Workers at senior centers across the state take calls from senior West Virginians requesting enrollment in the Meals on Wheels program, but many end up on waitlists and even more go without the help.  

State officials ensure about 25,000 seniors around the state receive home-delivered meals. 

But more than 1,000, including those who can’t prepare meals due to mobility problems and those who live in isolated areas without transportation, were on waitlists as of October, even though they met stringent eligibility requirements.

Even more seniors have asked for assistance but didn’t meet requirements to be on the waitlist. Some live too far away from providers’ service areas, but service areas are dependent on funding.

The Bureau of Senior Services has said it would take $2 million in additional funding to eliminate the waitlists, and previous Bureau officials requested that money. 

But new Bureau officials aren’t asking lawmakers to pass a budget with more funding reserved for the program.

In fact, about a month into the job, the new Commissioner of the Bureau of Senior Services Dianna Graves said she plans to audit the agency to make sure the funds it is expending are truly needed. But she said she’d like to serve more people.

Graves noted that in Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s State of the State address, he said his budget would include a 2% cut. He directed other state officials to figure out how to cut costs, as he says he wants to do more with less.

Graves gave a budget proposal to state revenue officials without that cut but also without the $2 million increase needed to eliminate waitlists. That proposal was incorporated into Morrisey’s budget proposal presented to lawmakers.

“I’m grateful. I’m very grateful that seniors did not see a budget decrease,” she said.

She also said some counties don’t have waitlists due to county funding and fundraising, and she hopes to see more of that.

When asked about the waitlists, since they wouldn’t be eliminated in Morrisey’s proposal, Morrisey sent a statement through a spokesperson, saying that the “hallmark of Governor Morrisey’s administration is fiscal responsibility.” 

West Virginia lawmakers are under no obligation to pass the governor’s budget proposal as written. 

But senior centers have said they need more funding for Meals on Wheels in previous years as well and lawmakers didn’t allocate it.

And during Graves’ budget presentation to lawmakers, several asked questions indicating they’d like to see the Bureau’s funding be reduced. 

The need for the Meals on Wheels program has increased for years, according to Jennifer Brown, president of the West Virginia Directors of Senior and Community Services.

But she said some seniors who could use the assistance likely don’t even know the program exists.

Brown, who is also the director of the Council on Aging, which provides services in a multi-county region in the southern part of the state, said centers do their best to help seniors who call, but she can’t promote the program in good faith.

“We don’t normally advertise our nutrition programs, as far as Meals on Wheels goes, because we know there’s always a waitlist,” she said.

Brown said she’s hopeful the Legislature will increase funding for senior services, at least next fiscal year, if the state’s more financially stable.  In the meantime, she said sometimes neighbors report concerns for seniors. 

Following those calls, senior center workers have responded to find people with empty refrigerators.

More than 100,000 West Virginians 60 and over, about 20 percent, have limited or uncertain access to enough food, according to a 2024 Meals on Wheels fact sheet based on 2021 data. 

In McDowell County, 70 people are on the waitlist.

Donald Reed, executive director of the McDowell County Commission on Aging, said isolation is a main contributor to people ending up on the program or waitlist. 

“They don’t have a large family or support network, because those family members have moved away,” he said.

Lucreatia Ford, a regular visitor to the senior center in McDowell County, noted that in the county, poverty is widespread and grocery stories are few and far between. She knows other seniors who struggle to get to them. 

“The majority of the people here are seniors,” she said.

Brown said one reason the meal delivery program is so important is it means someone is also checking on the welfare of seniors living alone.

“We’ve found people lying on the floor where they’ve fallen, and we’ve had to go in and help them or call 911.”

Senior services programs, like those at senior centers with opportunities for socialization and community connection and home-delivered meals, increase the chances seniors can live at home independently, instead of in nursing homes where they’re more likely to develop additional physical and mental health problems.

Ford socializes with other seniors during meals offered at the McDowell County center and while playing card games.

Now 79, she used to work at a nursing home.

“They were beautiful people,” she said.

But there was little she could do about how much they despised living there, becoming hopeless and trying to escape.

“They can’t get used to their new environment and they want to go home,” she said. “I hope I don’t ever have to go to a nursing home.”

More than 1,000 seniors are waiting for meals as Morrisey charges agencies to cut costs appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

West Virginia could lose out on millions of dollars earmarked to help state regulators clean up abandoned natural gas wells as a result of an executive order halting federal funding that President Donald Trump signed on the day of his inauguration.

Regulators previously estimated they’d receive more than $200 million in federal funding to help clean up the thousands of orphaned wells scattered throughout the state. However, West Virginia could lose out on nearly $90 million of those funds.

The cleanup of abandoned wells has been a growing liability for the state as operators have walked away from their nonproducing wells, leaving them unplugged. If the operator of an abandoned well is unknown or files for bankruptcy, it becomes “orphaned,” and the cleanup falls to state regulators. West Virginia regulators previously estimated it costs about $124,000 to clean up an orphaned well. 

Currently, regulators are responsible for cleaning up more than 6,000 orphaned wells in West Virginia. However, that number is considered to be greatly underestimated as there are tens of thousands more that aren’t documented. 

Unplugged, nonproducing wells can pose significant health and environmental threats, including contaminating groundwater and emitting methane and other air pollutants.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the unplugged, non-producing oil and gas wells emitted 275,000 metric tons of methane in 2020; equivalent to emissions of more than 1.7 million gasoline-powered vehicles driven for one year. 

The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $4.7 billion to states, tribes, and the Federal Bureau of Land Management to help clean up orphaned wells as an effort to address some of the damage left by the oil and gas industry. The money that was awarded was set to be distributed in installments, but Trump’s executive order halted those.

So far, West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection has received $56.1 million, according to DEP spokesperson Terry Fletcher. The agency expects to receive at least another $88.8 million, but that could change given the “fluidity of this situation,” added Fletcher. The state could get additional money if they spend the initial funding well.   

Hours after he was sworn into office, Trump signed an executive order that immediately halted federal spending appropriated by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Under the signed order, no funds from the legislation can be disbursed until White House officials determine whether the funding aligns with the executive order and administration’s policy.

The executive order also halted spending from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included billions of dollars for investments in clean energy and climate change mitigation. 

The federal funding has played a key role in helping West Virginia officials clean up orphaned wells faster than in previous years. The initial $25 million grant awarded to the state by the federal government in 2023 helped plug 202 orphaned wells — about 10 times the number of wells state regulators cleaned up with state funds in fiscal year 2023.  

The White House budget office issued a memo the week after Trump’s inauguration halting federal grants and loans. The action was temporarily blocked by federal judges. Though the memo was later rescinded by the White House, courts later determined that the Trump administration had kept funds frozen in violation of those federal orders. 

Many DEP programs rely on federal grants for funding, including one that cleans up abandoned coal mines and another that provides money for water and sewer programs.

While these programs can continue as normal during short funding pauses, Fletcher said, “Longer interruptions could be more problematic.” 

Trump’s halt on federal spending could cost West Virginia millions to clean up hazardous orphaned gas wells appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

From coal to education to deregulation to drugs, Gov. Patrick Morrisey covered a lot of ground as he laid out his legislative agenda to a packed House chamber during his State of the State address on Wednesday night. 

Here are five things you need to know about what Morrisey hopes to see this year: 

1. Use West Virginia’s coal to fuel a “Mountain State comeback”

Selling a vision where children will grow up to live and work in West Virginia, Morrisey described a future economy powered by supercomputers, data centers and cryptocurrency. 

And like the heyday of steel in the 50s, Morrisey said this new economy will rely on electricity, and that electricity will come from West Virginia coal and natural gas.

