Picture courtesy of the West Virginia Department of Veterans Assistance The Veterans Nursing Home in Clarksburg owes $5 million to vendors dating back to 2013.

CHARLESTON — A nursing facility managed by the state Department of Veterans Assistance owes more than $5 million to vendors, according to the governor’s office.

Gov. Jim Justice announced the accounting error at the Veterans Nursing Home Facility in Clarksburg in a press release, sent midnight Wednesday, that lacked details. It is the latest in a string of multi-million-dollar controversies discovered over the last six months.

According to Justice, the nursing home owes $5 million in unpaid invoices dating back to 2013. The state auditor’s office discovered the accounting errors and brought those to the attention of Veterans Affairs and the governor’s office.

“On-site visits were made in October to conduct employee interviews and review records and our team also met with the state auditor’s office to review the invoices in question,” Justice said. “Secretary (Dennis) Davis reported this to my office and a team was assembled to immediately correct the problems.”

A further audit revealed the full scope of the accounting issues, which first started to crop up in August. Officials conducted interviews and an on-site visit in October to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. Justice also said changes in staffing at the nursing home and the department will help prevent this from happening again.

“New leadership was appointed at the Nursing Facility in Clarksburg in early December,” Justice said. “A new chief financial officer has also been appointed at the Department of Veterans Assistance last week. Arrangements were made to pay crucial vendors to ensure the 110 veterans in the home are protected and cared for in the most efficient manner.”

The financial issues at the Veterans Nursing Home Facility marks another instance of an executive branch agency making a huge financial blunder.

Over the summer, the state auditor and the Legislative Auditor’s Office detailed issues with the RISE West Virginia flood relief program. Managed by the state Department of Commerce, RISE’s mission was to rebuild and rehabilitate homes damaged or destroyed during the floods of June 2016. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded the state more than $149 million for the project.

According to the audits, RISE entered into six contracts with Horne LLP totaling $18 million to help manage the grant funds and ensure compliance with federal rules, policy development, training, and support. The governor’s office paused the RISE program Feb. 28 to review the contract.

Auditors later found that the contracts were entered into without going through the Purchasing Division and being reviewed by the Attorney General’s Office. RISE also entered into several contracts with construction companies for more than $71 million before getting HUD approval.

Since June, several commerce staffers either quit or were fired. Woody Thrasher, the commerce secretary at the time, resigned and West Virginia National Guard Adjutant Gen. James Hoyer took command of the program. Justice appointed former state senator Ed Gaunch as the new commerce secretary at the beginning of December.

In July, the auditors found the state Department of Health and Human Resources spent 32 months paying for two leases at its former Middletown Mall location, costing taxpayers more than $1 million. Appropriate paperwork allowing the department to cancel the lease in 30 days never reached the Real Estate Division.

In August, the governor’s office announced that Corotoman Inc., a land development company, had collected rent from Ticketmaster at a Charleston office building purchased in 1999 with $3 million in financing from the West Virginia Water Development Authority. An internal review found that Corotoman — acting as a landlord — failed to forward payments from Ticketmaster to the water authority between 1999 and 2018. The company owes the state $1.539 million in back payments.

And in November, the Legislative Auditor’s Office discovered officials with the Division of Homeland Security and Security Management did not establish any internal controls on federal grants and had not corrected monitoring issues of grant sub-recipients since 2011, resulting in the Federal Emergency Management Agency placing the state on manual reimbursement.

Auditors also found that West Virginia is three years behind in drawing down more than $8.3 million in FEMA grant funds, including $5.4 million that is owed to counties and cities. Jimmy Gianato, the former director of homeland security, was removed and replaced by the division’s deputy director, Michael Todorovich. The division was also placed under the supervision of the National Guard with Gianato, who remains homeland security adviser, answering directly to Hoyer.