Photo by Steven Allen Adams Pictured from left, state Senate President Craig Blair, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Eric Tarr and Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo said Tuesday it was up to the House of Delegates to decide whether to allow a bill returning funds to the departments of Health and Human Services to die or to pass the bill with the Senate’s changes.

CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates ended a three-day special session Tuesday by restoring cut funds for the state’s departments of Health and Human services, but only after both bodies played a game of chicken with delegates concurring with Senate changes to the bill.

Both the House and the state Senate adjourned the first special session of 2024 sine die Tuesday afternoon after being called back to the State Capitol Building Sunday. Lawmakers passed all 15 bills on Gov. Jim Justice’s special session proclamation.

There were only two outstanding issues Tuesday between the House and Senate. Drama between lawmakers involved Senate Bill 1001, a bill restoring more than $5 million to the Department of Health and more than $183 million for the Department of Human Services.

The Senate version of the bill creates reserve funds in both departments for the restored funding. It allows the secretaries of the departments to transfer money out of a new reserve fund to provide money for other line items, such as Medicaid and the intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) waiver program. But the bill included no specific directives requiring DoHS to transfer those monies to those programs.

SB 1001 requires the secretaries to file monthly reports to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Government and Finance to explain any transfers. It also prevents any expenditures from these appropriations after March 30, 2025, expiring any remaining funding in those line items back to the general revenue fund. An addition made to the bill by the House would prohibit DoHS from transferring funds from the home and community-based waiver program to any other appropriation in DoHS.

But the House version of SB 1001 would have required DoHS to use some of the $183 million for specific line items. House Health and Human Resources Committee Chairwoman Amy Summers, R-Taylor, offered an amendment to the bill to appropriate $10.3 million to increase provider rates for Title 19 aged and disabled waiver program, $10.7 million to increase provider rates for the IDD waiver program, $6.6 million to increase provider rates for personal care services, and $135,000 to increase provider rates for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) waiver program.

The Senate stripped those requirements from the bill Monday night, with the House refusing to concur with the Senate’s changes to the bill. In response, the Senate adjourned the special session Tuesday sine die, putting pressure on the House to either recede and accept SB 1001 as amended by the Senate, or end the session without the passage of SB 1001.

“The position the House is in right now is they either need to recede from what they did yesterday or the bill is dead,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, after Tuesday’s floor session. “There’s been months of negotiation between the House and the Senate and the Governor’s Office to go through and set up a mechanism by which we both have transparency on how monies that are used that are appropriated from the Legislature within the Department of Health and Department of Human Services.”

The House blinked, choosing instead to recede from its position and voted to approve SB 1001 as amended by the Senate in a 87-2 vote, sending the bill to the governor’s desk.

Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, blamed some members of the House – including Summers – of trying to hold another bill hostage to force the Senate to accept the House position on SB 1001. Senate Bill 1011 takes $83 million out of the now-defunct PEIA Rainy Day Fund, with $51 million funding grant programs for college/university student aid due to FAFSA delays, and $32 million to cover PEIA 80/20 employer/employee match costs for public colleges/universities.

“By playing the horse trading game on something that shouldn’t be horse traded … she is in effect killing the bill because the governor would have to veto it,” Blair said. “They need those resources now to be able to help with something that the state didn’t create. It was the federal government.”

“If this doesn’t get through today, there are students lost every day,” Tarr said. “They’re not going to college this year. And the forecast for a potential enrollment drop is as high as 40% across our universities if we do not handle this here in the body. So when you’re talking about horse trading to me, this went over the line.”

“There is a difference between horse trading and playing with fire,” added Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha.

The House passed SB 1011 Monday but a motion to make the bill effective from passage failed, preventing the funds from being available to college students until August. The Senate voted to change the effective date until Wednesday which the House concurred with Tuesday.

Speaking after Tuesday’s floor session, Summers denied trying to hold SB 1011 hostage. She said the Senate should have worked with the House to craft a compromise between the House and Senate’s competing positions.

“That is foolish. That’s silly,” Summers said. “My interpretation was they took the ball and they went home. And I think the process is better if we would’ve had a conference and we could work this out between us. This just causes animosity and unnecessary angst and for the people to worry and not know what’s going on. So I think, I think we need to honor the process and do it the right way.”

Summers explained that state health and human services officials have admitted to spending money from the IDD waiver program for other line items. Her amendment would have not only restored funding to DoHS but it would have required the department to raise hourly rates for providers as recommended in a December 2023 rate study report by the Bureau for Medical Services. But she believes that DoHS will fund those programs moving forward.

“Our message has been heard loud and clear on what we believe and that the rates need to increase because these companies are closing,” Summers said. “If our vulnerable individuals don’t have places to be cared for outside of psych hospitals, this is going to be a nightmare…It does matter to us. I think they know how we feel. I hope it happens.”

Del. Mike Pushkin, the chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party, criticized Republican lawmakers – particularly Tarr — for not specifically addressing increasing provider rates and leaving it up to the discretion of DoHS.

“The primary reason Governor Justice called this special session was to address this issue,” said Pushkin, D-Kanawha. “Senator Tarr’s bill doesn’t guarantee any of these funds will go to the IDD waiver program. Senator Tarr is heartless and those who follow him are gutless. To adjourn without addressing reimbursement rates is inexcusable and does nothing to alleviate the crisis. Families and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities will suffer needlessly because of their refusal to do the right thing.”