(Editorial - Graphic Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Members of the state House Finance Committee are working toward some important changes to safeguard taxpayer dollars, ahead of a planned “universal expansion” of the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program.

Without many of the planned changes, the program will remain wide open to waste, fraud and abuse, as too many have taken advantage of the state’s failure to install guardrails earlier.

The originating bill, which has not yet been numbered, would cap the annual Hope Scholarship award to eligible families at $5,250, with $250 going to the State Treasurer’s Office for administrative costs. It would change the frequency of payments from twice per year to four times. The measure would both change the definition of “participating schools,” and remove tutoring services from qualifying expenses. According to the State Treasurer’s Office, for 2024-25, more than $1 million of Hope Scholarship money was spent on out-of-state private schools and microschools.

It would eliminate other abuses such as parents using the money to buy new computers for their students every year.

“Our concern was, as we were watching the numbers in the previous three or four years that we’ve had the program, we were seeing increases in dollars involved but without anything I call bumpers or parameters or covenants or whatever you want to call them, out there,” said House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood.

Anecdotal evidence suggests there were plenty of uses for the Hope Scholarship money that any reasonable taxpayer would understand were, at best, abuse of the system.

“We were seeing a lot of expanded expense on a lot of different things out there that didn’t have anything necessarily to do (with) the education process as if you were in public school,” Criss said. “So, we wanted to narrow that down.”

Lawmakers have responsibilities to meet the needs of West Virginians, improve quality of life, expand and diversify our economy AND be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. That’s not an easy job. But though there is still refinement to take place, it sounds as though delegates are doing their best to walk that line on our behalf with this one.