Justice lobs criticism at lawmakers as special session approaches without risk of ‘clawback’

The West Virginia Executive Budget with other paperwork during the 2024 legislative session. (Perry Bennett | West Virginia Legislative Photography)

Following a Friday announcement confirming what many had already assumed — that there will be no federal “clawback” due to the U.S. Department of Education approving a waiver for the state relating to its spending on education — Gov. Jim Justice on Tuesday promised that a special session will still be incoming next month.

Instead, when it’s announced, Justice said legislators will likely be asked to put their focus on reallocating funds to programs under the state’s three new health agencies, which were stripped in the “skinny budget” initially passed for fiscal year 2025.

The reallocations, if passed, will come after months of demands from advocates who want to see critical and permanent funding for programs like Medicaid, services for people with disabilities and child care, among others.

“We’ve got the money to really ensure that our seniors are taken care of, our kids are taken care of in a better way,” Justice said. “The last thing on Earth we want to do is do something that [is] harming the most needy of the most needy, whether it be [the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities waiver, or the IDD waiver] or on and on and on, it’s so important that’s the number one thing on the agenda.”

In his comments, Justice criticized legislative leaders, who he said exacerbated fear around the potential “clawback” despite him telling them it “was covered.”

“We were running up and down the halls, the finance chair was leading the way and leading the cheers and saying this clawback from the [federal Department of Education] could be the end of the world, the sky is falling … It really influenced a whole lot of people to really be concerned,” Justice said. “Forget the clawback now, we’ve got to stop that garbage talk and just move forward.”

The “clawback” came to light during the regular legislative session through a line of questioning to House Finance Chair Vernon Criss, R-Wood, during a meeting. It was the first time any member of the public — as well as several legislators — had heard about the situation which, if not resolved, could have led to $465 million being returned to the state due to a lack of funding for education initiatives during the pandemic.

In previous years, the state had been granted a waiver for its decrease in educational funding, which leaders attributed largely to a decline in student enrollment. The waiver approved for 2023 is not yet available on the Department of Education’s website.

Following the announcement of the potential “clawback” — which education officials told reporters in March was incredibly unlikely to take place — lawmakers rearranged several budget items, moving millions of dollars to budget lines for teacher pay raises, the school building authority and more. The moves were meant to appease the feds by showing more investment in the state’s schools in hopes that a waiver would be approved.

In turn, several other initiatives marked as priorities by the governor, numerous lawmakers and the public were left unfunded as the “clawback” loomed and Justice worked on “negotiations” with the federal department without regular communications to either lawmakers or the public. 

The uncertainty — which, even without the threat of a clawback, remains around the state budget for next year — meant lawmakers passed essentially a stopgap budget as they waited for more answers. Now come May, they will reconvene to amend that budget without the threat of losing more state dollars.

“… All that hooplah was worthless, that’s all there is to it,” Justice said. “We’ve done our job … We’ve done it last year, we’ve done it again this year and absolutely we’ve done it in a way that is very pleasing to the federal government in what we’ve done for education.”

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