With fears of a federal COVID-19 relief fund clawback quashed, Gov. Jim Justice urged lawmakers to restore funding to health and human services in West Virginia.
For weeks, the possible federal clawback of $465 million in COVID-19 relief funding for schools has loomed large in West Virginia.
But on Friday Gov. Jim Justice announced the state would not have to return the funds, which the United States Department of Education initially said were not spent according to federal guidelines.
News of the potential clawback threw a wrench into the final weeks of the West Virginia Legislature’s regular session this year. Out of caution, lawmakers ultimately approved a state budget of $4.9 billion — a figure lower than the $5.22 billion budget Justice proposed in January.
In March, Justice announced plans to hold a special legislative session in May to reexamine budget spending. With the specter of the clawback removed, lawmakers are now looking to bulk up the state budget.
And Justice has expressed a particular focus on restoring funding to West Virginia’s health and human resources.
State lawmakers significantly reduced funding for Medicaid services in this year’s regular legislative session.
This included a reduction of nearly $11 million in funding for the state’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) Waiver program, which provides residents with disabilities financial support and at-home health services.
During a virtual press briefing Tuesday, Justice said the dismissal of the federal clawback opens the door for restored funding.
“Where we need to concentrate our efforts right off the get-go is to restore the dollars that we pulled out of the budget … for the most needy of our people,” he said. “We didn’t need to [cut funding], and if we don’t watch out we’re going to get our really needy folks in a real mess.”
Lawmakers who supported the cuts during this year’s regular session said the reductions would increase spending transparency and limit unnecessary expenditures.
But opponents of the budget cuts have expressed concern that the lack of funding could broadly reduce Medicaid services for West Virginia residents, including individuals with disabilities.
In March, Justice announced plans to call a special legislative session before May 14, West Virginia’s primary election. He said reexamining the state budget was a top priority for the prospective session.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers have expressed a preference that the session be held later in May, to coincide with interim meetings at the State Capitol.
As of Tuesday, no date for the special session has been finalized.
Domestic violence prevention nonprofits have not received a state budget increase since 2009. Advocates hope a special session of the West Virginia Legislature could change that.
Tucked away on a side street of downtown Martinsburg, the Eastern Panhandle Empowerment Center (EPEC) is a domestic violence prevention nonprofit serving Morgan, Berkeley and Jefferson counties.
EPEC was founded in 1977 and expanded with time. Ten years ago, Executive Director Katie Spriggs said the EPEC served 250 people annually. Now, it serves more than 1,400 people each year.
Visits to EPEC may be on the rise, but Spriggs said funding has not increased sufficiently to meet them.
Looking at EPEC’s first-floor office it immediately becomes clear. Each day, staff members squeeze into corners of the room with laptops and cell phones in hand.
“We have probably on an average day 12 people that work out of this office, so it’s not large enough,” Spriggs said.
According to Spriggs, moving out of EPEC’s apartment-turned-office into a larger space would bring benefits. But a potential move and the expansion of current EPEC services are constrained by the same factor: the budget.
“We’re kind of stuck,” she said. “We haven’t seen an increase in so long that it’s really difficult to make the budget work every year.”
In West Virginia, domestic violence prevention nonprofits receive funding through a variety of sources, like private donations, federal grants and a line item included annually in the state budget.
But the state has not boosted that line item since May 2009, even as the cost of living has risen.
In recent years, Gov. Jim Justice has pursued a flat budget, which means freezing state spending so it stays the same each year. While surplus funds get redistributed, they do not supplement every budget item.
Continuing to provide resources to survivors of domestic violence requires reliable funding on the state level, she said.
Katie Spriggs, executive director of the Eastern Panhandle Empowerment Center, is in the process of digitizing decades of the center’s paper records.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Sara Belvins O’Toole, director of development at Huntington’s Branches Domestic Violence Shelter, said part of the need for additional funding stems from changing conversations around domestic violence prevention.
In the early days, Belvins O’Toole said advocates were focused primarily on removing individuals from crisis situations.
They now understand helping people stay away from abusive relationships requires more holistic assistance, she said.
“People who are just plopped out of a situation and put into another environment don’t have the resources and the skills and the support that they need to actually stay away from a person that was violent in their life,” Belvins O’Toole said. “Especially if that person was in control of the finances.”
Approaching domestic violence on a holistic level means considering other factors that put survivors at risk, like housing insecurity and child care needs.
“We have to do a little bit of that other work like housing advocacy, like legal advocacy — all of those things that are providing support,” Belvins O’Toole said. “It’s not about just getting somebody out of crisis anymore. It’s about supporting them into a life free from violence.”
