It is the informal gathering place for lobbyists, reporters, constituents, and lawmakers.

Centrally situated between the chambers of the House of Delegates and Senate,

The Well is where information is often shared, alliances are formed, and deals are made.

86th West Virginia Legislature

August Interim Meetings

State Capitol

August 25-27, 2024

West Virginia News Headlines

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Newsletter Digest

SUBSTANCE USE: Jeremy Samples, senior advisor for the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Health, said West Virginia’s substance use disorder (SUD) crisis has had devastating effect on policies, communities, and families.

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES: The state’s Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability (LOCHHRA) learned Child Protective Services (CPS) will have a new leader.

BROADBAND: West Virginia Office of Broadband Director Kelly Workman updated the Joint Committee on Technology and Infrastructure on the state’s broadband expansion efforts.

DEVELOPMENT: The Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Economic Development and Tourism heard four presentations concerning economic development.

She said the gap was mainly the result of the lower Medicaid enrollment as the COVID public health emergency unwound, as well as savings in prescription drug costs and managed-care organization payments. However, she noted some areas of overspending, including $9.3 million more for federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and $103 million more for long-term care reimbursement. The department also saw a $245 million increase in provider tax revenue.

Secretary Persily also discussed upcoming changes, such as implementing certified community behavioral health centers, continuing prescription drug cost management, and the phase-in of long-term care reimbursement rate adjustments. She also mentioned plans to introduce first-day Medicaid-managed care enrollment while continuing to manage waiver waitlists.

Childcare funding was a major topic of discussion. The committee heard concerns about relying on dwindling Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) surplus funds. The department is working on a model to stabilize childcare funding, potentially through an employer/state/individual cost-sharing approach.

Committee members asked about reimbursement rates, particularly for Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (IDD) waiver providers and family caregivers, questioning whether the rates are adequate to attract and retain staff. The department explained its approach and noted it was working with BMS on potential geographic differentials.

Delegate Amy Summers of Taylor County asked Secretary Persily for clarification on the recent 15% rate increase for the IDD waiver, Aged and Disabled (ADW), Personal Care, and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) programs.

Delegate Summers noted the Secretary had stated during an earlier meeting that the increase was 15% across the board. Secretary Persily confirmed the increase is 15% across the board, but some programs, such as ADW, were increased even more.

Mr. Samples said West Virginia has led the nation since 2010 in fatal overdose deaths.

“I won’t bury the lead,” Mr. Samples said. “We have not made enough progress. We’re nowhere near where we need to be.”

West Virginia is 151% higher than the best state and 85% higher than the national average in overdose deaths. He added that all strategies and expenditures must be reassessed.

Mr. Samples noted that despite billions of dollars and involvement of several federal agencies, the national overdose death has quadrupled, and the impact has been greatest in West Virginia.

Citing data, Mr. Samples told the committee that the drug crisis has been estimated to cost West Virginia $11.3 billion annually. In 2022 there were 1,335 known overdose deaths, and the state has recorded a 1,680% increase in overdose deaths since 1999.

Medicaid is the largest substance-abuse payer in the state through the Substance Use Disorder (SUD) waiver that waives federal authority and allows the state to go to outside parameters. The SUD waiver program spent $12 million in 2019 and $129 million in 2023. The expenditure is projected to be $161 million in 2027.

Noting that recovery homes and other resources are starting to make progress, Mr. Samples said, “There’s a lot of promising things happening,” but he added the disclaimer, “We’ve not had a lot of success. We’ve had failures.”

Trends around the country from 2023 to 2024 show that West Virginia is not keeping pace with decreases that other states are seeing. That affects overall life expectancy, and West Virginia has the highest death rate in the country for the working-age population. Mr. Samples added that drugs are directly linked to West Virginia’s child-welfare crisis. West Virginia has led the nation in children in foster-care entry rates since 2010.

West Virginia also leads the nation in neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), defined as a baby being fully addicted at birth. Mr. Samples described 2,500 babies who are exposed annually to drugs in the womb as “a demographic tsunami.”

After presenting the effects of substance use disorder, Mr. Samples provided some solutions. He said the passage of Senate Bill 820 was critical and drives quality performance measures. He stressed that the state has to measure what matters and that it is most important to measure every aspect of policies and expenditures.

Mr. Samples presented 10 core societal metrics and then specific societal measures. He included 10 critical outcomes for individuals and proposed policy solutions. The top three of the policy recommendations were:

·     Mandatory treatment (Casey’s Law)

·     SUD Transparency Act: SUD Outcome and Expenditure Dashboard

·     Improve CPS Management of Cases with Drug Addiction

In his concluding remarks, Mr. Samples said that evidence-based and best practices are good guideposts but haven’t translated into success in West Virginia. He advised the committee to look at what works.