In many ways, a large component of all his plans — whether it was education, cutting business regulations, speeding up permit processing and cutting taxes — is to continue the tradition of the same extractive industries that have left streams polluted, men dying in their 50s and towns with soot in their attics. 

“West Virginia has power, and by God, we are going to use it,” Morrisey said, “We’ll use every last ounce to fuel our Mountain State Comeback.” 

He vowed not only to continue with coal, but with natural gas, hydropower and nuclear energy – an idea that has, at times, been derided by pro-coal lawmakers. 

To get there, he wants to cut taxes, regulations and make it easy for industries to set up shop. 

2. Work closely with President Donald Trump 

When Morrisey first mentioned President Donald J. Trump, the 123 Republican lawmakers in the room erupted in applause, rising from their seats in a standing ovation. 

He positioned West Virginia energy as a major power supplier for Trump’s charge to take on China. Echoing a line from the president’s inauguration last month, he said: 

“I know our state and our nation are on our way to a resurgence and a golden era unlike anything we’ve seen before.”

Throughout the night, Morrisey vowed to work closely with the Trump administration on a range of issues from energy to education to drug abuse. 

West Virginia depends on federal dollars for nearly 50% of the state’s overall budget. Morrisey didn’t mention how potential moves to close the US Department of Education or cuts in federal programs could affect basic services people rely on, like school lunches or seeing a doctor. 

At a hearing held earlier on Wednesday on federal block grants, government employees gave five minute speeches about the programs they administer with federal funds. 

Anti-smoking and vaping campaigns, assistance for heating and utilities, help for sickly children and subsidies for childcare and many other programs are all funded by federal dollars. 

But like Morrisey, not one Republican in the room stopped to ask how any freezes to grant funding could affect those services. Only one Democratic delegate piped up to ask the question. 

3. Cut taxes while closing a $400 million state budget gap

Like Gov. Jim Justice before him, Morrisey said he’s inherited an economic mess. 

He said the state’s got a $400 million budget hole coming up that could get bigger over time. His answer is to cut. 

He touted audits and reviews of spending decisions across state government. He said the state would not fund new programs without new revenue. And he said he would propose consolidating departments in state government and eliminating numerous boards and commissions. 

“We are going to uncover all of the waste and abuse that hides in the dark corners of state government, and we will root it out,” Morrisey said. “If you like what President Trump is doing in DC, you’re going to love what we’re doing right here in West Virginia.”

Now where those cuts will be made will be seen in the budget. Morrisey didn’t mention it, except to say he wanted a “permanent fix” for the state government health insurance. 

While lawmakers have talked about a permanent fix for almost a decade, what they’ve done from time to time is just throw money from the surplus at the insurance program when it came up short. 

Even with all those money problems, he still called for more tax cuts. 

“I’m renewing my call to ensure we have the lowest income tax of all the states that we touch.”

4. Target trans rights and the “woke virus”

And while Morrisey wants to loosen up mandatory vaccination laws for actual viruses, he vowed to continue to eradicate West Virginia of the “woke virus.” 

“We stand for God, for life, for the second amendment, for religious liberty, our Constitution and our freedoms,” Morrisey said. “And we will always fight for those values.”

Morrisey took a victory lap on the closure of DEI offices on the biggest universities in the state, following his executive order banning it from state government. 

“That’s a win for West Virginia, and we’re not done yet,” he said.

He bragged about attending a signing for Trump’s ban on transgender children in sports. Morrisey asked the Legislature to pass a bill that would ban transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms for the gender they identify with. 

5. Get rid of cell phones in schools and government permission slips for hospitals 

But in a speech replete with platitudes, catch phrases, personal stories and broad visions of policy, Morrisey did not give a laundry list of bills for lawmakers to pass. 

He asked for a ban on cellphones in classrooms – garnering one of the few bipartisan applauses of the night. He said he’ll be introducing legislation to start a “one-stop shop” to streamline permitting for industry. 

But the biggest legislative request was to repeal “certificate of need.” The governor characterized it as a “government permission slip” to allow new hospitals and healthcare facilities to open. 

The niche piece of policy is divisive in policy circles – some say it kills competition that could lower healthcare costs. Others say it ensures healthcare systems can keep profitable services and use those to subsidize needed care that operates at a loss. 

He said will be introducing a bill to eliminate it, calling it “a big step forward to improve care for our most vulnerable citizens.”

A tech future powered by coal: Five takeaways from Gov. Morrisey’s State of the State address appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

A case against major drug distributors over the flood of painkiller pills that devastated West Virginia is back in court. This time, the case is before the state Supreme Court, which is considering whether the overdose crisis qualifies under West Virginia law as a “public nuisance.” 

Public nuisance is a legal term for something that endangers public health and safety. A person or company responsible can be sued and forced to remedy a public nuisance.

Typically in West Virginia, courts have applied public nuisance law to cases putting citizens at risk of exposure to environmental pollution, such as coal truck ash and arsenic in a river. 

In drug distributors’ arguments, they say that it is not applicable to shipments of a lawful product.

How did we get here?

Counties and cities across West Virginia filed lawsuits against drug distributors, manufacturers and pharmacies, saying they fueled the opioid epidemic resulting in thousands of lost lives, grieving families and overwhelmed law enforcement and treatment providers.

But Cabell County and Huntington have been fighting one case on their own.

Opioid litigation cases across the county were consolidated in a court overseeing multi-district cases in the Northern District of Ohio.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster selected the lawsuit filed by Cabell County and Huntington to serve as a “bellwether” case, meaning it could indicate how similar cases might fare. He sent the case back to federal court in West Virginia. 

Those municipalities alleged drug distributors AmeriSource Bergen Drug Corp., Cardinal Health, Inc. and McKesson Corp. caused a public nuisance by knowingly shipping an excessive amount of pills to the area, resulting in more than 700 deaths from opioid overdoses in Cabell County between 2015 and 2020.

They said to abate the crisis — abatement means remedying a public nuisance — companies should pay them $2.5 billion dollars, which a Johns Hopkins researcher estimated it would take to support their recovery. 

Cabell County and Huntington lost their case when in 2022, U.S. District Judge David Faber ruled in favor of the companies, agreeing with their argument that public nuisances don’t include lawful product distribution.

Soon after, more than 100 cities and counties settled with the same companies for $400 million, to be dispersed throughout the state.

This meant while they received money, companies didn’t have to admit liability.

Cabell County and Huntington appealed, and they presented their case to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., last year.

A three-judge panel there decided that the West Virginia Supreme Court should determine if state law considered drug distribution as something that would be found to be a public nuisance.

Why is the Supreme Court’s decision important?

Huntington and Cabell County say prescription drug distributions are different from other product distributions as federal law requires companies to monitor and report large prescription requests, because these drugs have potential for misuse.

Companies say applying the law would result in a flood of new nuisance cases. In oral arguments last week, an attorney for the companies, Steve Ruby, argued it could result in cases over everything from foods associated with obesity to gun deaths.

Ruby said companies and Faber agreed that distributors were only responding to prescription orders written by licensed doctors and sent to pharmacies. 

David Frederick, a lawyer for the communities, said Faber was “led into error by the distributors who wanted to shunt the blame to everybody else.”

If the city and county prevail, the case would be sent back to the 4th Circuit. A ruling there in favor of defendants would end the case. Judges there could also rule in favor of the communities, which could mean defendants could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, or they could send the case back to Faber.

Even if Huntington and Cabell County lose, they would still be eligible for funds from the West Virginia First Foundation. That’s because that organization is distributing $1 billion from settlements with multiple entities, including pharmacies and manufacturers, and Cabell County and Huntington are only excluded from the $400 million other municipalities received in settlements with distributors.

Companies also say the communities can’t prove they caused the opioid crisis, so they shouldn’t have to pay to remedy its impacts.

