A special circumstances review of Upshur County Schools by the West Virginia Department of Education revealed tens of thousands of dollars in misspent federal funds, among other financial misappropriations.
The West Virginia Board of Education has declared a state of emergency in Upshur County Schools.
A “special circumstances” review of Upshur County Schools by the West Virginia Department of Education revealed tens of thousands of dollars in misspent federal funds, among other financial misappropriations.
A preliminary report was presented to the board Wednesday by Jeffrey Kelley, accountability officer for the Department of Education. The findings Kelley presented included food and beverage charges for staff retreats at Stonewall Resort totaling $49,260 using funds designated for federal programs.
“(The) team also discovered an instance of a contract for a staff retreat at a bread and breakfast in Buckhannon totaling $1,415.94,” he said. “Overnight accommodation was provided at the bed and breakfast, which is located six miles from the board office.”
Nancy White, state board vice president, said the report is incomplete but concerning.
“I believe we have enough that tells us that these actions are very egregious, unethical and perhaps criminal,” she said.
However, there were questions from the state board about the timeline of the investigation, and why they were not notified sooner. State Superintendent David Roach told the board the special circumstances review was prompted after a routine review of Upshur County Schools in December 2022 that was completed in February 2023.
“I’m just trying to establish some baseline facts because my concern is, we’ve known about this since March,” said board president Paul Hardesty. “No action, no activity, no nothing, no correspondence with this board until May the 26th. I find that troubling on numerous fronts.”
The board went into executive session due to the incomplete nature of the report and the desire to delve deeper into its contents without compromising the personal privacy of subjects involved.
After close to four hours in executive session, Roach made 18 recommendations to the state board, including that a state of emergency be declared in Upshur County Schools.
“That the West Virginia Board of Education direct the interim and future Upshur County superintendent and the Deputy State Superintendent jointly develop and present to the state board at a future meeting a set of standards and or a strategic plan that must be implemented in order for the County Board of Education to regain control of the school system,” Roach said.
Roach also recommended the board grant the Deputy State Superintendent authority to take action necessary to correct the extraordinary circumstances in Upshur County.
The board unanimously approved the superintendent’s recommendations.
The office of the county superintendent of Upshur County Schools, along with positions of personnel who serve at the will and pleasure of the county superintendent, were declared vacant at the end of the business day.
Stephen Wotring, currently serving as superintendent of Preston County Schools, was named interim superintendent of Upshur County Schools.
The investigation is ongoing. One investigator told the board only 1 percent of Upshur’s total transactional data had been reviewed so far.
Hardesty said that West Virginia State Police were sent to secure the central office of Upshur County Schools effective until the West Virginia Department of Education can get their personnel on the ground.
A real problem facing many older adults is having enough money for their retirement. News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Josh Hodges, the chief customer officer for the National Council on Aging, to learn about the help that is available for retirees and caregivers.
A real problem facing many older adults is having enough money for their retirement.
News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Josh Hodges, the chief customer officer for the National Council on Aging (NCOA), to learn about the help that is available for retirees and caregivers.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Do me a favor, start out by giving me a quick introduction of who you are and what you do.
Hodges: Josh Hodges, I’m the chief customer officer at the National Council on Aging, or NCOA. We’re a national nonprofit, have been around for about 75 years, focusing on helping people age well. That can mean a bunch of different things. We have programs on the health aspects, focusing on helping people live healthy, planning for that stage of their life. We have employment opportunities.
We also have a lot of opportunities around economic security to help people have the money they need in retirement, help them stretch their dollars. I’ve been at NCOA for about four and a half, almost five years. Before that I spent over 10 years with the federal government doing aging programs.
Douglas: What are some of the tips that people need to know, as they’re getting older, as they’re getting into retirement age, to care for themselves and plan for the future?
Hodges: Well, they are two major drivers of running out of money. First, longevity. People live longer than they expect. For a 65-year-old, there’s a decent chance you’re gonna live to be 85. That’s especially true for women. There’s also long-term care costs of longevity, and then the cost of care later in life.
As any caregiver knows, long-term care is a series of caregiving opportunities that you need to help older adults continue to live in a home, or in an assisted living facility type place. And long-term care can be extremely expensive. It’s one of the things people don’t like to talk about, we don’t like to talk about the fact that we may need help getting around our community, we need help getting around the house, or making meals. We don’t, as a society, like to talk about those things.
