Government Story Archives - Page 2 of 1181 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

DoHS Promises Transparency In Spending New Reserve Fund

Following a special session focused largely on funding her department, the Secretary of the West Virginia Department of Human Services, Cynthia Persily, released a statement promising transparency Tuesday.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and both chambers made one thing clear this special West Virginia Legislative session: they do not trust the Department of Health and the Department of Human Services to spend money.

Following a special session focused largely on funding her department, West Virginia Department of Human Services (DoHS) Cabinet Secretary Cynthia Persily released a statement promising transparency Tuesday.

“Today’s restoration of more than $183 million in funds will allow DoHS to continue to provide essential services through its Bureau for Child Support Enforcement, Bureau for Behavioral Health, Bureau for Family Assistance, Bureau for Medical Services, Bureau for Social Services, and the Office of Drug Control Policy,” Persily said.

Instead of restoring the budget line items cut from the state budget passed on the last night of session, Senate Bill 1001 appropriates money to a new reserve fund of $183 million. The bill also makes $5 million available to the Department of Health. Lawmakers hope the cabinet secretaries of the departments will spend on underfunded line items.

The secretaries have the ability to move only 5 percent of any money from one existing account to another. The reserve fund is new and it will expire March 31, 2025. It is not encumbered, so the cabinet secretaries are not required to spend the money on specific items.

The House and Senate could not agree on how the money should be allocated and how much transparency and accountability should be attached to the funds.

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.

The House sent that version over to the Senate, where Summers’ amendment was stripped and the Senate reverted 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. They refused to concur and sent the bill back to the Senate.

The Senate then adjourned sine die. By taking no action, the Senate left the House to jump through hoops to get Senate Bill 1001 back on the floor and up for consideration.

Procedurally, the House had to move backward in order to take the bill back up. They had to vote to undo their Monday night actions, then vote to concur with the Senate, lest the bill die and the funding be left incomplete.

The House did just that and passed the bill, as amended by the Senate, with a nearly unanimous vote. The bill now awaits Gov. Jim Justice’s signature.

In her statement, Persily said she plans to use more than $89 million to remedy the anticipated Medicaid shortfall for Fiscal Year 2025.

Persily also said she heard the legislator’s concerns about the need for transparency and that the DoHS is committed to providing it while continuing to analyze reimbursement rates for all providers of services.

“As appropriate and feasible, DoHS will continue to make adjustments to rates as necessary for providers as early as July,” she said. “The department appreciates the work of the legislature and thanks each member for their time and attention to the crucial needs of West Virginia’s most vulnerable residents.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.

House Funds Waiver Programs In Final Hours Of Special Session

An extraordinary legislative session ended with tensions high among lawmakers who wanted more transparency in spending from the Department of Health and Department of Human Services.

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.

Instead of restoring the budget line items cut from the state budget passed on the last night of session, Senate Bill 1001 appropriates money to a new reserve fund of $183 million. Lawmakers hope the cabinet secretaries of the departments will spend on underfunded line items. The secretary has the ability to move only 5 percent of any money from one existing account to another. This fund is new and it will expire March 31, 2025. It is not encumbered so the cabinet secretaries are not required to spend the money on specific items.

On Tuesday, the Senate took no action on Senate Bill 1001 and sent the bill back to the House.

Emotions were high in the House after the Senate adjourned Sine Die without addressing the House’s version of the bill.

The House’s version would have required rate pay increases for those who work with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, otherwise known as those served by the IDD waiver program.

In 2023, the previous West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR), Bureau for Medical Services contracted with Myers and Staffer, an actuary firm, to conduct a “rates” study of the Aged and Disabled Waiver, and Personal Care Services programs.

The study recommended a $6.5 million rate increase for the IDD waiver program to hire and retain direct care professionals.

“We the House feel it is very important to include these rate increases for providers because we are very short on providers,” Del. Amy Summers, R-Taylor, said. “And it is our job as the legislature to make sure this infrastructure is there.”

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, said he believes there will be no rate increases since the House’s amendment was not passed.

“I trust when they said under oath that they had absolutely no intention of increasing the rates,” Pushkin said. “That’s what they told us when they were under oath, there was not their intention to increase these reimbursement rates.”

One House amendment that was included in the final version of the bill is a line protecting the IDD Waiver line from any moving of monies within the department.

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.

“I think the one issue that we did come to fix was the IDD issue in the stealing of money that was occurring out of that line item,” Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, said. “I believe that this legislation stops that. It ensures that $97 million is going to IDD.”

By taking no action, the Senate left the House to jump through hoops to get Senate Bill 1001 back on the floor and up for consideration.

“The position that the House is in right now, is they need to recede from what they did yesterday, or the bill is dead,” Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam told reporters after the Senate adjourned Tuesday.

Tarr said the bill was the product of months of negotiation among the House, Senate and governor’s office to go through and set up a mechanism for transparency.

“We don’t believe there’s a cash flow shortfall anywhere, and that’s coming up on us anytime soon,” Tarr said. “However, if there would be then there’s a reserve fund that has incredible transparency to it, that the secretary has to sign off individually on transferring those funds and the report to the joint committee on which line it went into, and why.”

Many lawmakers in the House expressed a desire for the cabinet secretaries to have to ask permission to spend, instead of reporting the expenditure after the fact.

“We can’t control where the money goes, specifically, but we can at least be told where it’s going to be spent,” Del. J.B. Akers, R-Kanawha said. “And pardon my language, I would hope that if it’s not spent the way that we intended, there’s hell to pay next year.”

In the Senate, only one Senator voted against this version of Senate Bill 1001 — Sen. Mike Woelfel D-Cabell. The House passed the bill nearly unanimously. It now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature.

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.

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

“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.