In April 2024, the WVCBP called on the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) to make their policies and procedures public.
Like most government agencies, DCR has the authority to create its own policies and procedures. This administrative law covers every facet of an agency that houses tens of thousands of people every year. Each day, DCR staff make decisions that shape the lives of each person incarcerated: when and how to provide medical care; whether to approve a spouse’s visitation request; if a person will be allowed to attend their parent’s funeral; if a person qualifies for medical release; and more.
Until recently, none of DCR’s 200+ policies and procedures appeared on the DCR website – or any other website. Instead, a curious citizen would need to make a public records request for a specific policy to DCR’s commissioner and wait five or more business days for a response. Or, if a citizen is lucky enough to be near Charleston, they could ask to view paper copies of the policies and procedures in the Secretary of State’s office.
The WVCBP and allies from the ACLU of West Virginia and Mountain State Justice used the Freedom of Information Act to request the 200+ policies that are supposed to govern West Virginia jails and prisons. In April 2024, the WVCBP published all the available policies to its own website with a call for DCR to follow suit.
It worked. In June 2024, DCR published the policies on its own website for the first time in its history.
This was a step in the right direction. But DCR must do more.
People confined in DCR’s facilities cannot freely browse the internet and are therefore unable to access DCR’s policies webpage.
Fortunately, there is an easy fix. Every adult and child incarcerated in West Virginia is supposed to receive a tablet. These tablets are a lifeline to the outside: they allow people to message and video chat with their loved ones (at a steep cost); they contain books and education materials; they provide access to a virtual law library of cases; and more.
However, the tablets do not provide a copy of DCR’s policies.
Rules should not be hidden from the people to whom they are applied. We hope DCR does what is necessary and makes these policies and procedures available–for free–on tablets, with paper copies available to those without tablet access.
If you believe that people who are incarcerated should have easy access to the policies and procedures governing their lives, DCR Commissioner William Marshall can be reached at william.k.marshall@wv.gov.
You can continue to find DCR’s rules–updated monthly–on the WVCBP’s designated webpage.
Read Sara’s full blog post.
2023 was a year of growth and change at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. We welcomed new staff, moved to a new office space, and ratified a refreshed mission and vision that better reflects our organizational evolution in recent years.
Throughout the last year and beyond, we also worked to better center our values of working hand in hand with community members and those most impacted by the policy issues on which we focus. The WVCBP has shifted to a longer, humbler approach that recognizes the need to support those who are on the ground building power in order to achieve our vision of a prosperous West Virginia where everyone has a meaningful opportunity to thrive with equitable access to health care, education, jobs, housing, and safe communities.
This vision is possible, but it cannot be achieved alone.
As we share our 2023 Annual Report, which includes more information about our work over the last year, a financial statement, and a list of recent funders, we also invite you to considermaking a donation to the WVCBP to help us keep up our fight.
Your support allows us to continue working to advance public policies that increase opportunity and eliminate inequities through credible and accessible research and community-rooted advocacy. It allows us to make a difference in the lives of West Virginians too often left unconsidered by state policies, and we do not take it for granted.
You can access our full 2023 Annual Report here.
You can make a donation to the WVCBP online here. If donating via check, please mail to:
WV Center on Budget and Policy, 1610 Washington St. E., Suite 200, Charleston, WV 25311
On behalf of the staff and board of the WVCBP, our sincerest gratitude for your ongoing support!
The Black Voter Impact Initiative and Black by God, the founders of West Virginia’s Black Policy Day, are excited to announce their upcoming webinar series focused on specific aspects of the Black Policy Agenda. This is an excellent opportunity to deepen your knowledge and engage with experts across various issue areas ahead of the 2025 West Virginia legislative session.
You can register for the webinar serieshere.
You can share what you would like to see prioritized in the Black Policy Agenda by filling outthis survey.
Mark your calendars for Black Policy Day 2025, which will take place on March 10, 2025.
The WVCBP recently released a report detailing how pandemic-era federal dollars helped stabilize the state’s child care industry.As these federal dollars expire, West Virginia faces a child care cliff, with centers closing and families at risk of losing their child care subsidies if the state does not increase its investment. A recent article, featuring insight from the WVCBP, provides further details on the current child care funding landscape in the Mountain State. Excerpt below:
Providers and advocates for childcare in West Virginia are pleased funding has been found to hold off a looming shortfall in childcare subsidy funding until the end of the year, but they’re not pleased with how this was communicated.
Several childcare advocacy groups rallied Sunday in the front of the Capitol on the first day of August legislative interim meetings. The groups called on the Department of Human Services and the Legislature to work on the long-term need of expanding access to available and affordable childcare.
“Childcare providers like myself are doing everything we can to keep our doors open,” Jennifer Trippet, owner of Cubby’s Child Care Center in Bridgeport. “We are stretched thin, trying to balance skyrocketing expenses and the need to provide fair wages to our teachers who are the heart of our programs.”
“Childcare funding is a bipartisan issue that affects everyone: children, families, businesses, and entire communities,” Trippet continued. “It is essential to economic growth and workforce development. When parents can go to work or pursue education and training programs, they contribute to our economy. When they cannot, the entire community suffers.”
In April, DoHS told lawmakers the department would need $2.3 million per month, or about $23 million, to fund the Child Care Assistance program at the current rate beginning in September for the remaining 10 months of the current fiscal year. The additional funds were needed to abide by new federal rules that take effect in September requiring states to fund childcare providers based on enrollment at individual facilities instead of attendance.