Long-term care is really driving the fact many older adults age into poverty, again, especially true for women. So, one thing we like to do in NCOA is really focus on — how do we help you stretch your dollars? There are federal programs out there and state programs out there to help you really make your money work every month. These are programs that you can apply for that have certain qualifications about their age, or income qualifications, that really help people make those daily expenses possible.
Douglas: Let’s talk about some of those programs, some of the ways that seniors can stretch their dollars to survive 20 or 30 years without a direct income stream other than retirements and social security.
Hodges: I would use some of these programs as supplements, opportunities to help you make those dollars do more. For example, Medicare is not free. Many people think it’s free, it’s this free program at the end of their life where they have access. There are premiums, there are co-pays, there are drug costs to it, and each of those areas have programs to help low-income older adults pay for those things.
One program to help pay for prescription drugs can save somebody an average of $5,000 a year. Now imagine you’re an older adult living in poverty, living at, you know, $12, $14, $15, $20,000 a year — $5,000 in your pocket is pretty significant and it gives you access to the drugs. What we don’t want is what happens in this society, is that people trade off their medication for their food, for their housing, they’re making these incredibly challenging tradeoffs. Having the opportunity to actually connect to these programs to help pay for food, pay for housing, pay for electricity, pay for your Medicare, are our opportunities that we really want to make sure older adults understand.
Douglas: What’s the scale? I mean, when you see TV advertising, you see happy senior citizens out traveling the world and going on vacations. I think we all know in the back of our heads that, that’s not reality for most people. But do you have any sense of the scale of how many people are just kind of eking by versus the ones who are living their best retirement?
Hodges: Our data shows tens of millions of older adults are barely making ends meet. You’re describing the idealized retirement. You get your gold watch after 40 years in a corporate job, then you move off to the Bahamas and you have a nice drink with an umbrella. That’s not the reality for many, many people in this country, because there are just so many different costs at play here. And because again, people are underestimating how long they’re going to live and definitely underestimate how much things cost.
These programs I’m talking about, there are $30 billion, that’s billion with a B, left on the table every year. These are dollars that older adults do qualify for but aren’t actually applying and getting benefits because many of them don’t even apply.
Douglas: In trying to care for my mom, that was one of the issues that I kept running into as a caregiver, I didn’t have a clue how to even get started with that kind of stuff. Where does somebody go to learn about these programs and get signed up for or get registered to take advantage of them?
Hodges: I think you really identified the first major hurdle, just knowledge of these programs. So NCOA runs a website — benefitscheckup.org. It helps people understand what benefits they may qualify for. We’re a nonprofit, we’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re not trying to collect your information, we’re not going to even ask you for your email address. We’re just going to ask you some basic demographic information about yourself, what zip code you live in, how many people live in your household, whether you’re a veteran or not. Some of these programs are dependent on veteran status.
This website gives you a sense of what coverage you may qualify for, then we connect you to where you actually apply for the benefits, because so many of these benefit programs are actually on state websites, are on third party websites. We want to connect you right to the programs themselves.
Douglas: What are the numbers we’re talking about? What does the average older adult qualify for?
Hodges: Average is a hard thing to do. We see many older adults who qualify for a Medicare savings plan or extra health. These are programs, they’ll pay for your Medicare. Extra Help is a program to help pay for your prescription drugs, we see numbers above $5,000 a year. Now it depends on what prescription drugs you’re on, it depends on your individual situation. But we’re not talking about pennies here, we’re talking about hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
The bottom line for an older adult or a caregiver: take a look. If you don’t qualify, you don’t qualify, but there are many programs out there designed to help older adults. Some of them are not income dependent. There are programs to help in different parts of the country, too, for local transportation that’s age specific, but not income specific; programs like the National Parks Pass to let you get into the national parks. Many people don’t know these things exist, but they’re out there to save you money.
Douglas: What haven’t we talked about?
Hodges: I think there are really two things to stop people from applying for these benefits. The first is knowledge, and so that’s one of our goals, get information out there. The second is this thought that there are people out there who need the benefits more, so I shouldn’t apply, because I’m doing okay. But these programs expand to meet the eligible individuals. If you don’t apply for the benefit that you would qualify for, somebody else doesn’t get more money. So don’t let that stop you, don’t prevent you from applying for these benefits. These benefits are there for people at all sorts of different income levels. And again, it takes about five minutes to see if you’re qualified for them.
If you prefer a one-on-one approach, we run a national call center. And you can give them a call between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. eastern, seven days a week to talk to folks. That number is 1-800-794-6559. You can call them, and they’ll actually walk you through what benefits you might be eligible for or connect you to a local resource.
