MORGANTOWN – Back in early April, The Dominion Post reported that through the DOGE process, West Virginia’s Department of Health had 10 grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human services terminated. WVDH finally gave a partial answer to what got cut just over four months after we asked.
The total value of the grants was $233,603,211.52, according to DOGE, and the total reported savings was $33,602,837. The DOGE website did not identify the grants, so we asked WVDH what they were, giving all the information DOGE provided on its site, including the value of each grant.
WVDH responded, “Send us the name of the grants and we will look into it for you.” We replied that we had given them all the information available, and sent them a reminder a few days later, but we never heard back from WVDH.
So on May 20, we sent WVDH a Freedom of Information Act request for the answers. After requesting several extensions to reply, they finally sent their answer on Sept. 30. A partial answer, anyway.
It says, in full: “In response to federal funding cuts related to COVID-19 grants and cooperative agreements, the West Virginia Department of Health is working to ensure the continuation of essential public health services for West Virginians.
“These reductions, primarily impacting funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, total approximately $1.19 million and affect 56 subrecipient grantees and 64 contracts. We were able to keep some by identifying and moving some to other funding sources, but this represents the contracts and grants that were affected by the funding ending.”
WVDH then said that any questions related to what is on the DOGE website or whether WVDH could apply for similar funding in the future should be referred to DOGE.
It’s unclear what WVDH is referring to in its answer. As we said, 10 grants were cut, with a total value of $233,603,211.52. None of the 10 grants cut were valued at $1.19 million.
We conclude with a list of the 10 grants and our questions.
The grant list is 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; $167,19.
We asked WVDH, in two emails and then in our FOIA:
- What the grant is for;
- Where most are not for the full value of the grant, what this means; for instance, have you partially spent it, or why is there a difference;
- For these terminated grants, are you discontinuing or reducing these services, or finding alternative funding such as state supplemental appropriations, or something else;
- Will you be able to reapply for grants in a future fiscal year;
- And what’s next for the services funded by these grants?