While the Child Care Assistance program would continue, not having the additional funding would mean a reduction in services. Advocates for childcare estimated based on DoHS testimony that about 2,000 childcare slots would be gone after August if the state didn’t provide additional funding.
During a May special session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1001, a bill restoring more than $5 million to the Department of Health and more than $183 million to DoHS. The bill created reserve funds in both departments for the restored funding.
The bill allowed the secretaries of the departments to transfer money out of these new reserve funds to provide money for other line items. Lawmakers have since said DoHS had authority to transfer money from that fund to cover the $23 million needed for the childcare subsidy, though some called for a special session to make a supplemental appropriation of available surplus tax collections from the end of the previous fiscal year that ended in June, with lawmakers addressing long-term funding in the next budget bill beginning in 2025.
Despite several news outlets requesting comment from DoHS regarding how it intended to address the shortfall, those requests for comment went unanswered. But Gov. Jim Justice announced last Friday, followed by a press release from DoHS, that money had been found to keep the Child Care Assistance program funded based on the enrollment formula through the end of December, the first half of the current fiscal year.
Both Justice and DoHS accused media and childcare advocates of pushing “inaccurate” reports about a “funding crisis” childcare.
Childcare advocates pushed back against Justice and DoHS Sunday, accusing the executive branch of trying to gaslight providers and advocates.
“Recently, the Department of Human Services has made claims suggesting that we, those of us who work tirelessly in this industry, are confusing or misleading the public by stating that 2,000 children will lose their childcare when funding runs out in September,” Trippet said. “But let me be clear, this number, 2,000 children, and the timeline of September came directly from DoHS. Now they’re trying to change their story, and in doing so, they’re undermining the very real crisis that our families and providers are facing.”
Laura Shimenga is a Wheeling native who now works as a public school teacher in Southern West Virginia where she lives with her husband and two sons. She said a third of her income goes toward childcare for her children.
“That’s more than $13,000 a year, and that’s with me having my kids two months out of the year,” Shimenga said. “If I weren’t a teacher, I’d be paying even more. Essentially, we are punishing parents for working. If the State of West Virginia would help to subsidize childcare costs across the board, that would give every West Virginian the ability to work.”
“Funding childcare means adding more women to the workforce,” Shimenga continued. “Adding more women to the workforce means adding more workers to the economy. Adding more workers to the economy is growing our economy.”
According to data provided by both the pro-business West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the pro-labor West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy, the state was already facing a significant childcare shortage due to low reimbursement rates and staffing shortages. Both have called for making enrollment-based funding permanent and to consider increasing subsidies.
Amy Jo Hutchison, the West Virginia campaign director for MomsRising, said the childcare issue goes beyond just workforce issues. Access to childcare means fewer reports of abuse and neglect for children, more support for foster children and support for parents in active substance use disorder recovery. Most importantly, Hutchison said childcare is the backbone of the working class.
Read the full Weirton Daily Times article.
Read the WVCBP’s recent report on the state’s child care funding landscape.
West Virginia lawmakers are under pressure from Governor Justice to override the tax cut triggering mechanism created as part of the 2023 state income tax law and enact additional cuts. But state revenue and budget pressures, including slowing revenues, costly enacted legislation, and a myriad of unmet needs come into direct conflict with rushing to push through more tax cuts that mostly benefit the state’s wealthiest households. A recent article, featuring insight from the WVCBP, offers additional details about the tax cut threat. Excerpt below:
West Virginians will see their personal income taxes drop by 4% in the new year, Gov. Jim Justice said.
The Republican governor recently announced that state revenues had met the threshold to trigger the reduction, set to take effect Jan. 1. The decision was certified by Revenue Secretary Larry Pack and State Auditor JB McCuskey.
The cut comes after Justice signed a 21.25% income tax reduction last year. According to the 2023 law, additional state income tax cuts can be triggered by a formula involving higher-than-anticipated annual revenue collections. Those further tax reductions cannot be larger than 10%.
Justice has stressed that he wants to see the personal income tax eliminated to promote economic growth in one of the nation’s poorest states, and he has tried repeatedly to persuade state lawmakers to cut the tax completely. The 2023 law, which takes a more measured approach, was a compromise between the executive and the state Legislature.
Justice said last month that he anticipated the income tax dropping by around 4% starting next year, but that he wanted to call lawmakers back to the Capitol for a special session to consider a further cut of 5%. The governor has not yet made a special session call or set tentative dates for lawmakers to return to the Capitol, so it’s unclear whether that will happen.
The West Virginia Center On Budget and Policy has urged caution on further tax cuts, saying the personal income tax is the state’s largest source of revenue and that years of flat budgets have meant education and childcare needs have gone unmet.
Read the full AP articlehere.
Read the WVCBP’s recent blog post detailing why the Mountain State cannot afford further income tax cuts here.
Urge Governor Jim Justice to Fund Enrollment-based Reimbursements for Child Care Providers
The current system of reimbursing child care providers in West Virginia is based on the attendance of the child, not their enrollment. This approach often leaves providers at a financial disadvantage when children are absent due to illness or other reasons.
We urge Governor Jim Justice to call a special session that would focus on changing this reimbursement model.
According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, stable funding based on enrollment rather than attendance can provide more predictable income for providers and support higher quality care. By adopting this approach, we can ensure that our child care providers continue offering their invaluable services without worrying about inconsistent finances.
Please join us in signing this petition and helping us advocate for a fairer reimbursement system for our West Virginia child care providers.