News from the world of banking over the last few weeks has been unsettling, both at home and abroad, but how has that affected West Virginia’s financial institutions?
News from the world of banking over the last few weeks has been unsettling, both at home and abroad, but how has that affected West Virginia’s financial institutions?
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its subsequent bailout by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as well as the insolvency of several other banks across the country, has created worries about the stability of the entire banking industry.
Brant Hammer, associate professor of finance at West Virginia University, said Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was in a uniquely unstable position due, in no small part, to its role in the tech industry.
“With Silicon Valley Bank, they had about 50 percent of their deposits concentrated in these tech firms,” Hammer said. “That customer base is not only concentrated in that one industry, but most of those deposits are large. The vast majority of them were uninsured deposits greater than $250,000. In fact, 97 percent of them. There can’t be five banks in the country that have more uninsured deposits than Silicon Valley did.”
As Hammer noted, $250,000 is the maximum bank deposit that the FDIC will insure.
There are a lot of other factors at play in SVB’s collapse, including rising interest rates and poor management practices. SVB got itself into a position where depositors lost confidence and rushed to pull their money out before the bank collapsed completely. This is commonly known as a “bank run.”
Hammer said that unlike the banking crashes in 2008, where credit was the underlying issue, SVB and other institutions that have needed help over the past few weeks faced a crisis of cash flow. Think of the Frank Capra classic, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” but with billions in venture capital funds.
“It didn’t start a week ago,” Hammer said. “The primary difference between what’s happening now and what happened in ‘08 is that what happened in ‘08 was a credit crisis, it was an issue of credit quality, meaning loans, going bad, people defaulting and that leading to losses of banks, which led to insolvency, which led to bailouts. This is the exact opposite. This is a liquidity crisis. This is a problem not of assets being worthless. This is a problem of assets of banks, essentially not having enough cash on hand to meet deposit withdrawals.”
Hammer points out that Silicon Valley Bank’s fate has spread to other institutions because people started paying attention to banks in similar positions, overinvested in unstable industries like tech and crypto, with too many uninsured deposits. As it relates to West Virginia’s banks, Hammer said they’re much more traditional and well-positioned to handle market volatility. His concern is what happens to the industry after things settle back down.
“I’m not worried about this problem resulting in people in West Virginia losing their deposits,” Hammer said. “I’m worried about this problem leading to an even more rapid consolidation of the banking industry, because it is the large banks that are benefiting. I just saw a headline this morning that just since the Silicon Valley crash, Bank of America has seen an inflow of $15 billion in deposits. It’s leading to a flight of deposits out of regional community banks and into the big four.”
Those big four banks are JPMorgan, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank.
Local leaders agree with Hammer that the state’s financial industry is generally insulated from what’s happening. On March 14, State Treasurer Riley Moore released a statement assuring West Virginians that the state’s $10 billion Consolidated Fund of short-term investments for the state and local governments had no exposure to SVB or other banks in crisis.
“There’s some unique things that are happening with SVB, Signature and some of those other cryptos. Part of that as well, is that at times, as we’ve seen, there’s a lot of volatility there,” Moore said.
Hammer and Moore both agreed that SVB’s uniquely large deposits of venture capital funds didn’t allow the bank to build a basis of loans and other, traditional capital diversification.
“Taking all these deposits as it relates to venture capital, where they’re not able to do capital formation and raise more money around a given venture, when they need to draw down cash immediately, that’s how you run into some of these problems,” Moore said. “Obviously, our banks here in West Virginia, are well diversified in terms of their deposits, in terms of the loans that they do. They’ve worked very diligently to hedge risk.”
Moore said that West Virginia is lucky to have a healthy variety of banking institutions – more than 40 – across the state, and specifically more community banks that focus on local relationships and businesses.
“We have a lot of community banks here in the state, I mean, tons of small community banks, that are really a hub and a central linchpin for the communities in which they operate in,” Moore said. “I think West Virginia does have a healthy diversification as it relates to community banks, middle market type banks. We’re very fortunate, I think, to have a very healthy community banking sector, as well as middle market banks.”
Adding to a well-diversified financial environment, Moore adds that the state’s banking system simply isn’t involved in the high-risk industries that made up the majority of SVB and Signature’s portfolios, things like venture capitalism, speculative tech startups and cryptocurrency.
“It’s a diverse type of business. Obviously, there’s a lot of banks here that are involved in the fossil fuel industry, to one extent or another, since that’s so large in the state of West Virginia, but it’s also a lot of small business,” Moore said.