A case against drug distributors over the flood of pills that ravaged West Virginia is back in court. Here’s what to know. appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Support for this story came from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 Data Fellowship and The Carter Center.

By the time Sadie Kendall turned 18 and aged out of West Virginia’s foster care system, she had lived in more than two dozen places. There was her mother’s house in Mineral County, where she lived until the state took her away after discovering her mom’s substance abuse. There were foster homes, and a revolving door of parents who ultimately couldn’t or didn’t want to keep her. There was shelter after shelter, short-term spots where Sadie waited for something better. 

And there were the treatment centers, a series of in-patient hospitals the state started sending her to when she was only eight. The first one — Southwood in Pittsburgh — is fuzzy in her memory. She knows there were other kids, some of whom were scary to her. She remembers being restrained, and nurses giving her shots in the butt. And she can still taste the psychiatric medications. She was too young to swallow pills, so nurses fed them to her crushed up in peanut butter. They made her sleep all day. 

“I was sedated most of the time, pretty much,” Sadie, now 27, recalled.

It didn’t help. There were outbursts, tantrums and repeated attempts to run away. Sadie missed her mom and was confused about why they weren’t all together. Time and time again, West Virginia sent her to short-term homes where she struggled to get adequate mental health care and form permanent relationships. 

“I think I just had a lot of trauma in my life, and I just needed somebody to care for me how you’re supposed to care for a child,” she said. 

By the time Sadie turned 18 and left the state’s care in 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice had concluded West Virginia was over-relying on these types of group facilities and treatment centers. This “systemic failure,” officials wrote in their findings, violated kids’ rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and “places children with mental health conditions who currently live in the community at risk of unnecessary institutionalization.” In 2019, West Virginia and the DOJ agreed to a plan to fix the issues. But several months later, there hadn’t been enough action for the state to avoid a lawsuit over the issue. 

And even now, more than five years later, West Virginia is still failing to meet the mental health needs of kids like Sadie, a Mountain State Spotlight investigation has found.

Undoubtedly, there are some foster kids who need in-patient mental health care and benefit from short-term intensive treatment. But in a system where by definition almost every child in it has either experienced trauma or neglect, West Virginia officials have fallen short of helping kids get access to therapy while they live with families in communities. 

Despite early gains reducing the overall number of kids in group homes and institutions, kids with any kind of physical or mental disability were still institutionalized at a rate more than three times the national average as recently as 2022, according to an analysis of the data West Virginia submits to the federal government. The state’s Department of Human Services still doesn’t have an adequate number of social workers to investigate child abuse cases and help find homes for foster kids; this in turn means untenable case loads that leave kids in care and foster families without adequate mental health care and necessary supports. 

And though the state has trumpeted increased enrollment in a new program to help kids access mental health care in their communities, in practice it has fallen short of giving biological, adoptive and foster parents and kids the support they need to keep kids safe and healthy at home.

Behind the data

Foster care has gotten a lot of attention, but we had more questions. Here’s how we got answers.

By mining the data West Virginia submits to the federal government, we were able to fill in some of the blanks about the state’s foster care system.

by Erica Peterson
January 28th, 2025January 27th, 2025

Over the last two months, Mountain State Spotlight has shared findings of our reporting with state human services officials. A spokesperson initially responded, referring us to previous agency press releases. We then sent the agency a long list of our questions, but received no response.

For kids like Sadie, hard to place because of behavioral issues, it may seem like there are few good options. But sending vulnerable children to residential facilities, including group homes, shelters and in-patient treatment centers, can end up doing more harm than good, according to warnings from years of research.

“Sending children to live together among other children who have behavior problems, we have good evidence, makes them worse,” said Mary Dozier, the Amy E. du Pont Chair in Child Development at the University of Delaware.

That’s what happened to Sadie, who spent her early adulthood struggling to piece together a life after her years in state custody. 

“It never got better,” Sadie said. “It was always just the same shit over and over again.” 

Kids still being institutionalized 

The system’s problems are deep, entrenched, and intertwined. But there are two points that can’t be ignored: mental health care is hard to access for many West Virginians, and there is a dire need for quality care among foster kids.

Most kids enter the foster care system because they are either abused or neglected, both of which can cause lasting mental health problems. Nearly half of the West Virginia kids who spent time in foster care from 2012-2022, were there at least in part because of a parent’s substance use. One-third of all foster kids were neglected, nearly one-fifth were exhibiting some sort of behavioral problem and one in six were physically or sexually abused.

And of course, all of them had experienced the trauma of being taken away from their families. While the goal of the state’s foster care system is to reunify kids with their biological parents, that’s not always possible. In those cases, West Virginia is their guardian on paper, tasked with making sure their needs are met and that they’re able to eventually leave the system as productive adults.

But all this is happening in a state where access to mental health care is a struggle. Only six of West Virginia’s 55 counties exceed the very low target adopted by the World Health Organization of one psychiatrist per 10,000 people. Thirty-five counties have no psychiatrist or addiction medicine specialist. None of the state’s public school districts met the recommended ratio of one psychologist for every 500 kids during the 2023-24 school year.

The result has been the state sending many kids with mental health needs to in-patient hospitals and residential facilities. In 2014, the rate of kids living in these kinds of residential treatment facilities was so high, it kicked off the DOJ investigation that concluded West Virginia had built its entire child welfare mental health system around these segregated facilities. 

It’s a system that Orion Flynn knows well. He was only 10 when he spent his first long-term stint in a psychiatric hospital. At that point, he had been through a lot in his short life — taken away from his parents as his mother struggled with substance use and his father repeatedly robbed the bank down the street. 

This led to behavioral issues. Orion says he “was a child who didn’t know what was going on, throwing a tantrum, yelling, slamming a door, that sort of thing,” he recalled. “And it would sometimes get me sent to actual in-patient psychiatric hospitals.” 

That first hospitalization at Charleston’s Highland Hospital lasted a year. Orion is 19 now, and still remembers the types of restraints the hospital used on him. 

There was the four-point restraint, a system of wrist and ankle cuffs that held the ten-year-old child to the bed for up to four hours. Then, there was the papoose board, immobilizing Orion on the floor when he acted out.

A spokesperson for Highland Hospital noted that the facility has changed ownership since Orion was hospitalized there, but that it uses these kinds of interventions for patients’ safety and in accordance with “the latest least restrictive psychiatric intervention guidelines” and to “prioritize de-escalation.”

But for Orion, it was an experience that didn’t seem to help any of the mental health issues he was experiencing. “When I left, I think I was on 12, maybe 13 different medications, and I received mediocre therapy at best,” he said.

West Virginia officials have spent the last decade arguing that they’re making progress on fixing the issue. In 2015, in the wake of the DOJ investigation, then-Cabinet Secretary Karen Bowling wrote in a press release that she had already been working for two years to “turn these statistics around.”

But four years later, in 2019, disturbed by the ongoing high rates of kids in institutions, a group of foster kids sued the state, seeking more independent oversight of the system. 

“Basically what's happening is the system is killing a lot of children who remain alive but who have just been so devastated by the circumstances that they encounter that they’re effectively destroyed,” said Marcia Lowry. She is a lawyer and the executive director of A Better Childhood, a nonprofit advocacy group that is representing the foster children in the lawsuit against West Virginia. Her group has successfully sued other states over similar issues, forcing reforms to their foster care systems.

“They are just destroyed, and they continue to walk around, but when they get to be 18, there's no way that they can effectively contribute to society. Some of them survive, lots of them don't, but they're all damaged,” she said.

In response to the suit, agency officials once again argued they were in the process of making major improvements, and shrugged it off as the work of outside lawyers. 

