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Attorney General Publishes Opinion On Hope Scholarship Dual Enrollment

State officials continue to clarify the Hope Scholarship for families and school authorities.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said county boards of education or public schools cannot lawfully prohibit a student from participating in a public school program because of the student’s simultaneous engagement in nonpublic education.

The Hope Scholarship requires applicants to be enrolled full-time and attending a public school program in the state for at least 45 calendar days.

In an opinion released last week, Morrisey affirms the practice of “dual enrollment”: enrolling a student in both a public and nonpublic program, only to disenroll the student from the public educational program once Hope Scholarship funds have been secured.

The opinion uses the example of a student attending an in-person private school during the day while attending a virtual public school in the evening.

“In the Hope Scholarship Act, the [West Virginia] Legislature made the express choice to allow students to depart public schools with state funding in hand so long as they are enrolled in public schools for 45 continuous days,” Morrisey said in the opinion. “The Legislature placed no further conditions on this 45-day requirement.”

The opinion also said schools cannot bar public school students from engaging with nonpublic education.

“Altogether, county boards of education or public schools may not lawfully prohibit students from engaging in ‘dual enrollment’ or deny students the ability to participate in public-school programs based on those students’ simultaneous engagement in private education outside public school programs,” the opinion concludes.

State Treasurer Riley Moore, who also serves as the chairman of the West Virginia Hope Scholarship Board, requested the opinion and issued his own clarification of Hope Scholarship use rules in October.

The ‘Checks In The Mail’ May Be For You

The state Treasurer’s Office recently mailed checks to 3,314 state residents worth more than $3.7 million. These are unclaimed property the treasurer’s office is tasked with returning to its rightful owners.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “the check’s in the mail,” but this time it’s real, and you may not even know it’s coming.

Recipients should have received letters in July notifying them they should be receiving a check identified as “West Virginia Cash Now.”

“I encourage all West Virginians to go back through their mail from the past month to check and see if they received an envelope from our office – you may have a check inside,” Moore said. “These checks are part of our automated unclaimed property return program and the funds are 100 percent yours, so we encourage you to open your mail and cash those checks today.”

The checks are good for six months otherwise they will be voided and the funds go back to the Unclaimed Property Division.

“We don’t want your unclaimed property check to become unclaimed property,” Moore said. “We’re doing everything we can to quickly return money to you, we just need you to cash the check.”

West Virginia Cash Now launched last year as an automated system to return unclaimed property without the need to file paperwork with the Treasurer’s Office.

State Treasurer Clarifies Use Of Hope Scholarship

State Treasurer Riley Moore has clarified the allowable spending for Hope Scholarship funds.

Moore, who is also the chairman of the Hope Scholarship Board, released a letter Wednesday emphasizing students enrolled full-time in public schools are not eligible to participate in the Hope Scholarship program.

That includes public charter schools, and the letter specifies that “the Hope Scholarship Board approaches public charter schools and the services they provide the same as regular public schools operated by county boards of education.”

More than 6,000 West Virginia students’ families signed up for the Hope Scholarship savings account this year, which awards close to $4500 for private and homeschooling expenses.

The confusion stems from Hope Scholarship students who are not enrolled full-time in a school being allowed to use the funds for certain classes or services a public school might provide.

As funding for public schools is based on enrollment numbers, Moore’s letter says the restriction prevents schools from “double-dipping,” or receiving both public funding and Hope funds for these services.

Those ‘Restricted’ Banks? They May Be Supporting Fossil Fuels After All

JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo are among the top six institutions worldwide to invest in companies that burn coal, according to the Sierra Club.

JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are on the state’s restricted financial institutions list. They got there because Treasurer Riley Moore determined last year that they are engaged in a boycott of fossil fuels.

A new report from the Sierra Club, however, shows all those institutions invest in electric utilities that are heavy users of coal.

JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo are among the top six institutions worldwide to invest in companies that burn coal.

British bank Barclays, which is not on the state’s restricted institutions list, is the largest investor in West Virginia’s top power companies, American Electric Power and FirstEnergy. Barclays is also the top financier of coal-burning utilities in the world, according to the report.

These and eight other power companies operate coal-burning power plants in 16 states.