That stability is reassuring because for now, there’s little that can be done on the state level.
“Our hands are kind of tied when the federal government is deciding to continue to raise interest rates. We’re all subject to that, everybody in the country is,” Moore said. “Obviously, that’s a challenge that we all face. I’m here to support the community banks and the banking industry at large in the state of West Virginia anyway that I can. But our hands are tied to a degree unfortunately, on some of this. There’s not too much we can actually do.”
An official in Gov. Jim Justice’s office said, “the West Virginia Division of Financial Institutions is closely monitoring developments together with state and federal counterparts.”
The Senate gaveled in for its first Saturday floor session of 2023 as Crossover Day looms this coming Wednesday, March 1.
The Senate gaveled in for its first Saturday floor session of 2023 as Crossover Day looms this coming Wednesday, March 1.
Crossover Day is an important deadline in the legislative process. It marks the final day for bills to pass out of their chamber of origin to complete legislative action in the other chamber.
The Senate began by deferring until later in the day two of the biggest bills on the day’s schedule: Senate Bill 268, which would address the state’s embattled Public Employee Insurance Agency and Senate Bill 423, which would increase salaries for certain state employees.
Nearing Completion
The Senate passed three bills Saturday that originated in the House of Delegates. However, as all three were amended in Senate committees, they must now return to the House before completing legislative action.
House Bill 2993 would create a new hospital designation called “Rural Emergency Hospital.”
During discussion of the bill in the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee Feb. 21, it was stated that the new designation was intended to allow access to critical outpatient hospital services in communities that might not be able to support or sustain a traditional critical access hospital.
House Bill 3113 would require West Virginia high school students to complete a course of study in personal finance to graduate.
Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, said during discussion of the bill in the Senate Education Committee Feb. 21 that he felt the requirement was long overdue.
“In my years when I had a business I was shocked at the number of people that had no earthly idea how to handle any kind of finances in their life,” he said. “I think this is long overdue that we put this in our school system to teach people how to do those daily financial things like balance a checkbook, how to try to manage credit that didn’t get out of hand. I think it’s a very big step for our school systems.”
House Bill 3317 would remove two continuing education requirements relating to controlled substances and veterans’ mental health for certain medical professionals.
Senate Health and Human Resources Committee Chair Sen. Mike Maroney, R-Marshall, said that the intent of the bill was not to make license renewal easier.
“Every now and then in code, depending on what’s going on in the world, we’ll put in requirements for licensure,” he said. “After four or five years of doing the same (continuing medical education) over and over and over again, it’s still required unless we remove it. That’s kind of what this bill does for those who have done it multiple times.”
To The House
The Senate also passed nine bills, including Senate Bill 469, which would create a special revenue fund in the State Treasury to pay for CPR instruction in the state’s high schools.
Senate Bill 544 also passed, which would increase the caps on maximum solar power output for commercial customers from 500 kilowatts to 1000 kilowatts.
Senate Government Organization Chair Jack David Woodrum, R-Summers, explained the cap increase would help larger projects advance the public interest.
“One such project is for Calhoun County Schools,” he said. “Two solar arrays will be installed, one to Calhoun County Middle High School with an output of 596.6 kilowatts, and the other at Pleasant Hill Elementary School with an output of 172 kilowatts.”
Senate Bill 558 would prohibit law-enforcement agencies from posting booking photographs of certain criminal defendants on social media, with exceptions such as in the active search of a fugitive.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, said the bill is modeled on legislation passed in several other states, and is needed to protect individuals alleged to have committed a minor offense.
“We all know that social media can be a difficult place sometimes, and there have been numerous studies that have shown the effects on mental health that social media has had, not just on our youth, but also on adults as well,“ Weld said.
Weld cited the case of a woman in West Virginia, whose young son was arrested on a misdemeanor charge.
“And after being released from custody, he found his booking photo on the social media website of the police department that had initially arrested him and charged him,” Weld said. “That young man, after seeing some of the vicious comments that were posted on his photograph, and the shares that it had had, and the attacks that were being made on him and his family as a result of his arrest, tragically took his own life.”
“And so I think that with the exceptions that we’ve placed in the bill, I think we can hopefully avoid another family being struck by a tragedy like that of the one of the mother that I had the pleasure to be introduced to,” he concluded.
Senate Bill 619 would allow, but not require, educators to teach intelligent design as a theory. The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia stated during discussion of the bill in committee that the allowance would enable violations of the establishment clause, which prohibits governments at any level in the U.S. from establishing or sponsoring religion.
