Americans For Prosperity-WV Executive Director Jason Huffman, third from right, and AFP-WV volunteers canvas Charleston’s East End in May on behalf of now-Gov. Patrick Morrisey. (Photo Provided)
CHARLESTON — The West Virginia chapter of a conservative grassroots advocacy organization that spent money and manpower on behalf of the state’s new Republican governor and other GOP leaders now hopes their legislative agenda will receive a warm welcome, though opposition remains.
The West Virginia chapter of American for Prosperity released last week their Pathway to Prosperity 2025 Legislative Agenda, which focuses on doubling down on expanding access to school choice, eliminating barriers to expansion of health care services, right-sizing state government, and providing greater scrutiny of legislative rules issued by state agencies.
“I think I’ve never been more excited about the historic opportunity that West Virginia has to really advance policies…to help folks have a better state to live and work and raise family,” said Jason Huffman, the executive director of AFP-WV, in a phone interview earlier this week.
AFP-WV was one of two conservative groups that backed Gov. Patrick Morrisey in the May Republican primary, where Morrisey faced five other candidates. AFP-WV spent the least amount of money among larger third-party political action committee heading into the May primary, spending more than $700,000 over a five-month period. But the organization focused its efforts of grassroots campaigning for Morrisey, going door-to-door.
Morrisey’s election as governor in November over his Democratic opponent, former Huntington mayor Steve Williams, made Morrisey the first first-term elected Republican governor in nearly 30 years, since the 1996 election of the late Gov. Cecil Underwood. The previous Republican governor, Jim Justice, was first elected as a Democrat in 2016.
Huffman said Morrisey’s election, as well as the election of new Republicans in the House of Delegates and state Senate heading into the 2025 legislative session on Feb. 12, now provides the perfect opportunity to push conservative public policy solutions.
“With the election of Gov. Morrissey, this is the first time that West Virginia will have had a day-one first-term Republican governor with the supermajority since before prohibition,” Huffman said. “Really what taxpayers deserve is an efficient effective government. I think it’s really impressed an opportunity that we have to not only reimagine government, but also to advance some very serious reforms. Our Pathway to Prosperity legislative agenda is just that.”
HOPE SCHOLARSHIP
The first goal for AFP-WV is ensuring that lawmakers and Morrisey make good on their campaign promises to move the state towards universal school choice. The first step is making sure that the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program remains fully funded is the program eligibility opens up to all public, private, and homeschool children beginning in the 2026-2027 school year.
In July, the Hope Scholarship met an enrollment figure benchmark it was required to meet in order to open up eligibility beginning in fiscal year 2027. The Hope Scholarship is currently limited to children who are eligible to be enrolled in a county school system’s kindergarten program the year the parents are applying, public school students who were enrolled full-time during the school year prior to applying for the scholarship, or public school students enrolled for at least 45 days during the current school year.
The Hope Scholarship – passed by the Legislature in 2021 and which went into effect at the beginning of 2023 following a legal fight and West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals decision in its favor – gives parents the option to use an equivalent portion of the per-pupil expenditure for their children from the state School Aid Formula – approximately $4,921 for the 2024-2025 school year – for educational expenses, such as private or religious school tuition, home school, tutoring, learning aids and other acceptable expenses.
According to the general revenue budget for the current fiscal year, more than $27.3 million was budgeted for the Hope Scholarship program, which is managed by the State Treasurer’s Office. An additional $27.3 million was given to Hope in a supplemental appropriation in a May special session.
“I was a strong advocate for educational freedom as a member of the House of Delegates and am thrilled to be able to oversee this program as it continues to flourish in my role as Chairman of the Hope Scholarship Board,” said State Treasurer Larry Pack in a statement this week celebrating national school choice week. “My goal is to ensure that parents and families have the tools necessary to tailor an education for their children that works best for them.”
According to the left-of-center West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, the Hope Scholarship program doubled in cost, from $9.2 million in the 2022-2023 school year, to $23.7 million during the previous school year, with the programs costs expected to double again to approximately $52.1 million by the end of the current school year.
According to a fiscal note in 2021 by the state Department of Education, opening up the Hope Scholarship to private and homeschool students could add an addition cost of $102.9 million in fiscal year 2027, which covers the 2026-2027 school year.
In two press conferences, Morrisey said the state faces a $400 million projected hole in the fiscal year 2026 general revenue budget as of his first day in office on Jan. 13. Morrisey cited several causes for the projected deficit, including future educational expenses, such as the increased costs to implement the Third Grade Success Act and the Hope Scholarship.
“The second driver of a number of these issues are educational costs, and that continues to rise,” Morrisey said. “We’re going to have to address that. That’ll be important. Education is the cornerstone for the kids in our state. We have to make sure they get the best type of education. But there have been some increases, and we have to make sure that’s factored into the budget.”
One of the eight executive orders issued by Morrisey on his second day in office directed his office to collaborate with the legislative leaders to ensure West Virginia has the broadest and effective school choice law in the nation and to direct resources towards that effort. AFP-WV’s focus will be ensuring that the Hope Scholarship maintains the funding it needs both for the next fiscal year and for when it expands in fiscal year 2027.