“The issues they raise are generally those the Department has already publicly reported to the Legislature and is working to resolve with the input of the Department of Justice, our local stakeholders, the West Virginia Judicial Branch, and the West Virginia Legislature,” former Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch said in a press release. “For an out-of-state group to sue the State of West Virginia to take over our child welfare system is offensive to the many federal, state, and community partners who have worked tirelessly to transform and improve our system.”

It’s true that since the DOJ first issued its findings, West Virginia has made some progress. 

In the years immediately following, West Virginia cut the overall percentage of kids going to group homes and institutions by half. There’s also been an effort to keep more kids closer to home, rather than sending them to out-of-state group homes and institutions, which a 2021 Mountain State Spotlight investigation found left some kids in unsafe situations. 

But while the state improved, the majority of those gains weren’t for the kids who needed it most.

Progress getting kids with disabilities out of group homes and institutions was much, much slower, according to a first-of-its-kind Mountain State Spotlight analysis of the data states submit to the federal government. In September 2022, West Virginia was still putting half of the kids with any sort of disability — physical or mental — in these types of places. That was three times the national average for similar kids with disabilities for that year.

The West Virginia Department of Human Services wouldn’t provide any more recent data about whether that has changed. But it does post monthly reports about where foster kids are living on a dedicated website. That separate state data doesn’t indicate disability status, but it does show that since the time period when the federal data ended, the state has sent even more foster kids — and a larger percentage of kids in care — to residential treatment facilities. 

Quality mental health treatment for a short period of time can help kids with some conditions. But the class action lawsuit alleges kids are being left to “languish” in these kinds of settings, where they experience additional trauma. And even in the best case scenarios, workers in these group centers, no matter how caring, are still coming and going. These situations rob kids of the key ability to form attachments, which can have life-long implications.

“If there's no primary persons who are pretty much reliably there, they're not able to form that kind of attachment, which will impact them throughout their lives,” said Carole Shauffer, the senior director of strategic initiatives at the Youth Law Center.

State’s solutions to these problems are falling short

As West Virginia grapples with trying to find appropriate homes for the increasing number of foster kids in its care, it’s under a mandate from an agreement with the federal government to offer more alternatives to in-patient psychiatric care. 

The goal is to give kids more options for mental health care in their communities, whether that’s living with their biological parents, with adoptive parents or in a foster family. 

It’s hard to say how many foster kids could benefit, because the data shows West Virginia hasn’t determined whether a large percentage of foster kids have a disability or not. 

Starting in 2016, there was a sharp jump among West Virginia foster kids who “had not yet” been diagnosed with any kind of mental or physical disability. In 2015, only 6% of kids had this undiagnosed status. The next year, as the DOJ continued to closely examine how West Virginia treated kids with diagnosed disabilities, 26% of kids were undiagnosed. Some remained that way for years, and West Virginia’s foster care agency didn’t respond to questions about why that might be.

But people familiar with the system weren’t surprised. 

“There’s a lot of things they’re supposed to do that don’t get done,” said Layne Diehl, a Martinsburg attorney who is frequently appointed to represent foster kids’ interests in court. She said often she’s had issues even tracking down kids’ basic medical records for their foster parents. 

“The way that that abuse and neglect system works, a lot of times I feel like the focus gets placed on putting resources around the parents and the kids oftentimes get left out,” she said. “You have parents who have to complete an improvement period and so they need to get a psychological evaluation, but the child’s not necessarily getting the services they need.”

And while kids entering foster care are required to be scheduled for an initial medical exam within the first several days, there’s no similar requirement for a mental health screening.

“There were times they needed a psychological that they didn't get it until they were court-ordered,” said former Child Protective Service worker Kathie Giboney, who worked for four years in the district that covers Pleasants, Doddridge and Ritchie counties.

Over the past 12 years, the state has rolled out program after program designed to help kids access mental health care in their communities. The list of programs has been a moving target as they change names and services over time; Safe at Home morphed into West Virginia Wraparound, for instance, and the state’s services now include a veritable alphabet soup of acronymic programs: ACT, CCBHCs, FSCs, CSED. 

The idea is simple: if you provide whatever mental health services a West Virginian might need in their own community, you may be able to avoid having to send them somewhere else for residential psychiatric treatment.  

For the last several years, the state has offered a special program for kids on Medicaid with serious mental health needs. It’s not just for foster kids or adoptive kids, but there is a large overlap between the two groups. 

Stacy Jacques’ son was one of the first kids to get into this program, back in 2020. Jacques adopted him from the foster care system and he had been struggling with significant mental health issues — so significant that they had posed a safety threat to Jacques and her other children and necessitated him living with another family for a while.

Jacques said this Medicaid program is the only solution the state has offered her son. “And it’s just not enough,” she said. 

West Virginia has touted the program’s increased enrollment as a sign of its success. In a December press release, the Department of Human Services reported that nearly 4,000 children have enrolled in the program, and provider numbers have doubled since 2020 to meet the growing demand. 

But while the program has grown exponentially — between 2020 and 2023, the number of kids approved on the first try grew six-fold — the providers haven’t kept up. There are just 26 providers now, up from 22 in 2021.

The state’s own reports have highlighted the program’s shortcomings.

Since 2022, the expert hired by West Virginia to assess whether it’s complying with the state’s agreement with the DOJ has warned that the number of hours of therapy each kid is getting through the program is too low. Even when there were fewer kids enrolled in the program, the report found they were getting less than nine hours a month of services. In a recent report — from March 2024, which analyzed 2023 data — kids were only getting 10 hours a month, and half of that was staff time for administrative tasks. 

When Jacques signed her son up, she says the program promised 2-4 hours of in-home services a day. But that didn’t last for long.

“Now we’re lucky to get half an hour every week.”

She said they’ve had some amazing providers through the program, but there have been major gaps and inconsistencies. She’s been waiting four years to get access to family therapy through the program, but has been told there are no therapists available in Cabell, Kanawha or Putnam counties. Once, her son didn’t have a therapist for a year because of a lack of providers. Once, during a crisis on a Friday night, she tried to access the emergency support that’s supposed to be part of the program. The coordinator who answered the phone said she was at a party and would call back on Monday.  

“With other families that I’ve known, most have given up,” Jacques said of the program. 

Now, after five years enrolled, she said assessments of her son still indicate he has severe needs, despite all that she’s done to keep him at home and improve his life.

“But the hand he was dealt before he even came to me has made it impossible to achieve those goals,” she said. “At some point it breaks your heart when the system screws a child so badly you know they’re never going to be fixed.”

Around the state, others have reported problems too. Giboney said while she saw kids get into the programs, they ended up being plagued by the same staffing shortages that are an issue among state CPS workers. “They had a worker that would come once in a while but then the worker had to either drop them, or they just didn’t have a worker because the worker quit,” she said. 

And in Martinsburg, Diehl said though the concepts behind many of the state’s programs are excellent, “the bureaucracy around it is absolutely maddening.”

She’s worked to get kids approved for the Medicaid program, but then their caseworker left the agency. Then, she has encountered the same sort of turnover among the mental health providers and the facilities. After months of calls trying to find someone else with a record of the approval, she’d reach someone only to learn the services were withdrawn because they weren’t used. 

“Right about the time you feel like you’ve got everybody on the same page, there’s a ball that’s dropped over in the corner somewhere. And everybody’s scrambling trying to find that,” she said. “It can be very, very frustrating.”

The cycle

As West Virginia enters its second decade of trying to fix the problems in its foster care system, thousands of children have entered adulthood having spent time in group homes and institutions. In the cases of both Orion Flynn and Sadie Kendall, they were released from the state’s custody with lasting trauma, ill-prepared to thrive on their own. 