The top six banks all made commitments to align their investments with the Paris Agreement yet have invested nearly $84 billion in coal-burning utilities since 2016, the report found.

Jared Hunt, a Treasury spokesman, said the banks were placed on the list based on their publicly available policy statements.

Virtually all banks have set net-zero goals for carbon dioxide emissions and have made commitments to environmental, social and governance, or ESG standards.

Yet as the Sierra Club report shows, many of them continue to support fossil fuels.

W.Va. Unclaimed Property Funds Returned At Record Setting Pace

West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore said his office has returned more than $3.6 million worth of unclaimed property during the month of May.

“It’s really a testament to the work of my staff and my employees,” Moore said. “It is also the legislation that we had passed in the legislature a couple of sessions back that helped us modernize the Unclaimed Property Act.”

Unclaimed property is not real estate, but financial accounts or items of value where the owner has not initiated any activity for one year or longer. Examples include unpaid life insurance benefits, forgotten bank accounts and unused rebate cards.

“Many times these are financial instruments that have gone dormant or not acted upon,” Moore said. “It could be a life insurance policy, a safety deposit box or securities such as stocks and bonds and things of that nature. They’re then turned over to the state Treasurer’s Office, and then it is the state Treasurer’s job to return that property.”

Moore said that legislation that helped expand unclaimed property advertising and the ability to file claims online has helped increase public returns at record levels, along with new programs like West Virginia Cash Now.

“That allows us to just send automatic checks out when we verify individuals on our end,” he said. “$100 to $5,000 is the range of monetary value of those checks.”

Moore said the total unclaimed property cash pushed out for this fiscal year stands at a record breaking $24.3 million. He said there are multiple ways to check to see if you have unclaimed property funds.

“You can search your name on our online database at wvunclaimed property.com, or you can click on our website, wvtreasury.com,” Riley said. “Click on the unclaimed property button and you can search your name, your wife’s name, brother, sister, uncles and cousins. Let people know that they have unclaimed property because you never know what you might have in there.”

A demonstration of how to use the Unclaimed Property search site is available on the Treasurer’s YouTube page, at: https://youtu.be/K09yQ7YNKlE. To search for lost financial assets outside West Virginia, visit www.MissingMoney.com.

Nationwide, nearly 33 million people in the United States – one in every 10 – are estimated to have unclaimed property available for them to claim.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Endorses State Treasurer Riley Moore

Born in Morgantown into the West Virginia Moore-Capito political family, Moore began his career as a welder before moving into politics. In 2013, he served as an associate at the Podesta Group where he was part of a client team working on the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU), which was formed to represent the Party of Regions, a banned pro-Russian political party in Ukraine formed in late 1997.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed State Treasurer Riley Moore for the 2nd Congressional District seat in the Republican primary next year.

McCarthy’s endorsement of Riley Moore, for West Virginia’s Second Congressional District, could help Moore in his primary election bid, where there are currently no declared Democrats in the race.

The heavily Republican district opened up after incumbent Rep. Alex Mooney announced his candidacy for West Virginia’s Senate seat currently held by Democrat Joe Manchin. Manchin hasn’t yet said if he’ll seek re-election. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Jim Justice has entered the race.

Moore later stated that he was unaware of any illegal activity after the Podesta Group was named in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation over alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was never identified as a person associated with the case.

Moore’s cousin, Del. Moore Capito, the son of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., has announced plans to run for governor of West Virginia next year. His grandfather, Arch Moore, served as governor in the 1970s and ’80s.

Before being elected to the role of state treasurer, Riley Moore served in the West Virginia House of Delegates for the 67th district. He beat six-term incumbent Democrat John Perdue for his current role as state treasurer in 2020.

An outspoken opponent of environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, Moore pulled West Virginia from the BlackRock Incorporated’s investment fund because of its stance on fossil fuels.

He also threatened to bar JP Morgan Chase and other big banks from doing business in West Virginia over what alleged fossil fuel boycotts.

The endorsement of Moore marks one of McCarthy’s first campaign moves since a showdown on Capitol Hill over the nation’s borrowing limit. Republicans have a narrow majority in the 435-member chamber.