Department of Homeland Security Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Constitutional Questions Surround Justice Appointment

The West Virginia Constitution prohibits legislators from being appointed to any position created under a law passed during their term of office.

On Aug. 30, Gov. Jim Justice appointed then Del. Mike Honaker, R-Greenbrier, to serve in the legislatively created position of Inspector General for the state Department of Homeland Security. Honaker immediately resigned his position in the House of Delegates.

The position was created by passing House Bill 3360 in the 2023 regular West Virginia Legislative session.

In an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting following the apparent appointment, Honaker said his primary duty is to conduct inquiries and, where needed, full scope investigations involving agencies that include the state Department of Corrections and the West Virginia State Police. He said he will work with the Corrections Inspector General on the many allegations and lawsuits facing that department and conduct his own prison inspection tour.

“My work is when there are allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and maybe even matters that rise to a level of criminal investigation,” Honaker said in the interview.

When he was asked about taking the position he had just voted on, he said that was never discussed or considered.

“Absolutely not,” Honaker said. “It was never discussed, and never occurred to me.”

However, Article VI, Sec 15 of the West Virginia Constitution prohibits legislators from being appointed to any position created under a law passed during their term of office.

In a written statement, responding to an inquiry about the appointment, Justice’s Press Secretary C.J. Harvey said: “Mike Honaker was hired into an existing position within the Secretary of Homeland Security’s office as inspector general, rather than formally appointed to the statutorily created position as head of the Office of Inspector General. The governor believes Honaker to be the best man to serve in this role, and intends to formally appoint him to the statutorily created position at a later date.”

Honaker spent nearly three decades in numerous positions with the Virginia State Police, including special agent in charge of a division of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Richmond, Justice‘s office said in a press release. Honaker later served as the Greenbrier County Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and Director of the Greenbrier County 911 Center.

That appointment will have to go through the Senate, beginning with the Committee on Confirmations. Sen. Donna Boley, R-Pleasants, chairs the committee. In an interview just after learning of the constitutional confusion, Boley said the issue will be investigated.

“It’s unconstitutional for a delegate or senator to vote on something that he later benefits from,” Boley said. “The governor may be right. I don’t know, at this stage.”

Boley said there is a legal question to consider and she hasn’t spoken to the rest of the committee.

“We have good communications between the governor’s office and the Senate,” Boley said. “Normally, if something comes up that most of the committee members are opposed to, we’ll ask the governor to pull that nomination. I just don’t know at this point in time whether that’ll happen or not.”

The Inspector General position created in the statute covers all the agencies that are under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. Those include West Virginia State Police, Division of Corrections, Fire Marshal’s Office, Parole Board, the Division of Emergency Management, the Division of Justice and Community Services.

New Homeland Security Inspector General Creates ‘To Do’ List

“My work is when there are allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and maybe even matters that rise to a level of criminal investigation,” Honaker said.

As a House of Delegates member in the 2023 general session, Mike Honaker, R-Greenbrier, said he had no idea in voting for House Bill 3360, to create the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security, that he would end up holding that position.

“Absolutely not,”’ Honaker said. “It was never discussed, and never occurred to me.”

Appointed by Gov. Jim Justice, Honaker said his primary duty is to conduct inquiries and, where needed, full scope investigations.

“My work is when there are allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, and maybe even matters that rise to a level of criminal investigation,” Honaker said. “Those investigations would be conducted in conjunction with the appropriate law enforcement agency if that were something that was necessary.”

Honaker is Inspector General for all the agencies that are under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. Those include West Virginia State Police, Division of Corrections, Fire Marshal’s Office, Parole Board, the Division of Emergency Management, the Division of Justice and Community Services. He says there’s “about somewhere north of 5000 employees” in Homeland Security positions.

Honaker said he will work with the Corrections Inspector General on the many allegations and lawsuits facing that department and conduct his own prison inspection tour.

“I’m going to be traveling around and personally visiting some of the prisons and jails and looking at the actual conditions there to make sure that we’re doing the right thing,” he said. “There is obviously pending litigation, so we are constantly reviewing that information as it comes in to see if there are more things we need to be doing or looking at to make adjustments.”

He hopes to create an internal homeland security fraud, waste, and abuse hotline.

“So that employees within organizations that maybe see things that they would not otherwise be comfortable reporting, they could do that anonymously,” he said.

Honaker said he will let the State Police investigations run their course, not ruling out any reviews.

“I don’t think there’s any cause for me to become involved because those investigations have been taking place for some months now,” Honaker said. “They are being appropriately investigated. There could be some cases that we would go back and review to maybe make sure they were handled appropriately with the previous administration.”

Honaker plans to conduct staff inspections of all departments and agencies, to ensure accountability.

“Are there checks and balances? Are there systems of accountability to make sure that these things are not occurring in agencies, whether it’s mismanagement of money or fraud, waste or abuse,” Honaker said. “We would only know that by actually sitting down with employees, reviewing files, interviewing employees, about their position.”

