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WHEELING -- Officials with the soon-to-be-split West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources fielded questions Sunday from lawmakers about recent controversies involving an indicted employee, the alleged deletion of emails, actions surrounding an arrest of a couple who kept their children in cages and a recently fired employee of a state hospital.
Members of the West Virginia Legislature are in Wheeling through Tuesday for traveling interim meetings.
The Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability met Sunday afternoon at The Health Plan corporate offices in downtown Wheeling. The commission received briefings from incoming cabinet secretaries for the Department of Health, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health Facilities.
Committee Co-Chair Amy Summers, R-Taylor, asked Dr. Sherri Young, interim secretary for DHHR and the incoming secretary of the Department of Health, about issues surrounding the recent federal indictment against Timothy Priddy, director of DHHR's Center for Threat Preparedness.
According to court documents, Priddy pleaded not guilty last month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia to four counts of making false statements to federal investigators and a grand jury during a review of COVID-19 testing invoices between the state and a vendor.
According to the indictment, the company received about $45 million in federal COVID-19 funds for 500,000 COVID test kits while only reporting 50,000 test results during a two-year period between 2020 and 2022. Priddy is free on bond and suspended from employment. Trial was set for Dec. 19.
"Without getting into the details of the federal indictment on that since the director, former...was having some issues, do you think we're going to have to pay back the $35 million to $45 million that's in question there? And if so, where would that come from," Summers asked.
"That would be part of the investigation and something far beyond what I would be comfortable with answering at this time," Young said.
Under the current DHHR model, the Office of Threat Preparedness answered to the DHHR cabinet secretary. But under the new mode that splits DHHR into three departments effective by the end of the year, the office will fall under the Department of Health.
Summers asked Young whether she thought that by having the Office of Threat Preparedness answer to the Bureau of Public Health whether she thought that took away potential checks and balances that could have earlier caught Priddy's alleged actions regarding COVID-19 test invoices. Young said given the state of emergency in early days of 2020, it likely wouldn't have made any difference.
"Looking at the volume (of invoices) that they had to take care of, it really was survival mode," Young said. "You went from processing a few hundred grants or accounts payable within a month to several thousand. So there's a lot of vulnerabilities there that I think we need to look at moving forward, saying 'these are the processes to follow.'"
As part of the transition from one large department to three smaller departments, Young said the incoming cabinet secretaries are reviewing all processes for invoices, grants, and contracts.
Summers asked Dr. Cynthia Persily, the incoming cabinet secretary for the Department of Human Services, regarding a pending federal class action lawsuit regarding the state's foster care system and allegations of deleting of emails for former DHHR officials.
Attorneys representing foster children the federal class action suit filed against the state in 2019 are seeking sanctions after it was discovered that the state did not keep emails and other electronically stored documents, including emails from former DHHR Cabinet Secretary Bill Crouch, former Commissioner of DHHR's Bureau for Children and Families Linda Watts and former interim DHHR cabinet secretary Dr. Jeffrey Coben.