Q&A: Boone County House Candidates April Estep and Josh Holstein talk drug treatment and funding services

In mid-September, Mountain State Spotlight went to Boone County to find out what issues people are facing.

Based on those conversations, we asked candidates for the 32nd District House of Delegates race what they intend to do if elected. Republican Josh Holstein, a first-term delegate who works as a consultant and graphic designer, is being challenged by Democrat April Estep.

Here are their responses, edited for length and clarity.

Decline in coal production and population over the last decade has forced local governments to make cuts in services and personnel to balance their budgets. For example, some elementary schools were closed in 2016, and the sheriff’s office had to reduce the number of deputies. While state funds can’t wholly replace local funds, what will you do as a delegate to ensure services like education and law enforcement are still available to the people of Boone County?

April Estep : I think one of the most important things we could do for both of those is to expand our tax base. We just need more employers here. I think we really need to encourage small business and just get more people working so that we have more taxes coming in. That’s my general answer.

For education, a big thing is the Hope Scholarship. It’s just taking so much money away from our public schools. I think in Boone County, the tentative number for this year, we’ve got, like, almost 400 kids homeschooling. If every single one of those kids gets the Hope Scholarship, which I think is $4,900 this year, that’s almost $2 million out of our budget just for kids that are homeschooled.

We need to take a look at that. I’m absolutely not against homeschooling at all. My youngest child was homeschooled, but we really need to look at that money. And do we need to be giving that much money to people – a lot of which is going out of state from what I understand?

For the police department, that’s not my area of expertise, and it’s one of those areas where I definitely need to learn a lot more about because I’m not really sure exactly how Boone County specifically gets money outside of taxes.

I really think we need to look at encouraging small business. We’ve got to support them in any way we can, whether that’s through tax breaks and tax incentives. I think that’s going to be our best bet. I’m not against larger business – that would be great. But I mean, if, if they wanted to be here, I think they would already be here.

Context: The Hope Scholarship is an educational savings account program that was passed by the Legislature in 2021 and went into effect in 2023. The scholarship allows parents to receive the amount spent per-pupil in a public school setting to pay for their child to attend private, home school and other alternative education systems. The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy projected a $21 million loss for the state school system in the 2024-2025 school year due to the program.

Josh Holstein : This is one of the most important issues that we face.

The real problem is not only the decline in the coal industry, but the loss of population. We’ve had people moving out as the coal industry has declined, almost a direct correlation there.

Obviously it has hurt our schools. We’ve had to consolidate some of them due to fewer students and budgeting.

On the business side, we have a lot of duplicative taxes in southern West Virginia. We have taxes on businesses at the county and municipal level that we also require at the state.

So, if you have a construction business, and you’re operating in Charleston or Madison, in an incorporated area, you may have to pay an extra business license fee just to operate within the city or town limits. Whereas, if you’re in an unincorporated area, you don’t have to. You just pay the regular state business license fee. We’ve got a lot of that going on.

Also, we have a really large problem with land in Boone County. It’s very hard to develop here, because we have a lot of large landowners from out of state that hold a lot of the property. That’s something the state really needs to work on an agreement with some of these land companies, as we have with other projects around the state.

On the population front and the family friendly front, we’ve got to get the drug crisis under control. Crime really seemed to decrease in Boone County over the last few years. But drug use hasn’t.

For the past three years, I’ve ran a substance abuse tax credit bill – that’s probably one of the most important pieces of legislation I’ve introduced – which would allow small small businesses and large corporations to hire individuals and claim a substance abuse recovery tax credit if those individuals voluntarily disclose that they’ve completed a drug court or some other government mandated recovery program.

That would do two things. It would give folks a job who are oftentimes stigmatized and are turned away because drug use often leaves obvious physical attributes on an individual –  you can usually tell. A lot of employers are skeptical, and I think this is one of the ways that can help that problem. Also, it pays back into the community, revitalizing the area by having more folks employed.

Another thing I think we need to do on the family front is we need to clean up our area. We have a huge problem with abandoned buildings in this area. Part of the problem with that is the lack of population. People have moved and left their property in disrepair, or they haven’t kept it up over the years, or they’ve sold it to someone who just doesn’t care.

Since I’ve been in the Legislature, we’ve raised teacher pay three times.

Over some period of time in the next five, six years, I’d like to see the Legislature try to get that baseline up to about $50,000 because we have a lot of teachers who are leaving, and teacher shortage is a big problem in Boone County. It’s all across West Virginia, but even more so in Boone and southern West Virginia.

Context: The issue of abandoned and dilapidated properties is a state wide problem. In 2021, the Legislature established a program through the Department of Environmental Protection to aid counties and municipalities in the costs of tearing down these structures.

Drug addiction was a major concern I heard about while speaking with people in Boone County, particularly in the community of Nellis. While there are some outpatient programs in the community, there’s not much by way of in-patient or residential services. If elected, what will you do to ensure people suffering from addiction, and the families they affect, can get the services they need to get better?

Estep: We really need to look at what we already have and what is working, and then try to replicate that enough so that everybody that needs those services can get those services.

I think for families specifically, we need to look at what their needs are. They’ve had a relative that has suffered from addiction. They’ve gone, they got clean, they got sober, they come back home, and then they just fall into those habits and start using again.

So what can we do for those families, for those people that are coming out of addiction, to stop them from using again?

It kind of all goes back to creating that tax base. If we have people that are trying to get their lives straightened out, they’re trying to do better, they do the work. They get clean. What are we offering them to help them stay clean?

Boone County is a perfect storm of not enough jobs, not enough money for education, not enough transportation. No great technology infrastructure that would allow someone to work remotely if they needed to.