Carole Shauffer of the Youth Law Center says that moving kids from one abusive or neglectful home to another goes against the goals of the system. “I think once the state intervenes, it has an obligation to intervene in such a way as to provide you with high quality care that will enable you to thrive and become a healthy adult,” she said.

It can be a vicious cycle, where it’s easy for former foster kids to see their own children taken away and put into the same system that defined their childhoods.

That’s what happened to Sadie. After she aged out of the system, she struggled to get back on track. She was sometimes homeless and worked low-wage jobs at Walmart and a local hotel. She moved in with her boyfriend to a house that she said was so bad, it should have been condemned. And she had two children.

“I didn’t have anything. I took care of my kids, I took care of them very well. But it wasn’t enough for the state,” she said.

After Sadie was arrested on a series of misdemeanor charges including disorderly conduct, obstructing, public intoxication, refusal to fingerprint and battery on an officer, the state intervened.

“They took them and that was it. That was it.”

To regain custody of her children, Sadie was told she could enroll in a series of parenting classes and report for regular drug tests. But she didn’t have reliable transportation to get there, and was trying to keep a job. The state had created a set of hurdles she just couldn’t clear.

“I kind of gave up,” she said sadly. 

At that point, it’s easy to see how for Sadie, the cycle might have continued. She signed away her parental rights, and her children were eventually adopted by a foster family. For many, that would be the end of the story. It wasn’t for Sadie.

She made more mistakes, trusting the wrong people and struggling with drug addiction. 

“At this point, what do I have left to lose?” she said.  

Then, she had another child. And she was determined not to repeat the mistakes she made with her older children.

Today, her daughter Zariyah is four years old. And despite Sadie’s best intentions, she’s continued to struggle to retain custody. Last year, she made a huge error in judgment when she gave an acquaintance a ride home. She got pulled over, and he had drugs on him. The state took Zariyah away. For a minute, it seemed the cycle would repeat itself again. 

But this time, Sadie knew what to do. She fought.

“They think it’s how it used to be and it’s not. I’m going to show them that I’m not just a statistic,’” she said. She hired a lawyer, she drove herself to the drug tests, she attended the classes. And several months later, she got Zariyah back. 

Now Sadie is trying again to be the mother she always wanted to be. She works part-time as a bartender; when she’s not at work, she describes her life as “Mommy mode 24/7.” She loves to cook and started culinary school this month in hopes of eventually doing it professionally. 

Though Sadie’s life has stabilized, she continues to bear the scars of her time in foster care. She struggles with deciding who to trust. She won’t touch prescription medication, even if she needs it. And she feels like West Virginia’s system repeatedly set her up for failure. 

“They were convinced I wasn’t going to make it,” she said. “I’m going to prove them wrong.”

Mountain State Spotlight is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on the collaborative include The Carter Center and newsrooms in select states across the country.

The data used in these stories, [Dataset 176, 187, 192, 200, 215, 225, 235, 239, 255 and 274, Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), Foster Care File 2012-2021], were obtained from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect and have been used in accordance with its Terms of Use Agreement license. The Administration on Children, Youth and Families, the Children’s Bureau, the original dataset collection personnel or funding source, NDACAN, Duke University, Cornell University, and their agents or employees bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

‘They’re all damaged.’ Despite progress, West Virginia is still failing to get foster kids the mental health help they need  appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia's civic newsroom.

When Jules Edwards was a teenager, they say being able to access an abortion was life-saving health care. 

“I was somebody who had an abortion as a teenager and didn’t tell my family and got support through a family friend,” Edwards said recently. “And that saved my life and gave me my future.”

Now, as executive director of Abortion Care Tennessee (ACT) and Mountain Access Brigade (MAB), independent organizations funding Appalachians who need to seek abortion care out of state, Edwards spends every day fighting to provide that same life-saving care for others. 

It’s increasingly difficult. Edwards says they’ve been threatened and doxxed doing this work. Their home state of Tennessee enacted a trigger ban when the U.S. Supreme Court first overturned Roe v. Wade; abortion remains banned across the state, as well as in the bordering states of Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. Tennessee’s abortion laws are so strict that the state is currently entangled in two court cases over them. 

With the government enacting ever-tightening bans across Southern Appalachia, nationwide organizations like Planned Parenthood are no longer able to provide life-saving abortion care in Tennessee, and have faced intense operational threats. It’s left to grassroots organizations in Appalachia — usually founded, funded and run entirely by and for their communities — to continue fighting to provide care and helping each other when no one else will or can, despite funding challenges, tightening restrictions and risks of persecution. 

Edwards’s organizations, ACT and MAB, are among the grassroots funds filling a reproductive health gap by operating statewide to service Tennesseans going out of state for abortion care. Among community work and educational measures, ACT funds procedural costs for Tennesseans traveling for abortion access, and MAB is an abortion fund and doula collective.

Now, New York and Maryland are the only Appalachian states who have permanently legally protected abortion, without six- or twelve-week bans. (At six weeks, many individuals do not even yet know they are pregnant). 

The ulterior motive of the state’s injunctions against abortion, Edwards said, is taking away the ability of young people to have power and autonomy, as well as to “make it impossible for the Planned Parenthoods, the abortion funds, or support groups to do their jobs.” Both abortion providers in Appalachia — and individuals who need abortions in the region — are left grappling with a landscape that’s nearly impossible to navigate. 

Organizers work through an ‘access crisis’ 

Tennessee was sued over its abortion law, a ban with virtually non-existent exemptions, in a case led by the Center for Reproductive Rights and three Tennessee women, Katy Dulong, Allie Phillips and Nicole Blackmon,who faced near-deadly barriers in accessing abortions for life-threatening pregnancies and/or fetuses that were virtually non-viable. In a temporary injunction in late October 2024, judges ruled that doctors in Tennessee who provide abortions to patients facing certain medical conditions can do so without facing disciplinary action. As of December 2024, the case is still active. 

Meanwhile, back in September 2024, a judge temporarily blocked enforcement of Tennessee’s ban criminalizing any non-parent from helping a minor to obtain an abortion, according to reporting from Tennessee Lookout. For organizations like ACT and MAB, bans not only impact them providing aid, including to minors, but also complicate elements of their work.

Before Roe’s overturn, “Tennessee was actually a safe haven for abortion in the South,” Edwards said, noting Tennessee’s central location to other Southern states and previously higher number of abortion clinics. As of 2012,  more than one in four abortions in Tennessee were being obtained by someone traveling from out of state, an outcome of the 2000 Tennessee Supreme Court decision that struck down abortion restrictions.

“We received quite an influx of out-of-state patients,” Edwards said. “So when Tennessee lost abortion access, it sent the entire South into an access crisis.” Doing this work in the South, Edwards said, “feels like a microcosm of the fascism that we’re facing on a national level.”

‘The need is significant’

That “access crisis,” driven by Tennnesee’s trigger ban, was compounded by violent blowback against providers. For MAB and ACT, the uptick in work kicked off before Roe’s overturn when, on New Years Eve of 2021, Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood clinic was destroyed. Mark Reno, a Jan. 6 insurrectionist and member of a Catholic Orthodox militant group, allegedly arsoned the $2 million yet-to-be-opened facility, but died in jail before he could be convicted. The year before, he had allegedly fired shots at the same clinic. 

The day of the arson, Noé Monárrez, an East Tennessee Community Health Educator who has worked at the Knoxville Planned Parenthood since June of 2021, recalled opening their phone and scrolling through Twitter. Monárrez immediately saw that a Planned Parenthood was on fire – and realized where it was. 

“I had an inkling that somebody had burned it down, because it is Knoxville, it is East Tennessee, that’s just one of those things you have to expect potentially,” Monárrez said. 

“The day it burned, I remember the first thing I thought was, ‘Did that person have my address? Did they find me online?’ said Tory Mills, who was Director of Community Engagement at Planned Parenthood for 11 years. Mills recalled fear that she — along with her friends and colleagues — were in danger. 