“If it works, I’m all about it. It has to work, and it has to be measured,” he said. “We can’t sustain 2,500 babies being exposed to substances in the womb.”

He added that he’s leaving this legislative position next month but will always be available.

The next presenter was Jonathan Board, Executive Director of the First Foundation, which was created to receive and disburse anti-opioid funding.

“We must get this right the first time,” Board said.

National litigation regarding the opioid crisis began 10 years ago. In 2023, Senate Bill 674 created the First Foundation, and its first meeting was in November 2023. He said the new nonprofit has had a workshop, developed policies, formed committees, and set protections for the fund.

Core strategies focus on reverse medications, neonatal abstinence syndrome, and prevention programs. Approved uses of funds are in place. They include treatment, recovery, and support for people involved in criminal justice programs.

West Virginia received the highest per-capita settlement in the country. The funds are contained in three “buckets”:

·     Counties and Municipalities: 24.5%

·     The Foundation: 72.5%

·     State Attorney General: 3%

The Foundation structure includes a Board of Directors made up of six regions with an elected director and five gubernatorial appointees. Its mission statement is, “Empowering

West Virginians to prevent substance use disorder, support recovery, and save lives.”

The Foundation has a public access policy and, in answer to a question from Delegate Mike Pushkin of Kanawha County, follows open meetings law.

Mr. Board said the next steps include finalizing staff, opening offices, and establishing the application process, among several other tasks.

The final presenter was Dr. Steven Lloyd, who was in his first day on the job as the new Executive Director of the Office of Drug Control Policy. He told the committee that he has been to many communities and has started looking at outcomes.

“We have to have the courage to move money from things that aren’t working to things that are,” Dr. Lloyd said.

Revealing that he has been in recovery for 20 years, Dr. Lloyd offered a bathtub analogy. A person can leave the bathtub and recover, flop back and forth, or die.

“If we allocate all the money to reversal drugs, we will save some lives, but we haven’t changed anything. We have done nothing to address shrinking the number of people in the bathtub,” Dr. Lloyd said.

He pointed out that addiction has changed because long-term use was the main cause of death in the past, but now one use can kill because of fentanyl in drugs. Describing his own addiction, he said people confronted his addiction 20 years ago.

“I stepped into a system of care with a high success rate,” he said. “We have to talk about strategies that work,”

Dr. Lloyd said predictive analytics and data modeling will reveal other measurable things.

“West Virginia is ground zero for the opioid crisis,” he said. “We can show the rest of the country how to get out of this.”

Secretary provides report on CPS

Secretary Persily said Ms. Kimberly Ricketts is replacing Jeffrey Pack. The Governor appointed Mr. Pack to be the Cabinet Secretary for the Bureau for Senior Services. Ms. Ricketts will serve as Special Consultant to the Cabinet Secretary for the Bureau of Social Services.

Secretary Persily said workforce recruitment has been an ongoing concern. She said the agency has made significant improvements in recruitment and retention. She credited the move from the Division of Personnel streamlinded the process. She said vacancy rates are down to 17% among CPS workers. Some counties, she said, have no vacancies. The larger percentages are in the larger counties, such as Kanawha with 13 CPS vacancies.

Retention efforts have brought vacancies down from 34.1% in 2021 to 9.9%. She said that was accomplished through check-ins with employees, more training, and changing the culture to a place where employees wanted to work. Secretary Persily said the agency conducts stay and exit interviews regularly. She added that staffing is determined by population, and the agency is working on training and workplace efficiency. She said exit interviews show that reasons for turnover have changed from low wages and excessive workload in 2021-22 to leaving for career change or retirement in 2024.

Secretary Persily said the agency implemented a centralized intake (CI) system, which receives all calls. In the past, calls came in county by county. She said the process, by collecting the same information on every call, takes subjectivity out of the process and adds consistency.

She further explained the time frame for first contact that she described as one of the most important variables. The time to first contact is either immediate, within 72 hours, or within 14 days. She gave several barriers or reasons for delays of first contact, which include incorrect addresses, family not being home or a family that has relocated (which is common in border counties), a family actively avoiding or hiding a child, or high worker caseloads that cause delays.

She emphasized that the CI contact number has been widely distributed and is on social media. The number is 1-800-352-6513 and is answered around the clock 365 days a year.

West Virginia’s confidentiality laws mimic federal law, but a work group currently is considering a limited release of information in the event of fatality or near fatality.

She said the group also discussed the release of information with the Prosecuting Attorneys Institute to find a way to balance the public’s need to know with the ability to prosecute an abuse or neglect case. The agency has drafted legislation that will be presented before the 2025 session, she said.

