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State Farms: Lawmakers should cut wasteful expense

For 15 years, lawmakers and West Virginia officials have known the state-run farms are inefficient and unsustainable. That is because a review by the Post Audit Division back in 2002 reached that conclusion, and offered solutions to the problem. According to Justin Robinson, a legislative auditor with the Legislature’s post audit division, those suggestions were not followed, and the problem has only gotten worse.

At one time the farms were meant to provide meat and produce to the state’s prisons and other institutions, and give inmates a place for rehabilitative work. Today, the farms, which have lost the state approximately $2.6 million over the past three years, actually purchase all of their pork and most of their beef before passing it along at a markup to state institutions.

Bureaucratic logic boggles the mind. Where else would a division that was draining $867,000 a year from its parent company while failing to complete its task AND asking the parent company to pay marked up prices for its product be allowed to still exist?

Robinson told lawmakers over the weekend they should give serious consideration to whether the state should continue to operate the farms at all.

He said they are still losing massive amounts of taxpayer money, they do not adhere to the law that created them, they do not truly provide rehabilitation for inmates and they do not file annual reports as required by state code.

One would think the decision to cut them loose would be an easy one for lawmakers.

Yet auditors gave the Department of Agriculture until November to come up with a plan to fix the farms. (Predictably, the department is asking for more time). It has been 15 years since an official report was issued detailing the problems with the farms, and likely much longer since those in charge began to understand the trouble brewing.

If lawmakers do not see a solid plan for a complete and speedy turnaround, they should auction off the farms. Perhaps they will wind up in the hands of private citizens who know what to do with them.

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