“That’s what that building being burned down was [for], was to scare people, to scare them away from getting care [and] from doing this work,” said Mills, now a member of Knoxville Abortion Justice Alliance (KAJA), a community organization advocating for stigmatization and education around reproductive care.

For a year after the arson, Knoxville, the third largest city in the state, was left without a Planned Parenthood. After that, Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood had a brief tenure of offering limited services out of a bus until the provider went on maternity leave. Even when the mobile unit was offering services, many community members didn’t know; Planned Parenthood was reluctant to advertise given the violence and threats they’d previously faced, and struggled with zoning issues, according to Monárrez. 

Because it was still a functional clinic, the bus had to be in a location zoned for health care. It couldn’t remain on the site of the previous Planned Parenthood due to construction starting, and had to be moved overnight due to safety concerns. 

“At the time, we also didn’t publish [the location of the bus] anywhere publicly except social media and maybe [the Planned Parenthood] website,” Monárrez said. “We tried to keep the announcement of it very quiet just because of safety and security reasons.” 

In anticipation of Roe’s overturn, the mobile health unit’s offerings were kept fairly simple. They focused primarily on basic birth control services, pregnancy testing and limited UTI treatment, with the hope of being able to offer ultrasounds, gender-affirming care and more extensive STI/UTI testing and treatment in time. 

“[For many of the patients,] the only times they were seeing any kind of medical care was when they were coming into Planned Parenthood,” Monárrez said.

The Dobbs decision left the entire state without abortion care. Now, the Knoxville Planned Parenthood facility has been rebuilt with tightened security measures and reopened in November 2024. But it still legally can’t offer abortion care within the state, though it will help navigate patients to the closest clinic that offers the services they need. The Knoxville Planned Parenthood also has an internal patient navigation assistance fund, which can be applied to travel costs such as flights and hotels as well as procedure costs, and partners with abortion assistance mutual aid funds such as MAB, according to Monárrez.  

In Appalachia, the stigma against abortion, as well as systemic barriers like lack of access to transportation and failure to expand Medicaid, directly impact community members. There are gaps in the narrative around what attacks on Planned Parenthood mean and how they impact people, particularly how they potentially leave “the everyday person who needs an abortion feeling terrified for their life,” according to Edwards. Whereas Planned Parenthood is a national organization, most local abortion organizations — the ones stepping in to fill health care gaps and save lives — are funded by the community and often lack capital. 

Multiple organizers with MAB and KAJA previously worked for Planned Parenthood, and noted the importance of the organizing work they learned there; Planned Parenthood is the first stepping stone for many people, some said. But Planned Parenthood doesn’t share the same funding burden with the funds, some organizers said.

One MAB member mentioned that the fund’s anonymous support line sometimes has to be closed for a week or so out of a month due to lack of funding. In late September, the fund posted a message to Instagram: the support line was closed because they’d spent double their weekly budget the week prior, supporting appointments.

The need is significant. A study from The Guttmacher Institute detailed that more than 10,000 Tennesseans crossed state lines to access an abortion in the last year. While Tennessee is already classified as a “maternity care desert,” experts have stated that maternal and infant mortality rates could rise in states with abortion restrictions, according to reporting from The Tennessee Lookout. Because Tennessee is out of Title X compliance due to a policy of refusing to allow clinics to share information on elective abortions, the state is also ineligible for vital federal Title X funding. 

Mills also noted that many abortion funds and national organizations deem the climate in Appalachia too difficult to navigate and too hostile, and simply give up on providing care here.  “This country as a whole has painted Appalachia as a throwaway place,” said Mills. 

The organizers in Tennessee see this as another social justice battle that Appalachia is being thrown to the frontline of.  “And now we’re experiencing that around abortion,” Edwards said, noting that many of the most brilliant social justice activists come from the South, particularly Appalachia.

The lack of resources, rights, wealth and more that Appalachians often face is discussed and widely known – but rarely are Appalachians celebrated for the “grittiness, resourcefulness and tenacity” they show in the face of oppression and injustice, Edwards said, pointing out that Appalachians rarely fail to rise up and provide for each other. 

People in Tennessee and East Tennessee will always need abortion, Mills said, and regardless of what entities or organizations hold the work, there will always be workers ensuring people get the care they need.

“Even as tired as I am 20 years into this fight, I will never leave this region,” Mills said. “I will never leave Appalachia, and I will never let the bastards win.”

Contact Mountain Access Brigade’s Support Line at 855888MAB8.

Kacie Faith Kress is an investigative journalist, with an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School, specializing in Social Justice & Solutions Journalism.  Born and raised in East Tennessee, she now lives in Chicago. 

The post Appalachian Tennessee Abortion Providers Are Still Fighting to Provide Care appeared first on 100 Days in Appalachia.

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened tariffs on imports from foreign countries to pressure them to curb illegal immigration and the flow of illicit drugs. 

When he takes office in January, he’s said he plans to sign executive orders implementing a 25% tax on all imports from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% tax on Chinese imports.

In his first term, Trump also used the threat of tariffs to negotiate with countries including Mexico. And started an ongoing trade war with China.

West Virginians across the state have said they are struggling with the rising cost of living. Donald Trump won West Virginia with 70% of the vote. Economists say his proposed tariffs would make prices worse.

Experts said stronger tariffs could raise the prices of groceries and technology. The state’s largest trade partners would be hit and could retaliate, furthering the effects on West Virginia’s economy.

Here’s what to know about how Trump’s proposed tariffs could affect West Virginians. 

What is a tariff? 

A tariff is simply a tax imposed on the import of a foreign-manufactured good that domestic companies pay. However, companies usually offset the costs by raising prices, which consumers then pay.

For example, most bananas at American grocery stores are imported from Central and South American countries because they grow best in tropical climates. 

So, when there’s a tariff on bananas, the company bringing them into the country has to pay the extra tax when they arrive. The extra tax gets passed on and shows up on grocery bills. 

Tariffs are not a new economic tool and historically they’ve been used to generate revenue when countries were developing. But now, those taxes are primarily used as leverage for trade agreements or to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. 

Recently, the U.S. has imposed several tariffs on countries, including China, with the Biden Administration substantially increasing taxes on electric vehicles, steel, aluminum and lithium-ion batteries. 

Christina Fattore, a professor of political science at West Virginia University who specializes in international trade relations, said tariffs can start trade wars between countries when retaliation occurs or an “eye for an eye” scenario where consumers lose out in both countries. 

“Tariffs are supposed to strengthen domestic industry, but if that domestic industry doesn’t exist, you’re stuck paying it,” she said. 

Where does West Virginia import from and export to? 

In 2023, West Virginia exported $5.7 billion of goods to other countries. Canada, China, Japan, the Netherlands and Belgium are the largest recipients. The state’s top exports were coal and petroleum gas, vehicle parts, synthetic rubber and chemicals. 

“Canada consistently ranks as the state’s top trade partner, accounting for nearly 40% of West Virginia’s exports, particularly in coal, chemicals, and machinery,” said Andy Malinoski, spokesperson for the state Department of Economic Development.

That same year, the state imported $4.8 billion of products from Canada, Japan, Germany, China, and Mexico. Imports included steel and aluminum for vehicles and aircraft, electronics and industrial chemicals. 

Tariffs by the U.S. would increase the price of imported goods. If other countries retaliate with their own tariffs on U.S.-made items, industries that export to foreign markets would be impacted.

How will proposed tariffs on imports impact prices in West Virginia? Who pays tariffs?

Trump said in a recent interview that he couldn’t guarantee that his proposed tariffs would not impact consumer prices, and many economists agree that tariffs drive up prices. 