The bill’s passage was the most contentious of the morning, with six Senators voting against.
Senate Bill 676 would require the Bureau for Medical Services submit a report every two years on Medicaid fees and managed care provider reimbursements compared to PEIA, Medicare, and surrounding states.
All bills now go to the House of Delegates for its consideration.
The Senate adjourned until 1:30 p.m. In the interim, both the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees will meet to discuss legislation, including House Bill 2526, titled “Relating to reducing the personal income tax.”
The Senate Education Committee started the day off with a lively discussion of several topics, including history and hygiene.
The Senate Education Committee started the day off with a lively discussion of several topics, including history and hygiene.
Senate Bill 216 would require all schools to instruct students on the Holocaust and other genocides.
Although there was brief discussion around the need to define the term “genocide,” much of the debate and ensuing amendments to the bill related to concerns about government overreach into private education.
Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, argued the bill exacerbated an imbalance of creating requirements for secular schools, but not for homeschooling or other alternative education programs.
“What we’re adding on to I’m fine with, I have no problem,” Roberts said. “I’m thrilled, except for the forcing of the private schools to do these things when, by the way, we have twice as many homeschoolers in the state of West Virginia as we do private school students. We don’t do those things with all of the others. This is a singling out, is where I have the problem.”
Roberts proposed an amendment to strike the words, “private, parochial, and denominational” from the bill, which was adopted.
Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, proposed another amendment that would require all public schools to teach financial literacy.
“The basic understanding of a checking account and banking and how a mortgage works, how a car payment works; those kinds of things, I think are things that somehow some of our children are, as they leave public schools, are not prepared to have knowledge in those areas, and those are decisions they’re having to make that can really affect them,” Oliverio said.
State Superintendent David Roach testified that West Virginia schools do teach financial literacy and have for years but conceded that there is nothing in the state code requiring it be taught. The amendment also passed.
A committee substitute of Senate Bill 216 was reported to the full Senate with the recommendation that it pass.
Free Period Products
The committee also took up Senate Bill 489, which would require all county boards of education to provide free feminine hygiene products to students in grades three through 12.
In recent surveys from the Alliance for Period Supplies, a nonprofit sponsored by Kotex, more than two in five people with periods say they have struggled to purchase period products due to lack of income at some point in their life, often leading to missed work and school. The surveys also show COVID-19 has only exacerbated the issue of access.
Sen. David Stover, R-Wyoming, voiced his support for the bill. As a teacher for more than 20 years, Stover said he saw firsthand the need for period products in schools.
“What I ended up doing for the last 10 or 12 years I taught, any two or three of the female students that I knew, and knew their moms – who I probably taught 20 years earlier – I just donated for 500 bucks,” Stover said.
“I said, ‘Here’s the fund, you and your mothers figure out where this will be stored. You don’t need to do anything, we’ll kind of know when you get up and go to that particular file cabinet.’ It was a godsend that that could happen. It would be a bigger godsend because it ended up being that students from every teacher in the building would interrupt my class then. So you need to do that in a central way. This could have been done a long time ago.”
If passed, West Virginia would join 16 other states including neighboring Maryland and Virginia in requiring period products in schools.
Senate Bill 489 was also reported to the full Senate with the recommendation that it pass.
Results Of Focus Groups
At the end of the meeting, the Senators heard a joint presentation from the state’s two education employee organizations.
American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia President Fred Albert and West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee presented some of the findings from six focus groups the organizations conducted across the state in late November and early December 2022 to collect community input on the factors that will help improve student achievement.
They reported the major finding was schools simply need more resources, closely followed by concerns of discipline, teacher compensation and academic freedom.
West Virginians will choose whether to keep Republican incumbent John McCuskey as state auditor this November, or instead turn to Democrat Mary Ann Claytor to help maintain the state’s financial integrity.
It is a position that entails much more than one might think — with the current office employing 250 workers. The state auditor is the bookkeeper for West Virginia – overseeing the use of state funds and payroll for state employees, independent of the Governor’s Office and the Legislature — which sets the state budget.
The auditor is also West Virginia’s chief inspector, meaning the office checks in on how money is being spent by local governments.
The auditor’s office provides transparency between the government’s budget and the people, said Marybeth Beller, Marshall University associate political science professor.
“It’s a very large operation, and one that is really in charge on all levels of making sure that the state is fiscally responsible,” Beller said.
