Sandy served in the Justice administration for seven years. He was the governor’s first appointment of secretaries.
Jeff Sandy, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will retire Aug. 1. Gov. Jim Justice announced the retirement Wednesday during his regular briefing.
Sandy served in the Justice administration for seven years. He was the governor’s first appointment of secretaries.
“Jeff Sandy has done an amazing job as Secretary of Homeland Security,” Justice said. “He’s an honorable man who’s helped my administration in countless ways, and we will greatly miss his tireless work. I can never thank him enough for his service these past seven years and I wish him the absolute best in his retirement.”
His accomplishments in his position include the reorganization of the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. He also oversaw the consolidation of jails, prisons and juvenile centers into one unit.
Justice thanked Sandy for his service and presented him with a Distinguished West Virginian award earlier in the day.
Justice also announced Sandy’s replacement, Mark Sorsaia, effective Aug. 1.
Officials have released the identity of a kayaker who went missing along the banks of the Middle Fork River in West Virginia last Sunday. Officials with the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety say Jamie L. Gray, 41, of Hacker Valley is presumed drowned after going missing on Feb. 9. The agency is closing access to the Middle Fork River between Audra State Park in Barbour County and Tygart Valley River to bring in equipment to assist with the recovery of Gray. Officials say Gray was kayaking with a group of nine fellow paddlers in river last week. Her kayak capsized and she was swept downstream. She then capsized again and swept under a large rock, where she never resurfaced.
The West Virginia Division of Corrections is relocating inmates and some staff from the Anthony Correctional Center in White Sulphur Springs after black mold was found.
The Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety says in a news release that the transfers started Friday after Corrections Commissioner Betsy Jividen received initial findings from an ongoing inspection of the facility.
The statement says black mold was found in the Anthony Center’s main building, which includes administrative offices, the facility’s kitchen, gym and some housing units.
The minimum-security Anthony Center houses about 200 young-adult offenders serving sentences ranging from six months to two years. Female inmates are being moved to the Lakin Correctional Center in Mason County. Male inmates are being sent to correctional centers in Parkersburg and in Pocahontas County
DMAPS, the shorthand for the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, is an area of the budget that, according to Senate Finance Chair Mike Hall, can be difficult to cut. At $350 million, it’s a fairly sizable part of state government and houses the regional jails, prisons, homeland security office, State Police, and a few other divisions.
During the department’s budget presentation Thursday, Gov. Jim Justice’s newly appointed Secretary Jeff Sandy told senators he’s only officially been in his position for just over a month, but he’s already looking to make changes that will result in savings.
“It did not take me very long to realize some of the issues within DMAPs,” Sandy said, “and that is duplication of efforts.”
Sandy reported the agency is already combining some services- including financial and legal- to share personnel across agencies within the department.
Each of those agency heads presented their individual line items to senators Thursday and even in a tight budget year, several asked for increases in their funding.
Jan Cahill, Superintendent of the State Police, told lawmakers that with the restoration of a previous $1.3 million cut, he planned to hire more technicians to help reduce the backlog in the state Police’s forensic lab, but he chose the new lab personnel over paying for a new State Police cadet class because of the lack of funds.
Several members of the committee didn’t like the either or choice in the State Police line item, including Sen. John Unger from Berkeley County, who questioned Cahill about an issue plaguing his district, and most districts: substance abuse.
“It is absolutely no exaggeration at all for us to say that 90-plus percent, probably 95 percent, [of crime] has a drug link,” Cahill said. “If you connect the dots enough, you can go back and find a drug link on just about everything we do.”
“We are being penny wise and dollar stupid here,” Sen. Doug Facemire of Braxton County said during the meeting.
Facemire said lawmakers are going to have to make budgetary choices based on priorities and the State Police should be one of them.
“What that means is the crimes and things that aren’t drug related; you don’t have time to fool with them,” he said to Cahill. “I mean, we owe our citizens more than this.”
Credit Will Price / West Virginia Legislative Photography
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
Sen. Mike Hall on the chamber floor.
Senate Finance Chair Mike Hall recognizes that the Legislature will have to make tough budgetary decisions this session, and so far, legislative leaders in both chambers say those decisions will come in the form of cuts.
But Hall is working hard to make sure his committee understands the real-world outcomes of those cuts.
“If you’re going to talk about reducing the size of government, that you actually look at government in total to decide where you want to go,” he said, “or decide maybe that it’s pretty hard to do.”
That’s why Hall has divided his committee into workgroups who are looking at each section of the budget before the agency’s present their funding plans.
That knowledge allows his fellow Senators to ask more pointed questions of the departments, but also get them through the budget process more quickly.
Hall said this session, he wants to have a spending plan prepared as close to the halfway mark as possible.
“We’ve only got 60 days, so we’ve got to build some baseline understanding of the expenditures,” he said. “Then, in the second part of this session, decide if revenue is going to be there or not be there, what to do next.”
That new revenue isn’t necessarily off the table, according to Hall, despite leaderships’ push to cut instead of increase taxes. To Hall, it’s about protecting necessary public services and he believes his fellow Senators are starting to come to the same understanding.
“I’m hearing members say things like, if I can be convinced that there’s not much waste or that we really need to do these things, then they would look at revenue measures,” he said.
West Virginia corrections officials say the lockdown has been lifted at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex where a 66-year-old inmate died after an apparent assault Sunday evening.
Authorities said Eugene Robert Anderson was fatally injured in an outdoor recreation area by one or more inmates.
According to the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, the facility was placed on lockdown and a weapon was found.
The lockdown was lifted Tuesday.
State police are investigating. No one has been charged.
Anderson was serving sentences from Kanawha and Wood counties for sex offenses involving minors with no release before 2148.
A lawsuit claims some West Virginia inmates were so desperate for water they tried to drink from toilets during a water crisis.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the suit was filed on behalf of inmates at South Central Regional Jail between Jan. 9-14, 2014. That was at a time when area residents were told not to use water for anything but flushing toilets and fighting fires due to a chemical spill in a river.
The West Virginia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit in federal court in Charleston.
The suit contains many more allegations about how the West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority handled the water crisis.
The state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety has defended allegations about how inmates were treated.