But this is easier said than done. Joyce Yedlsoky, team coordinator at the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WVCADV), said that the state’s flat budget has also affected separate nonprofits that address these needs directly.
In turn, she said domestic violence prevention advocates must wear multiple hats, spreading their time and funding thinner.
The budget “being able to account for other aspects that survivors need” is important as well, she said.
Through the WVCADV, Yedlosky works with the 14 licensed domestic violence prevention nonprofits located across West Virginia. In February, she helped arrange a visit to the State Capitol featuring representatives from each of these organizations.
The advocates lined the Capitol’s lower rotunda with tables, passing out stickers and informational flyers to visitors and lawmakers alike.
Yedlosky also took the time to speak with lawmakers about the nonprofits’ current financial needs, and said they were generally supportive of securing new funds.
But, since then, Yedlosky said lines of communication between lawmakers and the nonprofits have all but closed.
“Since the session ended, we haven’t heard from lawmakers specifically around our funding,” she said.
Staff members Katie Brougham, Serena Hemple and Foxfire Formoso (from left) stand in the entryway of the Eastern Panhandle Empowerment Center.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
By the time this year’s regular session of the West Virginia Legislature ended, no budget line increases for domestic violence nonprofits had been passed. New funding for services like child care were also left out entirely.
Still, this year’s budget is not completely settled. Gov. Jim Justice has expressed disapproval of some funding omissions from this year’s budget, and in March announced plans to call a special legislative session to reconsider the budget.
Justice said he plans to hold the session by May 14, the state’s primary election. Members of the Legislature’s leadership have indicated they would prefer for the session to coincide with interim meetings beginning May 19.
In a dream scenario, Yedlosky said she would like to see a $500,000 cost-of-living increase to the state’s funding for domestic violence nonprofits, which currently sits at $2.5 million split annually between all 14 licensed organizations.
But Yedlosky said she’s not holding her breath for what the special session will bring.
“To be honest, I don’t think that that’s on the table for the special session,” she said. “It would be really nice if it was.”
Instead, Yedlosky said she hopes that lawmakers will reverse course and provide new funding to other services like child care.
“I do believe if they reinstate back some of the huge cuts that they made, that’s also going to help survivors,” she said. “That’s my hope.”
Back in the Eastern Panhandle, Spriggs echoed Yedlosky’s calls for a cost-of-living budget increase. She described an increase like this as a critical way to reduce the risks that survivors of domestic violence face across the state.
“A line item increase on the state budget would not only keep the lights on and give us a foundation to grow on,” she said. “It would also prevent violence. A lot of violence.”
For more information on domestic violence prevention resources in West Virginia, visit the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s website.
On this West Virginia Morning, domestic violence prevention advocates lined the State Capitol rotunda in February, seeking a budget increase. They said lawmakers were receptive to the idea. But no increase was passed before this year’s regular legislative session ended. Jack Walker checked in with domestic violence prevention advocates on funding needs as a potential special session approaches.
On this West Virginia Morning, domestic violence prevention advocates lined the State Capitol rotunda in February, seeking a budget increase. They said lawmakers were receptive to the idea. But no increase was passed before this year’s regular legislative session ended. Jack Walker checked in with domestic violence prevention advocates on funding needs as a potential special session approaches.
Also, in this show, Central Appalachia is home to 16 state and federal prisons. Now, federal officials are considering adding a medium security prison in Letcher County. But as the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting’s Jared Bennett tells — the project is also drawing opposition from activists from across the country.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Emily Rice produced this episode.
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Regional jails in West Virginia have long struggled with staffing and safety issues. Investment reforms and recruiting efforts from state leadership aim to solve these issues.
As West Virginia’s strained jail system faces ongoingsafetyconcerns, reinvestment and recruitment efforts aim to amend facility issues on a state level.
The Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority convened for a public meeting Monday at the State Capitol. Their meeting centered around changes to staffing and oversight in the state’s jail facilities.
West Virginia’s jail system has come under national scrutiny for the alleged mistreatment of people who are incarcerated, including neglect, water deprivation and the deaths of tens of individuals in less than five years.
Last year, eight correctional officers at Southern Regional Jail in Beaver were charged over an assault that led to the death of a man who was incarcerated in the facility.
Carl Reynolds, senior legal and policy advisor at the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, spoke to lawmakers about “justice reinvestment” — the reallocation of funds from jails to other areas of the criminal justice system.
By providing investments “further upstream,” like in law enforcement, victim services and parole supervision, Reynolds said the state’s jail system can reduce expenses associated with incarceration.
