and got a voice vote rejection for every Democrat proposed amendment.

“I think that we’re very, very early in this process of the federal government coming out in front of this,” Hardy said. “Not being a priority of this legislature right now to be putting money being spent in the back of the budget as surplus revenue.”

With program funding concerns mounting and talk of a May Special Legislative Session to finalize a budget, Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, questioned a possibly wasted effort.

“So all these amendments are fashioned to House Bill 4025. Is that right?” Linville asked Hardy. “Yes,” Hardy said. “And yet the vehicle that’s going to be the budget is Senate Bill 200, is that right?” Linville said. “So everything that we’re doing here does not matter in the least does it?”

The House postponed any more debate on HB 4025 for one day, but they were far from done.

After a fire drill, the House returned to session and took up the Senate’s budget bill that Linville referred to. Criss walked through every major department in the budget and indicated where the Senate budget was different from the governor’s proposed budget. After a 45-minute discussion on Senate Bill 200, it passed by a 74 to 16 vote.

The two chambers will have to come together in a budget conference committee to work out differences between the two bills.