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National Guard No Longer Stationed In Correctional Facilities

As of May 10, no members of the West Virginia National Guard are stationed in state prisons or jails. This follows more than a year of National Guard support over understaffing.

Members of the West Virginia National Guard are no longer stationed in West Virginia jails or prisons.

William Marshall, commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, shared the news Tuesday at a meeting of the state’s Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority, which convened for an interim meeting.

Marshall said the final National Guard members left their positions May 10.

“We have relieved the National Guard of their obligation to us,” he said. “We have no National Guard working in our facilities.”

Hundreds of service members have staffed West Virginia correctional facilities since 2022, when Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency over understaffing in state-owned jails and prisons.

Overall, Marshall said position vacancies were down to 12 percent for correctional officers, and 20 percent for other positions across the state’s facilities.

Marshall said that some service members were hired full-time in the prisons, and other jobs were filled externally with help from new recruiting efforts.

“A lot of great candidates we’re bringing through the door right now,” he said.

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.

Special Session: 6 Bills Have Crossed Finish Line, 9 Bills Being Considered

The West Virginia Legislature is under way in its special session to pass additional appropriations to the budget.

The House suspended rules and passed six of the eight budgetary bills that the Senate passed and sent over Sunday. Those bills will fund things like higher education, agriculture and food banks. One bill that relates to the state’s rainy day fund was sent back to the Senate to consider changes made by the House.

Senate Bill 1001 is the only bill that has yet to make it out of the House. It funds the Department of Human Resources, and directly affects Intellectual Developmental Disabilities waivers.

That bill was amended Sunday by Senate Finance Chairman Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, to require DHR to receive a signature from the secretary of the department to move line item funds around within the department. Some say this will create more transparency, others worry that it will bog down the department with more bureaucracy.

The Senate suspended the rules and passed another six bills Monday and sent them to the House for consideration. The Senate only has one more bill left to send to the House. That bill would require addiction treatment facilities to be fully licensed and meet other requirements before they can be contracted by the state for patient care.

Even though this bill does not appropriate money for governmental spending, proponents of the bill say it will save the state money and therefore is relevant to the current special session.

So far, six bills are completed legislation this special session and await a signature by the governor.

Rainy Day Funding Formula Changed By Legislature

The West Virginia House of Delegates passed a Senate bill Monday that makes changes to how much money is set aside into the state’s rainy day funds. For the bill to become law, the Senate must concur with an amendment.

Updated on Monday, May 20, 2024 at 6 p.m.

The West Virginia Senate approved of the amendment made by the House of Delegates to Senate Bill 1015. The bill has passed and the rainy day funding formula has been revised.

Original Story

Rainy day funds A and B together have approximately $1.25 billion. The current funding formula requires them to have 20 percent of the operating budget, budget surplus and any supplemental appropriations.

The rainy day fund is necessary, generally, but also important to the bond agencies that allow the state to issue bonds and raise money for large projects. A stable rainy day fund means better bond ratings. In consumer terms, this is the equivalent of having a healthy savings account and a high credit score.

The bill that passed the House Monday, Senate Bill 1015, by a slim margin, changes that to 20 percent of the operating budget alone, meaning the state will only need to set aside about $934 million.

Del. Bob Fehrenbacher, R-Wood, said he felt the rest could be spent on state projects.

“I think what that does, it gives us as the legislators the burden to be good financial stewards and whether or not we can redirect it to investments to infrastructure to personal income tax reductions. That’s the challenge that we have to use.”

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, explained that the state is receiving 5.6 percent interest on Rainy Day A and Rainy Day B has a 6.7 percent yield.

“If you’re concerned about continuing to reduce your personal income tax, then we need to generate more in our economy,” Criss said. “So far over the last six or seven years, our biggest ability to do that is with our own dollars, our own investment dollars. We allow the agencies to go forth, to go to private enterprise and cut a deal to bring them here. And now we’re seeing the fruits of our labor, because we’ve had those dollars available to do that. So if you want to continue to help get your personal property or personal income tax cut rates, we need more economy, we need to drive more jobs here, more businesses here.”

Criss noted a period in 1989 when the state was in serious financial trouble.

“We went through a time period because of a change in our tax system that we couldn’t pay the bill,” he said. “Because we did not do the proper thing at that time. We cut it off immediately. And when we did that, it disrupted our cash flow. And it disrupted our tax base situation. And it took us a generation, 25 years to get back to the point that we’re going to be okay.”

The bill passed with a vote of 53 to 40 and returns to the Senate for its concurrence.

Criss also said the state expects approximately $750 million in excess revenue at the end of this fiscal year. Another special session in August to distribute that money is possible.

First Extraordinary Legislative Session Of 2024 Began Sunday

The West Virginia Legislature met Sunday evening in response to a call from Gov. Jim Justice to address issues with the state budget passed during the regular session, among others.

The House of Delegates met first and completed the first reading of 16 bills. The body then sent three bills to the House Finance Committee for further discussion.

One of those, House Bill 101, if passed, sends more than $9 million to the West Virginia Department of Health and the Department of Human Services.

Bills must be read over three successive days unless a chamber suspends rules and allows it to be read three times on one day.

The Senate did just that with about half of the introduced bills. But first, Senate Finance Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, offered a strike and insert amendment on Senate Bill 1001. His amendment replaced the original bill, changing how some funding is allocated for state hospitals.

The Senate passed eight bills and sent them to the House for consideration and advanced six other bills to second reading, or the amendment stage.

The Senate did not take up the 16th bill introduced in the House regarding having the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) pay for certain weight loss medications. That bill was not on the call from the governor.

The Senate also entered two resolutions to encourage the U.S. Department of Education to expedite processing of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applications and extended the governor’s state of emergency regarding student aid.

Putnam County Judge Selected To Fill US Magistrate Vacancy

Joseph Reeder, a circuit court judge from Putnam County, has been selected as the new U.S. magistrate judge for Huntington. Joseph Reeder was first elected to Putnam County’s circuit court bench in 2012, winning reelection in 2016 and 2024.

Joseph Reeder, a judge for West Virginia’s 29th Judicial Circuit Court in Putnam County, has been selected as the new United States magistrate judge for Huntington, West Virginia.

Reeder is originally from Parkersburg and received both his undergraduate and law education at West Virginia University. He practiced law in Kanawha County following law school, and in 2003 relocated to his current city of Hurricane in Putnam County.

In Hurricane, Reeder founded a law firm in 2003, and operated it until he was elected to the circuit court in 2012. He was reelected to the circuit court in 2016 and 2024.

During his time on the circuit court bench, Reeder has largely focused on issues surrounding substance use. He established the Putnam County Adult Drug Court and the Putnam County Family Treatment Court — both of which offer alternatives to incarceration for individuals with substance use disorder who are convicted of nonviolent crimes.

Reeder’s appointment follows the retirement of Judge Cheryl Eifert from the magistrate bench. He is slated to serve an eight-year term in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, pending a federal background check required for the role.