In Logan County, an outdoor theater production got $7,000 for new lights. In Kenova, $21,150 went towards paving the library’s parking lot. In the Eastern Panhandle, Berkeley County received around $150,000 for park and baseball field improvements. And just 10 miles from the Capitol, the Kanawha County Commission will use $1 million to expand the kitchen and bathrooms at the Shawnee Sports Complex in Dunbar.
And over the last couple of years, millions have gone towards a race car sponsorship.
What all these expenditures have in common is that they were funded through the Governor’s Civil Contingent Fund. This little-known pot of money is both the state’s main account to handle natural disasters — and also essentially money for the governor to spend mostly as he wishes.
Lawmakers put a certain amount of money into the fund every year. They earmark part of it for specific projects, but often leave the rest for the governor to spend as he deems fit. And unlike most budget line items, the money doesn’t go away if it’s unspent.
Every year Justice has been in office, millions of dollars have been allowed to go into the fund. But the amount the governor spends every year is typically less than what he is allowed, so under his tenure the total amount of money in the fund has ballooned to $567 million as of this month.
But as that pot of money has grown, natural disasters have continued to hammer the state: Between 2010 and 2021, West Virginia experienced 1,600 floods, the Pew Charitable Trust estimates. Mathew Sanders, a disaster planning expert with the trust, said climate change means the problem will only get worse.
“What we’re seeing is an increasing trend where we’re having more severe, more frequent disaster events and there just aren’t more resources to go around,” Sanders said.
Now, Justice is asking for $108 million more for the fund. A little less than half of that money would go into the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund, which has been empty since lawmakers created it last year. And while a good start, Sanders said ultimately a lot more money will be needed from the contingent fund to protect West Virginians from disasters.
Justice’s spokesperson didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment on the fund.
These types of funds aren’t unusual. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have some kind of fund for disasters and emergencies. West Virginia, however, is one of nine states that have a “contingency account,” which give sweeping authority for how money is spent.
The civil contingent fund is intended for “accidental, unanticipated, emergency or unplanned events” and not for daily operations of the governor, according to the annual budget bill. However, state code isn’t that specific. All it says is the fund can pay any expenses for laws without funding attached to them and “any other sums which the governor may deem necessary or proper.”
That’s a problem, according to Sean O’Leary, of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. While O’Leary said there’s nothing wrong with having a discretionary fund, its increased use for economic development projects in recent years concerns him. Instead, O’Leary said the state could use the Rainy Day Fund, which can also be used for emergencies but rarely is.
“I think that it would be better to tap into that more often than through the civil contingency fund where the governor can sort of monkey around with things a little bit more than straight up using emergency funds to respond to emergencies,” O’Leary said.
Unlike most funds in the state, which get zeroed out at the end of the budget year, the approval for spending from the Civil Contingent Fund rolls over from year to year. As a result, there’s about $567 million that is authorized to be spent in the fund.
In addition, lawmakers can ask the governor to use the funds for projects in their district. That’s what happened with the new lights for the Logan County play and the parking lot in Kenova.
As a 2015 report from the federal Government Accountability Office shows, the Legislature does have the power to authorize funds in the account for a specific purpose. For example, millions of dollars have been pumped into the account for a floodwall in Milton, to match federal dollars for its construction, according to Del. Dan Linville, R-Cabell, who represents the district.
And last year, when the Legislature wanted to earmark $282 million in surplus money for capital improvements at colleges, jails and prisons, it tapped the Civil Contingent Fund.
House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, said the contingency fund allows for quick adjustments in the case of an emergency, especially when the Legislature is not meeting. Part of the reason for the fund growing in recent years, according to Criss, is to match federal grants.
COVID dollars have also indirectly grown the fund. In 2021 $20 million spent out of the fund was reimbursed through COVID aid, according to state auditor records.
But Criss said other uses of the funds, like the nearly $2.5 million spent on a race car sponsorship, are well within the rights of the governor.
“That’s up to his discretion, that’s a management decision on his part,” Criss said.
While the Governor might have a lot of leeway in how spends the fund, the power of the purse strings still reside in the Legislature. But they too benefit from the fund — the new lights for the outdoor play came courtesy of a request from Del. Margitta Mazzocchi, R-Logan. The parking lot came from a request from Del. Ric Griffith, D-Wayne. According to Criss, each delegate can ask up to $25,000 from the fund every fiscal year.
Correction, Feb. 20, 2024: A previous version of this story misspelled Mathew Sanders’ first name, and incorrectly reported the amount of time that the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund had existed. It was created last year, and has been empty since then.