Interim Meetings Story Archives - Page 2 of 6 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Lawmakers Grow Impatient With Lack Of Health Action

Lawmakers questioned West Virginia’s State Health Officer Matthew Christiansen during a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health about the agency’s lack of action.

Commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Resources’ Bureau for Public Health and West Virginia State Health Office, Matthew Christiansen, presented a state health plan to the West Virginia Legislature’s Joint Committee on Health.

However, lawmakers questioned the plan’s similarities to past years and the lack of specific goals.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, thanked Christiansen for his report but asked if anything the legislature has done has helped improve the state’s health outcomes.

“We’ve been here long enough to see similar reports from other state health officials,” Pushkin said. “Have we seen any movement? Are we still at the bottom of every list or at the top of every rung list when it comes to poor public health outcomes? Has anything we’ve done here, moved the needle at all?”

Christiansen answered that there have been improvements in insurance access and accessibility to health care.

“Health care services and insurance coverage is one that we are consistently in the top 10 or so in the nation,” Christiansen said. “And so we do a good job at that; however, we still struggle with transportation issues, as you and I have discussed in the past, and accessibility of that health care access.”

Pushkin responded that the legislature expanded Medicaid for West Virginia residents years ago.

Starting Jan. 1, 2014, West Virginia expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Under the expanded eligibility guidelines, adults aged 19 to 64 are eligible for Medicaid with a household income up to 138 percent of the poverty level.

For a single adult in 2023, that amounts to $20,120 in total annual income.

“I guess what I’m getting at, we’ve heard for years about the determinants of poor public health outcomes, whether it was in regards to children with adverse childhood experiences, or with other socio-economic factors that leads to these outcomes,” Pushkin said. “There have been a lot of plans and I’d hoped that this body, that the legislature is able to actually address it at some point, or we’re going to continue to be at the bottom of every list that we don’t want to be on.”

Del. Amy Summers, R-Taylor, said she and other members of the joint committee on health grew frustrated at the inaction.

“Where I think we reach frustration is that we never get past the planning stage. And we want to be where we get three to six measurable goals, and what will they be? And how are we going to measure them, and okay, we achieve these things, and let’s move to the next thing,” Summers said. “But we never seem to get to that point. And I think that’s just all of our desire, yours as well, is to change some things.”

Christiansen said the current state health plan will be the one implemented, but it will take time.

“This will be that,” Christiansen said. “The State Health Improvement Plan will be that plan that will have a clear set of priorities, a big part of our assessment and survey processes around that stakeholder engagement piece to make sure that we’re bringing other people to the table, acknowledging that we again can’t do those things alone as the Bureau for Public Health but that we need all of our other public health and health care partners at the table.”

Update: Legislators Hear Update On PSC Fire Hydrant Investigation

Legislators heard an update about the Public Service Commission’s statewide investigation into the maintenance and testing of fire hydrants at Monday’s interim meetings.

Updated on Tuesday, Aug. 08, 2023 at 10:15 a.m.

The deadline for municipalities and water districts to file reports on the maintenance and testing of their fire hydrants was extended to Aug. 25 in an order issued Monday evening by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia.

“Despite the considerable number of entities that failed to respond, only a handful of entities contacted the commission to request additional time to provide the requested information,” the order said.

The order goes on to note that maintaining accurate and up to date records should be “business as usual” for a public utility and that information pertaining to utility facilities, including information regarding fire hydrants is required annually in the reports water utilities must file.

“We consider this to be a front and center public safety issue for which timing is of the essence and further delay is unacceptable,” the order said.

The order makes it clear there will be no additional extensions granted for any reason, and the PSC will proceed with appropriate actions to advise or direct utility action to protect the public health and safety.

Original Post:

Legislators heard an update about the Public Service Commission’s statewide investigation into the maintenance and testing of fire hydrants at Monday’s interim meetings.

At the end of June, the PSC initiated a general investigation and required all 301 of the state’s utilities that own fire hydrants, or that serve private fire hydrants, to report certain information including the number of hydrants owned or serviced, their age and maintenance schedules and practices by July 28.

However, during the Monday meeting of the Joint Standing Committee on Technology and Infrastructure Jonathan Fowler, PSC engineer, told lawmakers that only about half of utilities have responded.