The CSG Justice Center uses federal funds to work with officials on the state level and analyze data pertaining to state criminal justice systems. They then advise state leadership on potential changes to make.
Justice reinvestment refers to the reallocation of funding for jails toward other areas of the criminal justice system.
Photo Credit: Will Price/WV Legislative Photography
Reynolds said representatives from his organization have met with leaders from all three branches of government in West Virginia and have received approval to pursue this work in the Mountain State.
Justice reinvestment is an idea that West Virginia has recently begun to embrace.
Gov. Jim Justice awarded more than $2.6 million in grant funds to treatment supervision programs across the state in 2023, followed by an additional $2.4 million in 2024. These programs offer substance abuse interventions to some individuals convicted of felony drug offenses.
Reynolds said that his organization is currently collecting information and ideas from state officials on how to approach reinvestment efforts in West Virginia.
“This is an open-minded, open-ended process where we want to find out what’s important to you all and to the other stakeholders in the system,” he said.
In the meantime, recruitment efforts in West Virginia jails could also address issues in the West Virginia corrections system, according to Pat Mirandy, chief of staff for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR).
Mirandy said Monday that recruitment efforts have been “nothing more than miraculous over the past few months.”
Since Jan. 1, Mirandy said the DCR has hired 291 correctional officers and 49 additional, non-officer personnel members. Also since Jan. 1, 162 individuals have completed DCR corrections training, he said.
Pat Mirandy, chief of staff for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, updates lawmakers on recruitment efforts in West Virginia’s jail system.
Photo Credit: Will Price/WV Legislative Photography
Union representatives have longsaid that understaffing in the state’s jail system has created additional safety risks for workers, which also extend to individuals who are incarcerated.
In 2022, Justice issued a state of emergency proclamation over the staffing issues, which allowed members of the West Virginia National Guard to fill in vacancies in the jail system.
But the ongoing recruiting efforts could mean National Guard members will no longer be needed in the state’s jail system, Mirandy said.
At the beginning of the year, Mirandy said 413 National Guard members were working for the DCR. Now, that number has fallen to approximately 80.
During the meeting, Del. Bryan Ward, R-Hardy, said these staffing improvements marked “a lot to be proud of” for the agency.
Mirandy said that by May the DCR anticipates only five guard members will remain with the agency, staying on to complete “paperwork that needed to be done to close out the soldiers that we had in our facilities.”
“Because of the success of our recruiting efforts, we’ve been able to draw down the National Guard’s footprint in our agency,” he said. “Our plan to eventually achieve no guardsmen in our facilities will be a reality soon.”
State revenue is solid for the year, and over estimates, but down from last year because of personal income tax reductions and severance taxes.
West Virginia tax collections are higher than estimated, but it is unclear if another personal income tax cut will happen in 2025.
Legislators heard Monday from Mark Muchow, the deputy secretary of the state Department of Revenue, about 2024 budget revenue numbers.
“After nine months, the state has collected more than $4.07 billion. That’s $522.9 million above estimate,” Muchow said. “It’s down from last year by 11.6 percent, which is pretty good considering that we cut the income tax by 21.25 percent and some reductions occurred in the severance tax as well.”
Muchow said personal income tax collections are $184.1 million above estimate for the year. He explained that it is down 9.4 percent year to date over last year.
“Again, 9.4 percent is pretty good considering that we cut the tax rates by 21.25 and the income tax as a whole was over 40 percent of general revenue fund collections,” Muchow said.
Severance taxes on coal, gas and oil were budgeted for just $22.1 million for this fiscal year to date. So far, the state has collected $48.129 million. That sounds promising, except the previous fiscal year brought in nearly $85 million at this point in 2023 and is off more than 43 percent.
Since taking office, Gov. Jim Justice has maintained relatively flat budgets and kept budget estimates low as well. That has guaranteed annual budget surpluses. Over the last few years, they have topped $1 billion each fiscal year.
Last year, when the West Virginia Legislature passed the personal income tax cut, the bill included triggers that would further reduce those taxes. The triggers are tied to budget surpluses.
Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, asked about the trigger mechanism during Monday’s meeting.
“Are you able to project whether the August trigger is going to come into play or not?” he said.
“It’s too early for us to do that type of projection. There’s a lot of revenues outstanding. I do believe that the income tax is going to trend lower over the final, at least over the April, May period, [it] may bounce back in June,” Muchow said. “But there’s too many variables out there to make a good, firm analysis on the trigger.”
“When do you think you’ll comfortably be able to make that calculation?” Rowe asked.
“We will not have a complete idea till the end of June,” Muchow said. “But we’ll have a better idea for the end of April. And even better at the end of May. So by the end of May, things will be a little bit better in focus than they are today.”
