MORGANTOWN — Monongalia County Commission President Tom Bloom said the counties intend to question why the foundation that will be tasked with distributing hundreds of millions in opiate settlement dollars won’t be subject to the Open Meetings Act.
The issue was among those raised during a Wednesday afternoon session with representatives from the six counties hosting regional meetings to select representatives for that body.
“Each county is concerned about it. How they’re going to address it they haven’t decided. I know we’re planning to bring it up. Kanawha County, I believe, will also be bringing it up,” Bloom said. “That concerns us.”
Monongalia County will host the Region 4 meeting at 10 a.m. July 13 at the Mon County Center. The 13 counties and 63 municipalities within the region have been asked to send a representative to vote on who will represent the region.
Those regional selection meetings are subject to the Open Meetings Act, which mandates meetings of governmental bodies must be noticed, open to the public and have publicly available minutes. It also spells out when a legislative body can enter into executive session.
According to the West Virginia Ethics Commission, “the Act covers any administrative or legislative unit of state, county or municipal government including any subunit (e.g. committees) authorized by law to exercise some portion of executive or legislative power. The Act does not apply to courts or private organizations that receive government funding.”
The West Virginia First Foundation will be comprised of 11 members — five members appointed by the governor and one member from each of the state’s six abatement regions.
Bloom said he’s hopeful each of the six regional representatives will support conducting the foundation’s business in accordance with the Open Meetings Act.
“This group will write the bylaws and that should be included in the bylaws. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t support that,” he said. “It’s $1 billion.”
Bloom said Wednesday’s discussion was largely about making sure there is some uniformity among the host counties.
“We’ve been given general information but what we now see is they’re giving us enough latitude for each of the six counties to come up with an agenda and follow their path. That’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “Raleigh County (Region 6) is meeting right now, so everyone is waiting to see how it went.”
To date, the state has compelled more than $1 billion in settlements from multiple defendants involved in manufacturing, distributing, selling or dispensing opiates in West Virginia.
A vast majority of each settlement, 72.5%, will be distributed by the foundation.
Another 24.5% will go directly to local governments (counties, cities, towns and villages) based on a negotiated percentage. For example, Monongalia County’s negotiated percentage is 1.487%; Morgantown’s is .1330%.
Votes cast for each regional director will also be weighted using those allocation percentages.
“I believe what we’re going to do is a roll call public vote, but then also put it down in writing too, that way everyone knows who voted for who,” Bloom said, explaining that there will be an unofficial calculation of the results by the end of the meeting.
The official results will be certified and reported to the governor and attorney general within one week of the meeting.
Wednesday also marked the resume deadline for individuals interested in being nominated by the commission to be the Region 4 representative.
The county received resumes from Jonathan Board, Michelle Christy, Joe Adams, Jonathan Dower, Bob Musick and Richard Vaglienti.