Secretary Persily told the committee the People’s Access to Help, or PATH system, has been implemented and was fully operational on July 29. The new system replaces three legacy systems and modernizes West Virginia’s information technology with an initial contract cost of $308.8 million.

Secretary Persily assured the committee, “We are not deploying a system until we are as error free as we can be.”

The state has been active in securing approval and getting those programs off the ground and was among the first in the nation to do so.

Through ARPA funding, West Virginia already has awarded $156 million for 3,800 miles of new fiber infrastructure, reaching more than 40,000 residents. The state also has secured a historic $1.2 billion BEAD allocation, which it is now deploying.

Much of the discussion centered on the state’s “challenge process” to determine eligible unserved and underserved locations. The process involves identifying and adjudicating more than 80,000 location challenges from Internet service providers. The result is a final eligibility map the state must now use to ensure 100% coverage through the BEAD program.

However, the state also faces a couple of significant barriers, namely pole attachment agreements and the matching fund requirements for BEAD. The state Public Service Commission has stepped in to create a task force to investigate and address the pole-attachment issues, which are causing delays.

Committee members probed various aspects of the application and approval process, seeking clarity on definitions, potential claw-backs, and the overall timeline. They also asked questions about applicants’ pre-qualification and whether the state would release that information publicly.

The following were common themes:

The state can be retrofitted for economic development and expansion given its location, emergent workforce, and support from state policymakers.

Public school students, especially students of Career/technical education programs, are trained in basal or emergent skills that enhance economic development initiatives.

Maximizing community development goes hand in hand with economic development.

While higher learning was mentioned, Career & Technical Education (CTE) training may be foundational, according to employers that work with CTE centers. Higher learning, however, was also emphasized, especially in terms of what Gabriel Irizarry, IBM technical leader, discussed in terms of “state collaboration” built around the networking of higher education institutions.

Crystal Mersh, CEO, Quality Executive Partners, reinforced higher learning access through regional colleges and universities. A Calhoun County native who returned to the county after several decades working abroad, Ms. Mersh said raising expectations allows communities to regain hope and confidence.

Tom Zielinsky, President of Z Performance, a Detroit company, said the state’s support of motorsports can result in promoting West Virginia economically and attracting persons who would travel to the state and enrich local communities through lodging and commerce. He said he sees considerable interest in motorsports in the state, and he is promoting venues in Fayette County this year and next year as well. An inaugural event was held this summer at Snowshoe Mountain Resort, attracting about 2,000 participants, he said.

The committee heard additional presenters.

Marvin Woodie Jr., President of Conn-Weld in Princeton, said his company has grown from about 150 employees to more than 300 workers. He said manufacturers’ intent is to keep “people in West Virginia,” especially 18- to 25-year-olds. Mr. Woodie said county infrastructure, especially transportation, is key to economic development given markets’ in proximity of Southern West Virginia.

He called on legislators to continue efforts to reduce taxation on inventories and to broaden CTE emphasis by “asking” students how the public education system can best meet their needs so students can become welders, machinists, or construction employees. He praised state government leaders for enhancing the state’s business climate. Conn-Weld manufactures screens for use various manufacturing applications, such as large particle separation for coal, minerals, and aggregates, as well as sieves for mining.

Ms. Mersh said she found Calhoun County residents apathic.

“They had lost their hope. They’d lost their way,” she said.

Her effort, through nonprofit as well as for-profit ventures, was to allow residents to shape county economic development, which began with the purchase of the old Calhoun County High School building, which closed in the late 1980s. The building will include housing, a private school, and commercial space for entrepreneurs.

She also discussed how building a community swimming pool provided not only employment for life guards and others but also allowed students to form a corporation, sharing profits among themselves.

Ms. Merch cited the need for child-care services and cited “food scarcity” as an issue in the county. She enlisted students’ support as part of a coordinated grassroots approach despite what she termed some government leaders and “powers that be.” Her efforts also include securing funding for domestic manufacturing of generic pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Zielinsky said motorcross efforts bring attention to West Virginia, and residents and businesses are welcoming and inviting. He said few motorsports fans had been to the state, but he believes they will return. He said Car and Driver magazine said Snowshoe had the “most beautiful race padlock in America.”

He noted legislative support for motorsports.

The IBM presentation focused on health care collaboration through IBM services for state institutions of higher learning with Virginia Commonwealth University as the lead institution.

Presenters noted the state’s partnership with IBM and that the corporation seeks to enhance business applications in the state, including artificial intelligence (AI). Mr. Irizarry said the venture will result in students staying in the state.

·     September 8-10 (Parkersburg)

·     October 6-8

·     November 10-12

·     December 8-10