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One would think West Virginia would have learned its lesson by now, but apparently we are not just slow spenders, we are slow learners when it comes to dealing with the federal government.
According to a report by Mountain State Spotlight, as it closes the federally funded Mountaineer Rental Assistance Program, West Virginia has had to return as much as $86 million of the $350 million it received from Washington, D.C., which was intended for emergency rental assistance and paying utility bills during the COVID-19 pandemic. Why? Because it was spent too slowly and the federal government decided the money would be better used if it was redistributed to other states.
If this sounds familiar, it's because the Mountain State also has a reputation as a slow spender because bureaucrats had too hard a time spending federal money that was intended to help victims of more than one bout of flooding, and were scolded a time or two then, too. (A few of those folks are still awaiting completion of the help they were promised).
Federal officials reasonably asked West Virginia to spend the taxpayer dollars it was given in a timely manner. It didn't. Again.
It would seem as though there should be someone in Charleston with a sense of urgency about better communicating with and cooperating with the federal government in a way that doesn't give them the impression we can't be trusted with taxpayer dollars. If nothing else, for goodness sake the next time large sums of federal money are headed our way, perhaps among the first steps in planning should be making sure we meet federal timing requirements.
If that is too much to ask, we certainly can't blame federal agencies if they don't trust us next time.