MORGANTOWN – In the DOGE effort to curb federal spending by terminating federal grants, West Virginia has taken a relatively tiny hit compared to other states.
DOGE has terminated 9,283 grants, it reports, totaling $33 billion in savings.
West Virginia has 10 grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, terminated, along with one from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The HHS grants were to the state Department of Health and were all terminated March 23, totaling $233,603,211.52. The total reported savings is $33,602,837.
Puzzlingly, the state Health Department refused to answer questions about the grant, and in its final communication to The Dominion Post, could not even identify them.
We first contacted DH on Monday, April 7, identifying DOGE’s reported value and savings for each grant. As with most HHS grants on the list, the description of the grant was noted as “Currently unavailable.”
We asked DH several questions: including what each grant was for, it it had partially spent the grants where the full value exceeded the savings, would it be discontinuing or reducing services provided under the grants, and what’s next. We gave a deadline of for a reply of Wednesday, April 9.
DH responded that Monday, “Send us the name of the grants and we will look into it for you.”
We told DH we had provided all the information the DOGE provided, and pointed out the “currently unavailable” notation.
DH never replied to that by the deadline. We contacted them again on Thursday, extending the deadline to Friday morning, and still never heard.
Here are each of the 10 grants, arranged in order of reported savings (you will see that for a couple, the full value of the grant was saved). The first figure is the total grant value, which DOGE defines as “the potential expenditure including options.” The second figure is the saving, “the difference between the total value and the amount currently obligated.”
The grants:
- $30,370,777; $10,220,610.
- $21,473,262; $10,070,212.
- $103,153,083; $5,543,996.
- $6,826,198; $3,753,572.
- $7,778,761; $2,125,694.
- $57,211,926; $1,295,887.
- $18,830.518; $1,039,064.
- $820,338; $820,338.
- $7,904,019; $473,636.
- $267,696; $248,615.
- $218,330; $218,330.
- $5,606,448; $167,192.
USDA grant
On March 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture terminated a grant to the state Department of Education.
We reported on this issue in mid-March, saying at the time the USDA announced $1 billion in cuts to two programs that enable schools and food banks to buy products from local farmers. We talked to several farmers who would be affected by the cuts.
The total grant listed by DOGE for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement and the savings are the same: $3,788,060. It started Jan 15 this year and was slated to run through Jan. 14, 2028.
Its purpose was to “allow state and territory governments to purchase local, unprocessed or minimally processed domestic foods from local producers, targeting historically underserved farmers/producers/fishers and small businesses including processors, aggregators, and distributors.”
Food purchased was to be distributed to schools and child care institutions participating in the national school lunch program or child and adult care food program.
The original grant noted: “In addition to increasing local food consumption, funds are expected to help build and expand economic opportunity for local and historically underserved farmers/producers/fishers and small businesses including processors, aggregators, and distributors.”
DOGE lists other terminated grants from other agencies, but they weren’t labeled as specifically for West Virginia and it was not possible to determine their destination in time for this story.