In the 157 years of West Virginia state auditors, much of the time the office has been held by a Democrat; however, Beller said the position is effectively non-partisan.
“The auditor does not set public policy like the governor would or the legislature would, in terms of how monies are to be appropriated,” she said. “Rather the auditor makes sure that however those monies are appropriated that they’re spent properly. It’s not an ideological position at all. It’s one of accountability.”
There is also no term limit for state auditor – prior to McCuskey, the incumbent, Democrat Glen Gainer III held the office for 24 years.
Since taking office in 2017, McCuskey has implemented programs that he said improves transparency when it comes to state spending.
‘West Virginia Checkbook’ was rolled out in 2018. It is a public website that shows how the state and local governments are spending taxpayer money in real time. So far 19 counties have opted in, and McCuskey said if reelected he hopes to have all counties participating in the West Virginia Checkbook program.
“Our goal is to start to use the power of digital information to streamline the audit process and give us a perspective window into potential future financial collapses of smaller governments and enable us to stop catastrophes before they happen as opposed to trying to pick up the pieces after they do,” McCuskey said.
Monongalia County was the first to implement the West Virginia Checkbook program. County Commissioner and Democrat Tom Bloom said McCuskey has his vote, namely because of the pilot program.
Bloom said he would like McCuskey to have the opportunity to roll out the program to more counties, specifically boards of education where taxpayers’ money is being spent through levies.
“Many times, a politician is told, “Oh, you took this money and spent it somewhere else.” Now we can say, “Please go into the open checkbook, go right here,”’ Bloom said. “As long as people understand the process of where their money’s going and how it’s being used then it makes government so much easier to smoothly run.”
In 2017, the state auditor’s office partnered with West Virginia University to allow accounting students to perform audits on local governments. McCuksey said it prepares students for a job in the auditor’s office after college, while also helping the communities themselves.
“Cities are getting looked at and audited on a much more frequent basis, which is just good,” McCuskey said. “It’s good for fraud detection. It’s good, it’s just good government.”
McCuskey also implemented a fraud prevention unit. He said his office has identified 14 felony convictions for government fraud in the last three and a half years.
Prior to State Auditor, McCuskey was a two-term House of Delegates member for the 35th District of Charleston. He received his bachelor’s degree in political communication from George Washington University, and a law degree from WVU.
Challenger Mary Ann Claytor ran a grassroots campaign against McCuskey in 2016, receiving about 35 percent of the vote, as opposed to McCuskey’s 58 percent. However, Claytor’s win in the 2016 Democrat primary was a “political upset” as she was largely considered the underdog in the race.
This year Claytor is the party’s choice and is also a ‘West Virginia Can’t Wait’ candidate — meaning she has signed a pledge not to accept corporate donations to her campaign. She said she is the most qualified for the office.
“I’m the only candidate that’s running for state auditor, that actually has an accounting degree,” Claytor said. “And the extensive experience, you know, that I have, and the ability to actually do an audit if necessary.”
For 22 years she was employed by the state auditor’s office and the state tax department. Claytor received her bachelor’s in business administration, with a focus on accounting, from West Virginia State University and a master’s in religion from Liberty University.
If elected, Claytor said she would like to implement a grievance board and streamline the auditing process. She plans to personally visit every municipality in the state to evaluate how in-depth her office should be with each one.
“Sometimes we do things that because over history, we’ve found embezzlements, we’ve added additional procedures that we’ve done,” Claytor said. “So, I think we’re at the point where we try to need to evaluate those extra procedures that we do. So that we can see, are they still necessary even though they’re not, you know, required?”
Claytor said she would also like the timeliness of audits to be transparent. So, whether the state auditor office is behind or ahead of its yearly audits, the public would know.
Supporting Claytor this election cycle is Susan Perry, a Logan County resident and candidate for House of Delegates 24th District. Perry said she fluctuated between voting Republican and Democrat throughout her life, but regardless of party, she thinks Claytor’s experience speaks for itself.
“There’s very serious implications for our state, in who we put in those positions, and so the fact that Mary Ann has auditing experience and qualifications make me want to support her,” Perry said.
But not having career auditing experience does not necessarily rule a candidate out, as the state auditor is also a management position, said Marybeth Beller, Marshall University associate political science professor.
“We’ve got two different people who have qualifications, they both have different backgrounds, but both qualify them for the position,” Beller said.
Regardless of who is elected, the state auditor’s office will continue to monitor how the state allocates and spends COVID-19 funds in the new year — just like all other funds that flow through the state Treasury.
