Trending
CHARLESTON -- August will mark one year since Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency because of severe vacancies in West Virginia's prisons and jails.
But the Governor and members of the West Virginia Legislature are working towards a possible special session next month to address the problem.
During his weekly administration briefing from the State Capitol Building Wednesday, Justice said the Governor's Office and a group of lawmakers are having meetings to work towards a comprehensive plan to address staffing shortages within the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR).
If all sides can come up with a plan, a special session could be called as soon as Sunday, Aug. 6, coinciding with August legislative interim meetings between Aug. 7 through Tuesday, Aug. 8 when lawmakers will already be in Charleston.
"It is likely in August before we can have a special session, but our folks are meeting constantly with the folks upstairs (in the Legislature)," Justice said. "We do have a real situation with our correctional officers and vacancies. We're making some headway and everything. We need to someway, somehow make significant headway."
Speaking by phone Wednesday afternoon, House Jails and Prisons Committee Chairman David Kelly, R-Tyler, confirmed that meetings between lawmakers and the Governor's Office have been going on for several weeks to address the corrections crisis.
"We have been meeting and we're trying to come up with a plan forward," Kelly said. "Hopefully we can get something ready for the August interims."
Lawmakers have not met for interim meetings since May when the Legislature traveled to Marshall University in Huntington. During those meetings, lawmakers received a report from DCR on vacancies in the state's correctional system, consisting of 11 prisons, 10 regional jails, 10 juvenile centers and three work-release sites.
According to DCR, the number of overall vacancies as of May was 1,044, up from the 1,022 reported to lawmakers in mid-April, representing a vacancy rate of nearly 30%. For correctional officers, the vacancy rate is more than 33%.
Justice issued the state of emergency proclamation last August to address the vacancy rates across the state's prisons and regional jail system. Since then, more than 300 members of the West Virginia National Guard have helped staff prisons and jails. By August, the cost of that deployment is expected to exceed $20 million.
Several legislative committees passed bills during the 2023 session to increase pay for correctional officers and staff, create bonuses for retaining and recruiting correctional officers, and create a locality pay program for parts of the state seeing the highest number of vacancies, particularly in the Eastern Panhandle. None of those bills made it past their respective finance committees. Justice is an ardent supporter of locality pay.
"I've tried two times. I've sent up bills two different times," Justice said. "Both times they were shot down. One came through the (Department of) Homeland Security folks. One came from me. We need to do some kind of locality pay. We need to do something, absolutely something, to really move the needle."
Speaking Wednesday morning on WV MetroNews Talkline with host Hoppy Kercheval, Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, said the corrections working group is meeting Thursday at the State Capitol Building. Blair said some of the planning will focus on additional ways to relieve pressure on the correctional system. But a special session will only happen if all sides can agree on a plan.
"If there is no agreement between the House, the Senate, and the Governor's Office, then you won't see it happen and that can will get kicked down the road for another month, but I am anticipating an agreement," Blair said.
"As soon as we can get to the point of time to where we have an agreement, I will call a special session in the next 10 minutes," Justice said Wednesday afternoon. "But there is no point in calling a special session, spending your money for two or three days or a week or may be, listen to 10 or 15 different solutions and go nowhere. We don't need that. We've got to come to an agreement, and we're working on it. I'm very, very hopeful we would."
Kelly, who has been active in proposing solutions to the vacancy issue in corrections, agreed that the issues go beyond funding. But he believes that the sooner all sides can agree on a solution, the better for the state's correctional system.
"We have to do something," Kelly said. "Money is not the total solution, so we have to look at a lot of different areas. But something has to be done here."
Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com