“What we’re talking about when we say expanded educational freedom, particularly around the Hope Scholarship, is just to ensure that those dollars that need to be allocated for the Hope Scholarship expansion come to fruition through the legislative process,” Huffman said. “I think when it comes to allocating those dollars, we just want to make sure that all lawmakers continue to prioritize empowering parents and families to find the right education for them.”
Opponents of the Hope Scholarship claim that students leaving the public school system to accept the Hope Scholarship are adding to the issues facing county school systems of decreased enrollment, affecting future school system budgets and causing counties to receive reduced funding from the state school aid formula.
“The Hope Scholarship Program has diverted significant funds from the public school system to private schools and other educational service providers within and outside of the state,” wrote Tamaya Browder, an education policy fellow at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, in a policy paper earlier in January.
“Although declining enrollment was already an issue for public schools prior to the Hope Scholarship, after the program was implemented, the enrollment crisis considerably worsened,” Browder continued. “Declining enrollment and the resulting impacts to funding and resource allocation for schools has led to a precarious situation for our public school system.
Huffman accused the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and other anti-school choice opponents of unfairly laying the blame for the decades-long issue of decreased school enrollment on the Hope Scholarship, a program that has only been in effect for barely two years.
“The problem is that opponents of educational freedom will always try to scapegoat educational freedom for the woes and the problems of the traditional K-12 education system,” Huffman said. “I think that when it comes to the Scholarship and when it comes to educational freedom at-large, we already have a fairly good balance with regards to both of those systems existing. We want to make sure that families have the right education opportunities for their kids – be that public, private, charter schools, or whatever that pathway is – that works best for the kid, regardless of their income level or their ZIP Code.”
CERTIFICATE OF NEED
Another plank of AFP-WV’s Pathway to Prosperity is removing barriers and increasing access to health care through the elimination of the state’s certificate of need (CON) program.
States began implementing CON programs to help control health care costs and prohibit duplicative or unneeded medical services in communities. West Virginia’s CON law was put in place by lawmakers in 1977, making it one of 35 states with CON laws. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 12 states have fully repealed their CON programs.
Supporters of repealing CON believe that ending the program will give residents more options for health care, increase the number of rural hospitals and other rural health care options in the state, and provide more savings in health care costs and possibly save more lives.
According to the KNEE Regulatory Research Center at West Virginia University’s John Chambers College of Business and Economics, a review of scholarly research on CON law repeals found that 88% of research found no detrimental effect on health care quality or access.
“It’s been around for 40 years. It used to be a requirement the federal government made states have,” Huffman said. “Some states of luckily been able to repeal their certificate of need laws over that time and rightfully so. Unfortunately, West Virginia is still one of 35 states that has some type of CON on the books.
“We want to fully repeal all certificate lead laws because the overwhelming amount of data and research suggest that it increases costs, it lowers access, and it decreases quality,” Huffman continued. “That’s particularly true for underserved populations, like rural areas which much of West Virginia is. So, we’re very adamant about this particular policy reform. It’s a long overdue and that’s why it’s our number one priority for the session.”
Opponents of CON repeal include the West Virginia Hospital Association, which believes the current CON process ensures that regions of the state have appropriate levels of health care and helps protect rural hospitals from unfair competition.
There have been several efforts by Republican lawmakers to repeal CON laws. Last year, the House Health and Human Resources Committee recommended for passage House Bill 4909, relating to eliminating the certificate of need program for health services, on a 13-9 vote. HB 4909 would eliminate certificate-of-need requirements for all health care services except hospice care services.
HB 4909 was never taken up by the full House of Delegates last year, remaining in the House’s inactive calendar for the remainder of the 2024 session. CON repeal is often opposed by lawmakers with rural hospitals in their districts. In an op-ed released this week, Del. Scot Heckert, R-Wood, claimed that repealing CON would put the state’s rural health care system at risk.
“West Virginia is the only state in the nation that is completely in rugged, mountainous terrain and our sparse population creates unique health care challenges,” said Heckert. “Our rural hospitals operate on razor-thin margins with one of the lowest cost per inpatient day in the nation so every health care dollar matters. The CON law ensures these facilities remain viable by preventing unnecessary duplication of services that would drain limited resources from the local community.”
Huffman sees the upcoming 60-day legislative session as ripe for a CON repeal to pass. AFP-WV is making a six-figure spending on advertising and advocacy to influence lawmakers to support a CON repeal using what he calls AFP’s “signature grassroots approach.”
“We’re going to be holding events. We’re going to be making sure that citizens are aware of this issue,” Huffman said. “This work began really in June of last year, us going out and knocking doors and building awareness around the fact that there’s a group of unelected bureaucrats that gets to decide whether you get a new health service in your community or not, and that’s not right. People are becoming aware of that, and we’re going to patch those people in to lawmakers so they can make their voices heard.”
AFP-WV also supports Morrisey’s efforts to review all state legislative rules and regulations to bring them into parity with neighboring states – what Morrisey calls the “Backyard Brawl.” To help with that effort, AFP-WV will push for passage of the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which would require economic impact statements for any legislative rule that could have a more than $200,000 annual economic impact.
“West Virginia has already a really great regulatory review process and it’s rulemaking review process, but we don’t have enough economic information from agencies,” Huffman said. “If you have a rule or regulation that’s going to cost the private sector economy over $1 million over five years, you’ve got to let the rulemaking review committee – the lawmakers that are making these deliberative decisions – know that information so they can enter into it eyes wide open.”
Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com
