Photo provided Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, right, looks under the cushions of the $32,000 sectional couch during a tour of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals offices in Charleston last year. At left are delegates Rodney Miller, D-Boone, and John Overington, R-Berkeley.

WHEELING — West Virginia’s infamous $32,000 blue suede couch still sits at the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals — and it has a rip in it, according to new Justice Evan Jenkins.

While the sectional serves a monument to what can happen when government officials are permitted to spend taxpayer dollars without oversight, the tear may just come to symbolize what results when public trust is severed.

Jenkins inherited the office of former Justice Alan Loughry, who is now serving 24 months in federal prison on 10 federal charges, including mail fraud and wire fraud.

The couch associated with Loughry and uncontrolled court spending remains behind in the office. Close to it is an inlay floor containing cut-out shapes of all 55 counties in West Virginia, with Loughry’s home county of Tucker in granite. It reportedly cost $7,500.

Jenkins said people often stop by to see the office and sit down on the sectional. He has sat on the couch, and doesn’t believe it to be anything special.

The couch even has an unexplained tear, Jenkins reports. He said he may look into donating it to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

“Both (the couch and the medallion) are now very much a part of West Virginia history,” he said.

“I would hope they would be used in an appropriate way of how not to serve on our state’s highest court. They should serve as a constant reminder of what shouldn’t have ever been done.”

The West Virginia Legislature was required by the state’s constitution — and a past ruling by the State Supreme Court — to allocate “whatever the judiciary asked for” when it comes to judiciary spending, according to Jenkins.

“I think anybody could see in their own life if you had a credit card, and could spend on it whatever you wanted, abuse can occur,” he said. “That, tragically, is how you come to have a $32,000 couch, an $8,000 chair, and tons of other amenities.”

West Virginia voters passed a constitutional amendment last November giving oversight of the court’s budget to the legislature. The legislature now has the authority to reduce the court’s budget by as much as 15 percent.

Jenkins said the current court received a budget already started by the past court, which had anticipated spending for fiscal year 2020 at $147 million. Funding for the court during the current fiscal year totals $39 million.

The new court members went through the budget line-time by line-item, and were able to reduce it by $8 million to $131 million before referring on to the legislature for approval.

Included in the budget were wages for 1,500 court employees, including 400 who work in the magistrate court, according to Jenkins. Another 200 employee work in probation, and oversee over 10,000 probationers in the state.

Reductions didn’t affect any employee hires or court programs, Jenkins said. The current justices just saw a lot of inflated costs in the budget.

“(The year) 2018 was a wake-up call, as it should be,” he said. “What happened was unacceptable. The voters spoke clearly on the judicial budget amendment, and you have a court now that is being much more engaged in an open and transparent way with the voters and with the legislature.

“What happened in the past should never happen again.”

Jenkins said that “real, meaningful policies” are now in place as a deterrent to overspending.

“This is is the beginning of trying to restore the public’s trust and confidence in our judiciary,” he said. “We know what happened has put a stain (on the court), and caused mistrust by the public.

“While people expect politics to take place in the executive and legislative branches, they don’t want it — and they don’t deserve it — in the judiciary.”

The court’s budget presently consists of 13 line items, and legislature is looking to increase that to as many as 99, according to Jenkins. He said the number in the end probably will be somewhere in between.

“We’re willing to have that level of transparency in our budget,” he said of he and other justices. “We endorsed, as a court, the passage of Amendment 2.”