“The water utilities have never been asked to report anything other than the number of hydrants in their annual reports,” he said. “What we’re trying to do now is to develop a more comprehensive database to reflect the industry standard on maintenance and testing of these hydrants.”

According to Fowler, there is a national standard that specifies that fire hydrants should be inspected annually and should be flow tested either every three years or every five years.

“We are trying to determine how many utilities comply with that standard,” he said.

Fowler said he has been pleasantly surprised at the number of smaller utilities that have written fire hydrant maintenance procedures and documentation.

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, said she was intimately familiar with why the investigation is happening, in reference to a fire in May that burned down a Charleston house where firefighters could not find a functioning hydrant.

“Half of these water utilities are not in compliance,” she said. “What do you do if they don’t respond? These people’s homes are potentially in danger, so how do we best protect our constituents?”

Fowler said there will be a further order issued by the PSC requiring those to respond.

“And I would suppose after this second notification, there may be an additional action by the commission,” he said.

Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, asked if there was a plan to replace inoperable hydrants after the data collection process was concluded.

“Utilities are supposed to repair and maintain their system in accordance with the standards,” Fowler said. “For small utilities costs can be a deterrent.”

He went on to explain that new hydrants being installed on existing lines can cost between $10,000 to $13,000. He explained that hydrants are robustly designed and are designed to be maintained for 100 years.

“We have a few in this state that are over 100 years old. The majority from what I’m seeing in the data responses are less than 50 years old, and you can still get all the parts you need for those,” Fowler said. “So it gets back to an issue of requiring the utility to better maintain the hydrants. We had one utility responded that seven fire hydrants in his system are so old, he’s afraid to open them because he can’t shut them back off. So this is the kind of thing we’re getting. It’s an important public safety question.”

Fowler said once the PSC has received all the information from utilities it will be able to formulate an appropriate response.

Legislators Learn Challenges For Teachers With The Third Grade Success Act

Legislators learned that it may take teachers years to be fully prepared for the implementation of the state’s new early childhood literacy requirements.

With House Bill 3035 and the Third Grade Success Act set to become law next month, the Joint Standing Committee on Education heard a presentation on the science of reading during interim meetings at Marshall University Monday.

Toni Backstrom, strategic state solutions manager at Lexia Learning, explained to the lawmakers that their goal of increasing reading proficiency is possible, but it will take a lot of work and specifically support for teachers.

“Research and science show us that 95 percent of students can learn,” she said. “I don’t say that lightly. A number of our students will struggle, they will need additional support and intervention. But if our teachers have the expertise, they can meet every one of those students where they are when they step into the room and get them on that trajectory to success.”

Senate Education Committee Chair Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, who is a teacher, said teacher training and professional development will likely take years.

“Our teachers are so used to professional development being a one day thing. We have an eight hour day and schedule the kids are off and we have professional development that day and it ends that day,” Grady said. “For this to be expanded, I think that’s going to be our challenge, is the mindset of ‘Okay, it’s not something I’m learning in one day. It’s something that I am using and continuing to learn over the course of a few years and even still doing it after that as well.’”

Potential Policy Revisions Add New Pathways To Teaching

The teacher shortage was one of the first items on the agenda during the April legislative interim meetings, just a month after the end of the regular session.

The Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability heard about revisions to the state’s licensure requirements for public school education personnel in West Virginia Board of Education Policy 5202.

The revisions add temporary teaching certificates to the categories of licenses. This allows individuals who do not meet the requirements for a professional teaching certificate, but who have been hired by a public school, to receive a temporary certificate.

Robert Hagerman, director of the Office of Certification for the West Virginia Department of Education said the revisions aim to address the state’s teacher shortage.

“The changes that we have incorporated in the policy open certain flexibilities for all areas because in West Virginia, across the state, depending on the county, those shortages could be in any particular subject,” Hagerman said.

A temporary renewable teaching certificate for applicants with an expired, out-of-state certificate is also included in the revisions, as is a temporary teaching certificate for program completers.

The latter certificate can only be issued one time for an individual who has completed an approved preparation program, but failed to meet the necessary Praxis exam score twice.

Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, asked if the addition of the temporary certificates did not lower the standards for educators.

Hagerman replied that the standards are not being lowered, and instead a new layer of licensing is being included.

