Gov. Jim Justice and the acting secretary for health and human services described initial steps to improve how West Virginia addresses health and quality-of-life issues.
Those include lifting a hiring freeze for the Department of Health and Human Resources and working swiftly to fill several open child protective services workers positions in the Eastern Panhandle.
“We have made absolutely instant recommendations and instant moves,” Justice said. “My team identified some of the bottlenecks in the hiring process. Why are we taking too long to get people in place?”
The Department of Health and Human Resources has been under scrutiny over how the enormous agency handles a range of issues, including foster care, child protective services and the developmentally
disabled.
DHHR Secretary Bill Crouch announced his retirement on Monday, and the governor named Dr. Jeff Coben, who is dean of the School of Public Health at West Virginia University to be the acting secretary. More guidance will come from Dr. Clay Marsh, the executive dean for health sciences at WVU, and James Hoyer, the state’s retired adjutant general.
“This crew, I will promise you, will hit the ground running,” Justice said. “There’s no slowness here.”
The changes seem unlikely to hold off legislative consideration of how to reorganize the agency, and the governor pushed back against that possibility.
“We’re doing this for our people, are we not?” Justice said. “When you jump too fast and you do it irresponsibly — in order to get on a soap box and rah-rah the people and act like you’re doing something, that’s not wise. We know it’s not wise.”
The governor said the changes won’t make DHHR perfect, but he predicted they will result in
improvements.
“We could just jump. We could just jump for the sake of saying ‘Look what I did,’” he said. “But at the end of the day, we want to be bold in what we do, but we want to be smart in what we do.”
Justice said state officials earlier this week extended offer letters to three child protective services workers and one youth services worker in the Eastern Panhandle. The governor also described a hiring bonus for child protective services workers. Those reflect concerns recently highlighted by state Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Trump, R-Morgan.
And Justice outlined an executive order allowing retired DHHR workers to return while still maintaining their retirement benefits.
“We’ve been aggressively been moving forward to address changes and to enhance the workforce,” Coben said.
Coben made a pitch for workers, describing cooperation with the state Division of Personnel. “So if you need a job and you want to join the dedicated team and staff at DHHR, we’re hiring.”
Marsh described several days of meetings with DHHR’s leadership and “what we’re finding is, these are really talented and really committed servants to our state.” Marsh expressed urgency about focusing on West Virginia’s most vulnerable populations along with emphasis on the mental health crisis and substance use disorder.
Hoyer said the governor told the leaders to “bust through bureaucracy if bureaucracy is holding us back.” He also said the governor’s mission is “to be bold and do the things that we need to do to make this work for our most vulnerable population.”
