Settlement Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

PSC Denies Part Of Appalachian Power’s Fuel Cost Recovery Case

In a decision Tuesday, the PSC denied nearly $232 million in fuel costs, while approving $321 million, to be recovered over 10 years.

Bringing a nearly two-year case to a close, the West Virginia Public Service Commission denied part of the fuel costs Appalachian Power sought to recover from electricity customers.

In a decision Tuesday, the PSC denied nearly $232 million in fuel costs, while approving $321 million, to be recovered over 10 years.

The average residential customer will pay $2.50 more per month for those 10 years. Customers will begin paying the new rates on Sept. 1.

The PSC also denied a proposed settlement by the West Virginia Energy Users Group and the West Virginia Coal Association to recover fuel costs and other expenses over 20 years at a cost of nearly $3 billion.

The commission staff and the Kanawha County Commission opposed the settlement.

Appalachian Power had sought to recover about $553 million through the beginning of 2023 and an additional $88 million for the year beginning Sept. 1, 2023.

The PSC said the company did not properly manage its coal supplies in 2021 and 2022, leading it to buy coal and purchased power at higher prices. The commission said customers should not have to bear all of those excess costs.

Many power companies struggled with the high cost of coal and natural gas beginning in 2021 after the economy began to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 pushed prices even higher.

Rail and barge availability issues also put pressure on coal supplies at power plants in West Virginia. Appalachian Power at one point sued its largest coal supplier over missed deliveries. The companies eventually settled.

Both coal and natural gas prices have fallen in recent months.

Appalachian Power is an underwriter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

Mon Power Bills To Increase In March If PSC Approves Settlement

The average Mon Power residential electricity user will pay about $5 more a month starting on March 27, if the West Virginia Public Service Commission approves the deal.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect amount of the monthly increase.

Thanks to a settlement reached Wednesday, Mon Power customers will pay a smaller monthly increase than originally proposed, starting in March.

The average Mon Power residential electricity user will pay about $3.77 more a month starting on March 27, if the West Virginia Public Service Commission approves the deal.

That’s less than half the increase the company proposed. The company also wanted it to take effect on Jan. 1.

It will take electricity users three years to pay off Mon Power’s fuel costs of $255 million, but that lowers the monthly cost from paying it all off at once.

As part of the settlement, the company agreed to review its coal management practices.

PSC testimony showed that Mon Power acquired more coal than it could safely store at its two West Virginia power plants. It had to store some off site or burn it when power was not needed.

PSC testimony also showed that Mon Power incurred a $40.5 million performance penalty for the failure of one of its coal units at the Harrison Power Station to operate during last December’s Winter Storm Elliott. The company has said other performance bonuses resulted in a net benefit of $10 million to electricity customers.

W.Va. Scores High In Opioid Settlement Money Transparency

Only 13 states in the nation have promised 100 percent transparency in how their settlement money will be distributed.

West Virginia’s distribution of opioid settlement funds is among the most transparent when compared to other states.

According to Opioid Settlement Tracker, an independent study of total distributions from nationwide settlements, West Virginia scored 72.5 percent in promised money being distributed to the public.

Only 13 states in the nation have promised 100 percent transparency in how their settlement money will be distributed.

The West Virginia First Foundation was created by the passage of Senate Bill 674 during the 2023 legislative session.

The Foundation is responsible for ensuring counties and other local governments appropriately spend hundreds of millions of dollars they will receive from settlements with opioid companies.

It will handle 72.5 percent of the state’s settlement funds, while 24.5 percent will go directly to local governments. The remaining 3 percent will be held in escrow by the state.

For the first seven years, 20 percent of the Foundation’s annual budget must be spent on regions, which in turn must report spending of its localities back to the Foundation.

The Foundation must publish “consolidated” expenditures annually, though it is unclear whether these reports will include amounts not devoted to regional spending.

Lyn O’Connell is the associate director for the Division of Addiction Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. She also sits on the Governor’s Council on Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment and is the chair of the public education subcommittee.

O’Connell also works with the city of Huntington in the Mayor’s Office of Drug Control Policy. She said it is important for communities to identify their short term and long term needs and a sustainability plan for that funding.

“Without addressing the big underlying issue, we’re still just painting the thing we’re gonna have to paint again next year,” O’Connell said. “So I think that’ll be key in helping and ensuring communities are aware of what they need, and then can build that infrastructure, because it won’t do us any good, to not build lasting infrastructure that hopefully changes the tide on these problems, rather than just expecting it to magically cure itself one day.”

O’Connell said the grant funds will be tracked and recommended other communities follow in Huntington’s footsteps.

“In Huntington we developed two toolkits, one called the ‘City of Solutions’, which was our response to being called the epicenter of the epidemic,” O’Connell said. “Then the second is the ‘Resiliency Plan’. The City of Solutions is retrospective of what we’ve done, and the Resiliency Plan is what we need moving forward.”

The Resiliency Plan outlines continued steps toward recovery from the effects of the substance use epidemic on Huntington’s community by sustaining existing approaches and establishing the necessary long-term solutions to fully recover and prevent similar future crises.

Erin Winstanley, a research scientist and associate professor at West Virginia University’s Department of Psychiatry, said she is concerned about the settlement money being distributed without clinical and scientific methods taken into consideration.

“What we know historically has happened is people without adequate knowledge of empirically based prevention and treatment interventions make decisions about the allocation of funds without understanding the scientific merit of what they’re investing in,” Winstanley said. “I think that leads to potentially poor and ongoing decisions. We really need to question ourselves. West Virginia has had the highest rate of overdose deaths for two decades, for 20 years and we could really potentially squander the opportunity to not just see a decline, but see demonstrable improvements in health and health and access to resources in West Virginia.”