Honaker said he will report investigation findings to Justice and Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia. He said he will not determine guilt or innocence.

“What I will fully do is conduct thorough, complete, fair, impartial investigations, to determine the facts and to produce reports that would allow the Secretary or the governor to make logical conclusions as to whether the allegations are substantiated or not,” he said. “I have no interest in being anything less than completely fair and impartial.”

ACLU-WV Petition Seeks Transparency For Alleged ‘Secret Prison Laws’

The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia has alleged the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Department of Homeland Security attempted to hide a set of legislative rules from public view.

The ACLU’s legal filing alleges Corrections and Rehabilitation provided a partial and inaccurate version of its Policy Directives Manual after it was requested by the organization in January.

It also alleges that after the ACLU requested access to the manual from the Secretary of State’s office, certain access was restricted after some time at the request of Homeland Security. The agency also allegedly requested a removal of the documents from the Secretary of State’s office, which was denied.

“What we were initially looking at, it’s unclear the extent to which that was accurate in the first place. But at this point, we don’t have access to the full document,” ACLU-WV Managing Attorney Aubrey Sparks said.

The manual is considered a legislative rule in West Virginia code. The ACLU petitioned the Kanawha County Circuit Court to order the agencies to provide a complete and accurate version of the policies, claiming the two agencies were creating “secret laws.”

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Sparks said legislative rules act differently than internal policies or procedure guides.

“The issue here is that this is a legislative rule, which means that it has the full force of law, and yet it’s not accessible to the public,” Sparks said.

The request for the DCR documents comes after a 2021 report that ACLU-WV published with findings that West Virginia has some of the nation’s deadliest jails.

“We were interested in seeing how those jails are run, if that document, that legislative rule conferred any substantive rights on the people who were incarcerated that could be useful in trying to improve the conditions of the prisons and jails,” Sparks said.

According to the legal filing, the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitations claimed the initial request for the document was treated as a Freedom of Information Act request, with some of the records removed “pursuant to W. Va. Code § 29B-1-4(a)(19),” which states certain records relating to facilities, directives and operational procedures could be used “to escape a facility, or to cause injury to another inmate, resident, or to facility personnel” if they are released.

The ACLU argued in the filing that the public still had a right of access and that further access was withheld to documents which were not initially restricted.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting reached out to the DHS and DCR for comment. The DHS declined to comment, while the DCR has not yet provided a response as of the story’s publication.

Berkeley County Receives Federal Funds For School Safety

It’s part of the DHS’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Program, meant to prevent “domestic violent extremism” within small communities. DHS is providing more than $380,000 to the Berkeley County Council for the local program.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is helping establish a “threat assessment and management task force” for schools in Berkeley County.

The money will fund a local network to watch for — and stop — targeted violence, like school shootings or other types of domestic terrorism. Three thousand public school employees will receive training on what to do in such emergencies. The county is one of a small handful of 43 local governments and organizations nationwide to get the funding.

“It’s more of a complement to existing training initiatives that we build upon, like the train-the-trainer style courses,” Berkeley County sheriff Nathan Harmon said. “So we’ll identify in educational systems who those trainers are, and then we’ll build upon what their expertise is.”

Harmon says it’s a way to prevent such incidents before they happen.

“As much as we would love to think that a terrorist act would not happen here, or an active shooter incident would not happen here, we’d be behind reality if we told ourselves that,” Harmon said.

Aside from educational sessions, the program will create unique emergency guidelines for each school in the county by the beginning of the next school year.

State Receives Millions In Federal Grants For Preparedness

Organizations across West Virginia will receive millions in federal grants for preparedness efforts.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Preparedness Grant Programs and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have awarded more than $24 million via 21 grants in the state.

The West Virginia Bureau for Public Health is the largest grant recipient with close to $16 million from FEMA.

The State Homeland Security Program provided the next-largest grant of nearly $5 million to the State of West Virginia.

The funding is designated to prepare against man-made threats and natural disasters, and reimburse costs accrued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prison Substance Use Treatment, Juvenile Justice System Receive Federal Money

More than three quarters of a million dollars is coming to substance use treatment and juvenile justice system programs under the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Justice’s Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program, which supports programs in 10 facilities statewide, will receive $302,965. The national program helps provide treatment and recovery to those with substance use and other mental health disorders.

The remaining $457,500 comes from the DOJ’s Title II Formula Grants Program. The program helps support job training, mental health treatment and community programs to help prevent truancy.

Cabinet Secretary Jeff Sandy said in an email that this portion of the funding “will be presented to the Juvenile Justice Commission.” It will be up to the commission to make recommendations on how to use the grants.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said in a statement that “providing substance use disorder treatment options across the state is crucial” to combating the state’s drug epidemic. U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said the funding supports programs that “meet individuals where they are, and provides the tools needed to help them contribute to their communities and lead a successful life.”