Lawmakers, governor upset with results of West Virginia’s special session

Del. Amy Summers, R-Taylor, led the House's effort to amend a funding bill for the Department of Human Services with spending mandates. (Perry Bennett | West Virginia Legislative Photography)

Last week’s long-awaited special session of the West Virginia Legislature was called a “disappointment” and a “failure,” and there was much tension between the Senate and House of Delegates.

Gov. Jim Justice called the special session to address the state budget passed on the last night of the regular legislative session in March. Many lawmakers were unhappy with what they referred to as a “skinny budget,” and the plan was always to go back and rework it.

Of the 15 items on Justice’s proclamation , 13 dealt with the budget.

Spoiler alert: Lawmakers passed all 15 of Justice’s bills.

However, Justice still wasn’t happy.

“I have been extremely disappointed in the behavior of a few of our legislators over the last few days,” he said in a statement. “For months now, I have demanded that we need to restore the budgets of our Department of Health and our Department of Human Services, so that hundreds and hundreds of our doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers won’t face rate cuts and to ensure that tens of thousands of our people won’t see reductions in needed services.”

His statement isn’t clear on the details of what he’s upset about, but it was most likely related to Senate Bill 1001 , which would put $183 million in a reserve fund for the Department of Human Services and $5 million in reserves to the Department of Health.

When the bill got to the House, delegates were unhappy that there were no mandates on how the money would be spent.

At the beginning of this year, the Department of Health and Human Resources was split into three departments — the Department of Health, the Department of Health Facilities and the Department of Human Services — to allow more transparency with funding.

Last month, lawmakers learned that the Department of Human Services didn’t spend $29 million in fiscal year 2023 that was meant to provide services for people with disabilities, and some of the money was instead used for at-home COVID-19 tests and contract nursing.

This led many legislators in the House to say that they don’t trust DoHS to spend the money the way lawmakers intend for them to without mandates.

DoHS has “proven over and over again that they don’t do the right thing,” said Del. Michael Hite, R-Berkeley.

The House amended mandates into the Senate’s version of the bill, however the Senate never took up the bill before adjourning sine die.The House then begrudgingly took the bill back up and passed the Senate’s version.

Del. Amy Summers, R-Taylor, led the House’s effort to amend the bill with spending mandates. Summers said she did not think voting for the Senate’s version of the bill was the “best path forward,” but the path they needed to take in order to get funding for programs for people with disabilities.

“This gives the additional money to the DoHS to fund these programs, if they so choose …  we are going to have to blindly trust that they’re going to do that,” Summers said.

The West Virginia Democratic Party called the session a failure in a news release, and condemned Senate President Craig Blair for adjourning the Senate without taking up SB 1001 with the House’s amendments, which mandated the money would go to the Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities Waiver.

“Senator [Eric] Tarr’s bill doesn’t guarantee any of these funds will go to the IDD waiver program,” said West Virginia Democratic Party Chair Mike Pushkin. “… To adjourn without addressing reimbursement rates is inexcusable and does nothing to alleviate the crisis. Families and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities will suffer needlessly because of their refusal to do the right thing.”

Tarr, the Senate Finance chair, said on MetroNews’ May 23 episode of “ TalkLine ” that the amendments were unnecessary because “we have commitment from the department to do those rate increases.”

Oh, a commitment? Did no one think to have the department commit to spending the $29 million correctly? You know, the money that was set out as a line item to be used for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, but instead was used to purchase at-home COVID-19 tests.

Tarr said the bill that the Senate passed was a compromise made between the House, Senate and governor’s office after two months of meetings.

Justice’s administration lacks transparency, and it seems the House is tired of it, and for good reason. Another special session is expected, possibly in June or August, and maybe lawmakers will continue to express that they’re fed up — the rest of us have been for a while.

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