“I am really concerned about consumer prices — prices are going to go through the roof,” Fattore said. “Countries will retaliate with tariff taxes on their own.”

Grocery store items like fruits and vegetables would increase in price because the U.S. relies on other countries for produce. In 2022, Mexico alone supplied 51% of fresh fruits and 69% of vegetables that Americans buy. 

Gasoline prices could also increase from Canadian tariffs as the U.S. imports crude oil from the country. Some analysts have predicted gas prices could go up by 30 cents or more. 

Meanwhile, the price of new and used cars will likely increase as Canada and Mexico remain top suppliers of auto parts and imports to the U.S. American companies like Ford, Tesla and General Motors have factories in Mexico and about 76% of vehicles manufactured in the country are exported to the U.S.

Fattore said when global steel and aluminum tariffs were put in place in 2018, the prices of aluminum cans became more expensive, impacting canned goods, soda and beer. She said technology imports also suffered as Chinese tariffs hurt American businesses during the 2018-2019 trade war.

“If you’re thinking about buying a new car, getting a new phone or buying a computer, I would do that before Christmas or before Trump comes into office,” she said. 

How could a trade war affect West Virginia’s jobs?

A new trade war could hit American workers just as hard. Trump’s proposed tariffs could lead to the loss of over 344,000 jobs, according to a report from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. Those projections do not account for any future retaliatory tariffs from other countries. 

Fattore said tariffs can usually backfire and harm the job market as other countries retaliate with their own taxes on imported goods. 

“I wouldn’t expect more American jobs to come out of tariffs,” she said. “When Trump put tariffs on steel and aluminum, companies like Harley-Davidson actually exported jobs overseas so they could avoid paying import fees.”

Canada is West Virginia’s largest trade partner and tariffs would hurt manufacturers, especially car manufacturers who ship parts back and forth between the border, she said. 

In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, opening the door for freer trade between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. But it disproportionately impacted American manufacturers and pushed thousands of jobs to other countries, hurting places dependent on manufacturing. 

In West Virginia, places where steel jobs were significant like Weirton, lost thousands of jobs. 

In 2020, the Trump Administration reached a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA. 

The free trade agreement provided new provisions highlighting digital trade, requiring that 75% of automotive parts be made in North America and allowing the American government to conduct independent reviews of working conditions in Mexican factories.

However, the new proposed tariffs would effectively squash the 2020 deal on free trade between the three countries as it will need to be renegotiated. 
The U.S. has 14 free trade agreements with 20 countries, including Canada and Mexico. These agreements eliminate or reduce tariffs and other trade barriers to protect domestic investors.

How President-elect Trump’s proposed tariffs could further squeeze West Virginians’ wallets appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Two years ago, the DSL internet at Aeriell Turner’s home in rural Raleigh County grew increasingly unreliable as she began to rely on her phone’s mobile hotspot for work.

“The lines where I live are notoriously bad,” she said.

But then, Turner, an insurance agent who works remotely, switched to Starlink. 

Now, as she turns on her computer at the beginning of each work day, a sleek white router softly blinks in her living room reminding her that her internet troubles are far behind. 

She now answers video calls and interacts with her clients without interrupted service. 

“A good internet connection is a literal lifeline,” she said.

For West Virginians like Turner, Starlink promises a solution to their desperate need for fast and reliable internet access. Residents say they’ve turned to the company, despite the high price tag, while they wait for faster, more reliable internet from traditional providers.

However, federal regulators concluded that the company couldn’t meet promised speeds and rejected its application for nearly $900 million in subsidies in 2022. 

Now, as West Virginians continue to search for answers, Starlink could soon be in line for more of the flood of federal dollars to expand broadband.

The company’s owner, Elon Musk, is not only the richest person in the world, but he spent $200 million to help Donald Trump get back to the White House. And Trump has already said he plans to appoint a Musk ally to run the Federal Communications Commission. 

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not respond to a request for comment. 

State officials are in the midst of a $1.2 billion push to bring high-speed internet to every corner of West Virginia by 2029. However, the roll-out has been hindered by disputes between utility companies and internet service providers on the ground.

Starlink hasn’t released exact numbers for how many customers they have in West Virginia. The company is not required to share that information, said Del. Daniel Linville, chair of the House Infrastructure and Technology Committee. 

But, the number of subscribers is increasing monthly in the state, he said. 

Kensey Bergdorf-Smith, director of the West Virginia Science and Technology Policy Initiative, said despite its growing popularity, satellite internet still has challenges compared to other broadband options. 

A dish must be properly positioned and be free of interference like trees and bad weather for the strongest service, she said. 

“The concern with satellite internet is that it’s not super reliable,” she said. “It doesn’t always reach the speeds that it needs to, and it’s also pretty pricey compared to standard broadband options.”

Starlink was denied millions in federal subsidies 

In 2022, Starlink’s long-form application for a $885 million contract from the FCC through its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund was denied. The fund was created to expand broadband to rural communities and the subsidies would have been released over 10 years. 

The company was to deploy internet service to over 600,000 homes and businesses across 35 states with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second download and 20 megabits per second download upload. 

Those speeds are defined as the bare minimum to qualify as broadband following new standards passed by the FCC earlier this year. 

Federal officials determined the company would be unable to provide high-speed internet to the amount of homes it had proposed. The FCC affirmed that decision last year. 

“The agency also has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet basic program requirements,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a press release.

Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the FCC, dissented from the agency’s ruling writing that the decision follows the Biden administration’s pattern of “regulatory harassment” against Elon Musk. 

This week, President-elect Donald Trump named Carr as the new chairman of the commission. As chairman, Carr could exert influence over decisions with the potential to send hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies to Starlink.

Starlink service is expanding from space, while internet providers hit snags on the ground 

From outer space to deep inside a holler, high-speed internet can reach homes without traditional infrastructure like poles and cables using satellites that bounce signals as long as there is a clear view of the sky. 

The company offers residential plans for $120 a month with unlimited data and charges a $349 upfront cost for hardware like the router and mountable disk. 

In a 2023 survey of over 2,000 West Virginians by state broadband officials, 15% said they use satellite internet and generally paid more than people using other providers.

Alex Cain, owner of Country Roads Satellites in Clarksburg, said that his team travels across the state installing Starlink mounts on homes, and most customers have resorted to satellite service because they’ve had unreliable, slow internet connections. 

“When Starlink came out, it was kind of a game changer just because the speeds are 20 times faster,” he said. “We’ve been doing five to six installs a week.” 

Starlink’s satellites circle the planet in a much lower orbit than older satellite internet providers. That means Starlink satellites should be faster than competitors. 

Outside of Durbin on the northern end of Pocahontas County, Elizabeth Stewart lives with her husband in a wooded area and uses Starlink to work from home.

They’ve put their dish in a clearing where there isn’t interference from trees in the yard. She said she’s been a customer for three years despite other providers offering cheaper plans and doesn’t mind paying the higher cost.

“You have to shell out about 500 bucks to get the service and a lot of people can’t afford to do that,” she said. “But, online is my life, and it’s how I’m able to work from home.”

As Starlink faces federal scrutiny, the internet company has become a lifeline in West Virginia — for those who can afford it appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

When West Virginians go to the polls today to cast ballots for their next U.S. Senator, Governor, state delegate, or county sheriff, their votes will be counted and protected, despite any fraud claims. 

Four years ago, then-President Donald Trump falsely alleged that the election had been stolen from him. The turmoil that followed led to a violent insurrection in which his supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory.

This year, Trump has said that if he loses the election, it will only be because he was cheated out of victory. Therefore, things could get increasingly confusing, so here’s what you need to know if you’re watching events unfold at home.

Haven’t voted yet? 