“So if we were to have a special session in May, and that has been discussed, then you may have the numbers you need to calculate whether the August trigger will come into play?” Rowe asked.
“We’ll have a better idea, but not a perfect idea,” Muchow said. “Again, there’s a number of variables outstanding that we’d have to consider in that equation.”
The Legislature is expected to return to Charleston for a special session on the budget in mid-May following the election but before the end of the month.
West Virginia geospatial officials are developing new technology to help visualize flood and landslide risk in the state. The project aims to create more accessible and updated community-level flood risk data.
Flooding events like these are familiar territory for many residents. According to the West Virginia GIS Technical Center, 286 communities across the state are located directly on flood plains — areas adjacent to waterways that can become inundated by rising water levels.
The center has long worked to identify flood risks through digital mapping software. On Sunday, state analysts presented new developments in this effort to the West Virginia Legislature’s Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding.
Currently, the center is working to strengthen local flood risk data and to create data visualization tools more easily understood by members of the public, according to Co-Director Aaron Maxwell.
Often, emergency management data comes from the federal level, which limits the level of detail available on the local level.
The center is working to update structural and flood plain data across the state to “support the public and flood plain managers in flood-prone communities,” and to develop a “higher grain of detail than what’s available with federal tools,” Maxwell said.
Last year, the center began developing the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Framework through a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This has allowed the center to develop mapping and modeling tools on flood risk and resiliency across the state, Maxwell said.
Beyond modeling how waterways and properties would be affected by rising water levels, Maxwell said the center is also conducting a statewide survey to assess how residents feel about flood risks and recovery efforts in their community.
The center will then flesh out additional reports on flood risk preparedness locally, Maxwell said.
By providing resources like new data visualization software and survey reports to the public, Maxwell said the center hopes to bolster “data-driven decision-making in the state,” like corroborating emergency relief grant requests with concrete data.
Maxwell also said that the center has been working with West Virginia’s State Resiliency Office to compile these resources into a “one-stop shop for people to go to, to investigate their flood risk.”
This furthers the center’s goals of providing more accessible data for the public. Pulling it all together in one location is easier for every-day residents, like how 3D visualization tools are more easily understood than convoluted or industry-specific information, Maxwell said.
Aaron Maxwell, co-director of the West Virginia GIS Technical Center, speaks to members of the West Virginia Legislature Sunday.
Photo Credit: Perry Bennett/WV Legislative Photography
The center is also working to develop tools that can assess risks associated with flooding, like landslides.
Kurt Donaldson, geographic information system (GIS) manager at the center, said that landslides are the second most costly form of natural disaster to West Virginia, second only to flooding.
“Just where West Virginia is, with the steep slopes, landslides are always an issue,” he said during the committee meeting Sunday. “Sometimes they get categorized as flood-damaged structures when it was associated with a mudslide.”
Donaldson said that the center is developing a state landslide susceptibility grid.
Like the flood risk visualization maps, these aim to convey to local officials and members of the public emergency risks present in their communities. “It can be useful for identifying areas that are susceptible to landslides,” he said.
While the center will continue to work on the project in the coming months, Maxwell said their NSF funding ends in October, requiring sustainable, long-term funding resources to keep data up to date.
Sen. Chandler Swope, R-Mercer, said that flood risk management is often overlooked in financial discussions within the Legislature, which he views as an oversight.
“Flooding has been, in budget terms at least, virtually ignored for 100 years,” he said during Sunday’s meeting. “We’ve got the other highways, water, sewer, broadband, et cetera infrastructure, but flooding is not on our agenda as a major infrastructure need for West Virginia.”
Swope said that he and members of the Legislature should prioritize flood risk mitigation funding in upcoming financial discussions.
“As money becomes available after other infrastructure needs are met, I think we should give serious consideration to doing what we can for flood mitigation, and we’ll choose the highest priority places first,” he said.
Swope also said that preventing damages associated with natural disasters like floods would ultimately limit state spending on emergency response efforts.
“It’s not an expense that wouldn’t pay for itself with the proper application,” he said. “If this information had been available 100 years ago, there might be a lot of towns and cities that have a lot less damages due to floods.”
To participate in the West Virginia GIS Technical Center’s flood resiliency survey, visit the center’s West Virginia Flood Resilience Framework website.
For more information on local flood risk in West Virginia, visit the West Virginia GIS Technical Center’sWest Virginia Flood Tool.
This 3D model from the West Virginia GIS Technical Center shows how rising water levels would affect a West Virginia home.
Image Credit: West Virginia Flood Tool/West Virginia GIS Technical Center