We do not have enough of those inpatient treatment services here. So if that means we look for grant funding to build more, that’s what we do. If that means we have to find places outside of Boone County and pay for people to go to them so that they can get clean, then maybe that’s what we do. But we’ve got to do something, because the problem is out of control, and it has been for a long time.

Holstein: We’ve had a couple different organizations that have come in just in the last few years. The BARN Community group there in Nellis, which is in the old Nellis Elementary school building.

Their resources have been building and building over the last few years. They have more organizations and more resources than I would have ever thought they would have had. And so that’s been a great resource for that area.

It’s really difficult when you’re already struggling to bring business and to keep your population in your county. It’s even more difficult to say, well, we need a rehab facility, or we need something. You also have to realize that those are mostly business oriented. You have to be able to convince them that it’s worth their while, and it’s worth their money to invest in this area.

While there’s obviously a problem, the population is much lower.

I think the state should invest more. I would be more than happy to vote to appropriate more funding to invest in more resources.

But bringing private business here for that specific purpose – inpatient –  that’s an extremely lofty goal, and I’m not sure it’s necessarily achievable. I think the most impactful thing we can do is figure out how to invest in public transportation, because we’re not that far from Charleston, anywhere in Boone County, which is obviously where a lot of resources are available for folks. If we could figure out a way to provide public transportation, or at least increase access to it, I think that would be huge.

Context: Certified recovery residences, also called sober living homes, are accredited through the West Virginia Alliance of Recovery Residences. The only current operating sober living home in Boone County is the Hero House, which is listed at total capacity of 15 beds split between both men and women. More listings of sober living homes in West Virginia can be found here .

With Boone County being very rural, I heard over and over that transportation is an issue for people without a car, especially as they seek services to get back on their feet. If elected, what are your plans to address this issue?

Estep: I think we already have a shuttle bus type situation that will run a couple days a week, and we’ll pick up people. I don’t know how well that is utilized, but I see it on the road every so often.

I think if we had more businesses here so people wouldn’t have to travel as far to do things, then that would be one easy solution.

I would say we look at grant opportunities to see what we can do to bring in more public transit that will run a regular route every day.

Everything I do is through the lens of being a teacher or being a mom. And so I thought we have a vocational school that has a lot of really great programs. But we also have kids that will go to those programs, will get certified to do something, and then they graduate, and then they have no way of getting to a job that would employ them with their certification. Is there some way we can pair with the vocational school? The vocational school can do a 13th year where someone is working for a business, and then the Boone County Schools could supply some type of transportation to get those kids, those recent graduates, to their jobs. I mean, it’s just there’s so many different things and so many different aspects to look at that there’s no one right answer.

Holstein: We’ve got to work with the county commission.

I think that that’s less of a legislative thing, and it’s more of a county/ private sector kind of thing. I’ve discussed it in Charleston with other legislators, about “what do you do in your area?” We’re pretty universally rural across the state, so that problem is not just exclusive to here.

I don’t have a direct answer for that. I don’t know what we do. But that’s something we need to do. That’s something we need to start discussing immediately.

Context: Currently, the Tri River Transit provides low cost transportation for people in Boone, Lincoln, Logan, Mason and Wayne counties. The Boone bus is currently scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Fridays – service on that line runs to the Southridge Shopping Center on Corridor G, just outside of Charleston.

Communication can be difficult in the county, due to spotty mobile phone reception service in more remote locations. As a delegate, what do you intend to do to get people plugged into today’s technology driven world?

Estep: That’s the million dollar question. In the last few years, I think our access to cell service has gotten better. I’m getting reception in places where previously I haven’t. So I think we’re on the right track.

I think we need to have an accurate map of what areas are not being served or not being served sufficiently.

If we need to apply for grants to expand services, we do that. If we offer incentives to the providers to get them to expand the service, we do that.

We need to see where we’re lacking and figure out a solution to get those areas covered as quickly as possible, because it is scary.

Holstein: In Boone County, if you look at the map, I’d say 10% of the area has cell phone coverage, and probably 40%, 35% of the population where they live has cell phone coverage. Now, I have been railing against this for a long time. I spoke directly to AT&T about two years and a half years ago.

I said we have access roads where they used to go up there to do the surface mining. I said, why can we not find somewhere to enter into some kind of agreement with a coal company or a land company to put a tower in some of these areas? It really wouldn’t be that hard. You wouldn’t have to build the access road on your own. You could use some of the ones that currently exist.

AT&T told me directly, they said, ‘It just doesn’t make sense for our business model.’

I get it. I totally understand it. There’s a high cost and a low reward, because the population is lower. That was a couple years ago, and I have been applying pressure to not only them, but to other companies as well.

I don’t know how we incentivize businesses to do that. And I think one of the ways that we’re going to have to do this is really a controversial approach, particularly on my side of the aisle.

We’re such a rural state and sparsely populated state, I think we’re going to have to have the state government offer grants to these businesses to come in and service these areas. I think that’s the only way we can do it, because alone, there’s not a there’s not a big enough incentive for them to do it.

I had looked in a couple states that have invested in connection hubs.

They are a designated area near a community center, or something like that, where there’s free – or where there’s like a booster that will emit service for a mile radius. We could work with some of the companies to get grants for those and put those in, most highly populated areas where there’s no service. That’s something I’ve been doing a lot of research on lately.

We’ve got to offer grants or some kind of tax agreement to entice the businesses to set up in places of need, just as we’ve seen the federal government and us here at the state level do with broadband.

Q&A: Boone County House Candidates April Estep and Josh Holstein talk drug treatment and funding services appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.