If you haven’t voted today, there’s still time. 

Today, several key races will be on the ballot. The state will have new leadership come January between the governor’s race and local delegate races in each district. 

Mountain State Spotlight has a comprehensive voter guide with information about each candidate running in your district and our previous coverage talking with voters from all 55 counties. 

How can I find out who won? 

After polling locations close and results come in, we’ll have live election results on our website provided by the Associated Press. 

We recommend reading coverage at news outlets like the Associated Press for information about national races outside of West Virginia. There, those results will be updated in real-time after polls close on Election Day. 

The Associated Press has a team of experts who research historic voting trends and election laws. As votes are tallied, they project winners when the losing candidate can no longer come back and win.

Voter turnout has historically been much lower in West Virginia than in other states for the past three presidential elections. But, in early voting, several county clerks said they had record-breaking turnout on the first day. 

How votes in West Virginia are counted

On the night of Election Day, ballots cast and tallied are reported as unofficial votes. After polls close, official results will not be known until a few days or weeks later. 

Five days after the election, excluding weekends and holidays, county election officials conduct the canvass process in which mail-in, early voting, absentee and election-day ballots are counted together. During this process, officials also review voting machines and other materials involving vote collection. 

After the canvass process is completed officials declare the results and wait 48 hours, during which candidates can request a recount. Then, the results are certified except in places where votes must be recounted. 

Within ten days after the results are certified, candidates can contest the election through the courts. 

If the results are not contested, then those are sent to the secretary of state and governor within 30 days to be reviewed. The deadline for results to be transmitted is December 5.

To learn more about how election officials canvass votes in West Virginia, you can find the state canvassing and recount manual on the Secretary of State’s Office website. Or view the West Virginia Election Calendar. 

To learn more about election laws, you can read the elections and officers portion of the state constitution. 

How is your vote secured?

The West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office ensures that each election is secure and every ballot is properly counted. 

County clerks conduct the actual counting of votes at the local level, as laid out in state law. 

“The process is established in a manner to make elections the safest and most transparent for gaining the public’s confidence,” wrote Diana Cromley, Mason County clerk and president of the West Virginia Association of Counties, in a recent op-ed.

County clerks are responsible for making sure that everyone who votes is eligible to vote and has access to vote, Cromley wrote. They also assist with the canvassing process after Election Day. 

Is voter fraud an issue?

In 2020, former President Donald Trump claimed that the presidential election had been stolen, despite numerous court rulings indicating otherwise. These claims have been echoed by West Virginia politicians, even the state’s top election officer, Secretary of State Mac Warner.

The truth is that incidents of voter fraud are almost nonexistent, voter impersonation is very rare and many instances of alleged fraud are errors by election administrators, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.

Human errors can still happen. In Mingo County, a state Senate candidate was mistakenly left off of nearly 700 ballots during early voting.

Several studies have also been conducted which have shown election fraud is incredibly rare. It is illegal in every state for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, holding a penalty of up to a year of federal prison and a fine. 

“Citizens can vote in 2024 with confidence,” wrote Michael Waldman, the center’s president and CEO. “Despite the noise and lies and melodrama, voting will likely be uneventful for the vast majority of Americans.”

Today is Election Day. Here’s how votes are tallied and secured in West Virginia. appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Back in July, we asked incumbent state Del. Marty Gearheart if he had anything to add to his answers to questions about community redevelopment, the high costs of medical insurance and homelessness.

“It seems to me you address a lot of issues that are far afield for what I address and my party addresses,” Gearheart said. “I would prefer to talk about lessening the tax burden on all West Virginians.”

That answer convinced me of the importance of the approach Mountain State Spotlight has taken over the last year as we’ve covered the 2024 primary and general elections.

Reporter Henry Culvyhouse spent a couple of days in Gearheart’s district, asking Mercer County residents what they wanted candidates for public office to be talking about as they asked for votes. The result was a nuanced profile of Bluefield and Princeton. These are communities that have taken some tough shots. But folks there were working hard to come back and wanted a little more help from the state to get there.

And Henry’s questions for Del. Gearheart were drawn from his discussions with those residents — the delegate’s constituents — asked in a respectful way aimed at getting answers voters could use to make informed decisions.

It seems important that a state delegate (and perhaps his party) are addressing different issues than what that delegate’s constituents want to hear about. But in the runup to the 2024 election, there is a fair amount of that going on in West Virginia and across the country.

Over the last six months, Mountain State Spotlight staff crisscrossed the state, talking to more than 500 West Virginians across visits to all 55 counties. We hosted events in six communities, from Wheeling to Welch. And our reporters took trips to every corner of the state, visiting our cities, towns and hills and hollows.

This all started with our belief that elections should be more about West Virginians and their communities, and less about horse race polls or attack ads. Using The Citizens Agenda, we set out to help our neighbors take back the political process.

We began with a simple question: What do you want to hear candidates talking about as they ask for your vote?

Everywhere we went, there were common refrains from voters: We need more substance abuse treatment and recovery programs. We need clean and reliable water. Our roads need to be fixed or upgraded. Our community needs more jobs, better schools, affordable child care, and a more responsive government.

Our reporters found a lot of West Virginians who were digging in, trying to make their part of the state better. Most didn’t mind doing that hard work, but many also said they would like to see the state do more to help. 

We also heard that lawmakers focus too much on issues that can tend to divide West Virginians, and not enough on things that can bring us all together.

For example, in McDowell County, we heard a desire to focus less on what the Rev. Brad Davis called “culture war issues” and more on the ingredients for building a post-coal economy, like access to food, water and health care.

“They’re not focusing on the quality of life,” Davis said at our event in Welch.

In other places, like Logan County, we found plenty of examples of West Virginians who don’t really trust politics anymore. Others are just sick and tired of empty promises.

We read a lot about young people leaving, but often it’s just old people lamenting this trend. Our reporters actually talked to some young people – in Lincoln County and in Wetzel and Tyler counties – to lift up those voices.

As we heard more and more from voters, we started putting their questions to the candidates. When we started this work, we worried about what to do when none of the candidates would talk to us. 

After all, our organization is still only four years old. A lot of politicians don’t feel the need to talk to the press, let alone to a Charleston-based outlet they and their constituents have never even heard of.

But broadly speaking the results of this effort have been good. Some Republican incumbents with no general election opposition have talked to us. In competitive races, we’ve been able to publish some lengthy answers in which candidates talk in some detail about the overdose crisis or economic development or water and sewer problems or family violence. In today’s political environment — and with the decline of local media — this is a rare thing that is so important to give voters.

At the same time, the response to our outreach to more than 200 candidates wasn’t what it should have been. Only about a quarter of candidates answered the questions we developed from reader input.

This was our first election doing this as a major newsroom project, so it’s been a learning process. One thing readers asked us for that we promise to get better at next time is comparing what incumbents are saying with what they are doing when they come to Charleston. As we finish our campaign coverage, some major stories about the races for governor and senator seek to provide a bit more of that.

National media has tried to say that people in places like our beloved West Virginia vote against our own interests.

And we did certainly find examples of powerful politicians in West Virginia who are campaigning on protecting gun rights, outlawing abortion and continuing the extractive economy, while their constituents wanted to hear a lot more about making substance abuse disorder treatment more easily available.

Maybe there’s a powerful disconnect here. Maybe there’s something more cynical going on. Either way, more information is a path forward for our state.

Mountain State Spotlight’s bold and ambitious mission is to help West Virginians make our state a better place by delivering sustained outrage journalism that holds the powerful accountable and lifts up voices that aren’t always heard.

As we’ve visited your community and so many others, one thing we’ve learned is that we have our work cut out for us.

Mountain State Spotlight talked to voters in all 55 West Virginia counties. Here’s what we learned. appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.