“Instead of being so prescriptive that you can only meet the standard in one particular way, we’ll give you about three or four other options to meet that standard,” Hagerman said. “But all of those are within a minimum threshold quality supported by the district, supported by the particular school and supported by the West Virginia Department of Education.”

Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, asked about revisions to early childhood classroom assistant teacher authorizations. The changes allow assistant teachers already authorized for grade levels pre-K and Kindergarten to add grades one through three to their authorization.

“What we have done is provided an avenue for those who are already certified to Grade K to come back and while they’re employed take a couple of modules for literacy, numeracy and all the things required up to third grade to be able to transition into those positions,” Hagerman said.
Public comment on the changes is open until May 15.

Legislators Hear Several Reports On State’s Educational Systems

Sunday’s interim legislative meetings included several updates on the state’s schools and educational programs.

Cynthia Persily, vice chancellor for health sciences with the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission presented the Health Sciences and Rural Health Report Card.

Persily told the Legislative Oversight Committee on Educational Accountability that the state’s three state funded medical schools enroll more medical students per capita than any other state in the country, but most of them don’t stay in state

Despite the high enrollment, Persily says only 1 in 5 medical school graduates educated in the state end up practicing here due to a high debt load and lower reimbursement rates and salaries for physicians compared to other states.

“What we’ve seen is a steady decline in the number of students choosing to practice in West Virginia,” she said. “But I’m pleased to say that we at least leveled off from last year at 20 percent of our graduates from the classes of 2012 to 2017, who are practicing in West Virginia. We hope to start to see these rates incline.”

Persily says doctors are more likely to practice close to where they completed their residency, and state officials are trying to improve retention of medical school graduates with improved incentives.

Charter School Report

Later in the meeting, State Deputy Superintendent Michele Blatt presented a report on the state’s new public charter schools.

Established in 2021 by House Bill 2012, West Virginia’s first four charter schools opened this past fall.

Blatt says the Department of Education has worked to support the new schools, which all constitute their own local education agency.

“So if they want to work with a local county to provide transportation or child nutrition, then they have to pay for those services to the county because they’re separate from that,” Blatt said. “But we’ve worked through Jefferson County and Mon county to make sure that everything is working together the way that it should.”

There are currently brick and mortar charter schools in Morgantown and Kearneysville, as well as two virtual charter schools, with a third brick and mortar charter set to open next fall.

Blatt also presented brief reports on the regulations for the education of students with exceptionalities, the Feed to Achieve program and class sizes.

Legislators Hear About Corrections Cost Increase And Possible Solutions

The cost of keeping inmates in regional jails in the state may go up, and counties and municipalities are concerned.

At a meeting of the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority Tuesday evening, members heard results from a working group of statewide stakeholders about the daily rate for inmates.

The amount counties and municipalities pay has been capped at $48.25 per inmate since 2018, but is set to expire in July.

Committee staff counsel William Valentino said that amount falls short of actual cost to run the jails

“From my experience, working for corrections, they have to make up that money somewhere,” he said. “What I’m being told is that they are running out of revenue sources to make up the money that they are losing by the actual costs of per diem versus the $48.25.”

Valentino said the State Budget Office has already stated the per diem rate will increase to $54 in July, unless the legislature takes action in their upcoming session.

The working group of various officials from across the state met from May through September to discuss the per diem increase. The group included representatives from the governor’s office, the Supreme Court, the municipal league, mayors, sheriffs, attorneys and county commissioners.

“The things that we heard from the group over and over again, the common themes for what what was driving the pretrial detention, what was driving the increase in per diems, were either substance use disorders, mental health disorders, or essentially some co-occurring disorders of substance use and mental health,” Valentino said.

He said 80 percent of pretrial detainees, who make up the core of the regional jail system’s population, are arrested as a result of substance use or mental health disorder.

“It’s important for this committee to remember that the jails are not mental health facilities,” Valentino said.

He also highlighted the overcrowding in the state’s jail systems. He said the system in total is designed to hold 4,265 inmates but was currently housing 4,858 inmates, down from a high of 5,177 earlier in the year. Valentino said on average, pretrial detainees spend 271 days in regional jails.

The working group discussed and came up with many potential solutions, including cost sharing agreements between law enforcement organizations, reporting centers to replace expensive bonds in appropriate cases, and reducing pretrial delays by shifting juvenile abuse hearings to family court.