Winstanley said it is important to remember many areas in West Virginia have been designated as health care shortage areas, calling it an access to care crisis.

“I do believe that evidence supports that provision of mental health care, particularly in adolescents and young children, is the primary prevention of drug abuse,” Winstanley said. “If we increase access to behavioral health care, mental health and substance use disorders, we will be able to move the needle on this and make demonstrable improvements. And so we really need to spend that money wisely.”

Hospital To Pay To Resolve Fraud

A hospital in Weirton has agreed to pay to resolve its liability in a potential health care fraud case.

Weirton Medical Center has agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting claims to Medicare in violation of the Physician Self-Referral Law.

The Physician Self-Referral Law, commonly referred to as the Stark Law, prohibits a hospital from billing Medicare for certain services referred by physicians with whom the hospital has a financial relationship.

It is intended to ensure that medical decision-making is not compromised by improper financial incentives and is instead based on the best interests of the patient.

The settlement, which is based on the hospital’s financial condition, stems from a voluntary self-disclosure made by the hospital and resolves Weirton Medical Center’s liability under the False Claims Act.

Latest Use Of Force Suit Against Charleston Police Ends In $80,000 Settlement

The city of Charleston will pay an $80,000 settlement to a Black woman who police arrested and allegedly injured outside a Family Dollar on Charleston’s West Side in October 2019.

City council members approved the terms of the settlement during a meeting on Monday, after attorneys for Freda Gilmore and the city agreed to settle last week, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.

“This settlement gives Freda an opportunity to pick up these pieces and move forward, to start over again,” said Gilmore’s attorney Michael Cary in an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting Tuesday afternoon.

Cary said he also reached a confidential settlement for Gilmore with Family Dollar. The store’s security guard was involved in Gilmore’s arrest.

Patrol officer Carlie McCoy was responding to an altercation between two people outside the Family Dollar on Oct. 14, 2019. McCoy said in a police report that night that Gilmore was involved in the fight. McCoy further alleged that Gilmore was uncooperative, refusing to remove her hands from her pockets and attempting to walk away from McCoy.

McCoy already had Gilmore on the ground when patrol officer Joshua Mena arrived at the scene and approached them, following McCoy’s requests for backup. He said in his own supplemental statement that he had attempted to strike Gilmore with his knee.

Mena acknowledged issuing several more fist blows to Gilmore’s face when she was on the ground, which he said were to “gain pain compliance.”

Gilmore, who Cary and her family say has special needs, stayed at the South Central Regional Jail in Charleston for less than a week before her release. The city of Charleston is agreeing, through the settlement, to dismiss the two misdemeanor charges against her, for obstructing an officer and animal cruelty.

During her arrest, McCoy said she found a dead small dog in Gilmore’s pockets, which officers said died from parvo. Gilmore told the Gazette-Mail in January she had found the sick dog earlier and it wasn’t hers, but she wanted to help it.

An internal review from the Charleston Police Department found the actions of Mena and McCoy fit the city’s decades-old use of force policy, last updated in 2003. Both officers remain on staff.

Videos of the arrest from bystanders posted to Facebook sparked public outcry and requests for a new investigation last fall. Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin said in November the city referred the incident to the FBI for review, but there have been no updates and the Charleston Police Department’s policy remains unchanged.

Earlier this year, the Kanawha County Commission also agreed to pay a $275,000 settlement to a white family in Dunbar, who alleged that the sheriff’s department and local police illegally and forcibly entered their home early in the morning on March 12, 2016, in search of a suspect who attorneys say the family had nothing to do with.

According to the Crites’ family lawsuit, filed in March 2018, officers didn’t have a warrant. They entered the Crites home with firearms, they didn’t identify themselves, and they damaged the stairs leading up to the Crites’ attic, their front door and their garage door.

Cary filed a separate suit against the Smithers Police Department in Kanawha and Fayette counties for an incident in 2019, during which an officer allegedly threw two women to the ground and injured both, as he was trying to arrest one of the women for missing a hearing in Fayette County magistrate court. Attorneys for that officer, C.L. Osborne, denied most of the complaint’s allegations of violence in a response filed on Feb. 14.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

West Virginia Reaches $2.65 Million Settlement with Volkswagen

West Virginia has reached a $2.65 million settlement with Volkswagen AG and two of its affiliates in a lawsuit over the automaker’s emissions-rigging scandal, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Tuesday.

Morrisey announced the settlement with Volkswagen and its Audi and Porsche brands.

German automaker Volkswagen admitted rigging diesel emissions technology to pass U.S. smog tests. The lawsuit alleged the scheme led to false advertising because the self-described “clean diesel” engines actually emitted up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide.

Volkswagen acknowledged it knowingly defeated the EPA’s testing routine for seven years before being caught by the International Council on Clean Transportation, which hired West Virginia University researchers to test a VW on real roads.

The state filed the lawsuit against Volkswagen in October 2015.

Volkswagen Group of America spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said in a statement that the agreement resolves claims asserted by West Virginia related to the diesel case “and is another important step forward for our company and our shareholders.”

Under the settlement, the automakers agreed to refrain from unfair and deceptive practices in future dealings with West Virginia consumers, Morrisey said in a statement.

Morrisey said the settlement saved the state more than $500,000 in legal fees and likely exceeded the payout it would have received in multistate litigation.

“This settlement marks a huge victory for West Virginia consumers,” Morrisey said.

Volkswagen previously agreed to at least $16 billion in civil settlements with environmental authorities and car owners in the United States, and to a $4.3 billion penalty to settle a U.S. criminal investigation.