photo by: W.Va. Legislative Photography

Dr. Cynthia Persily, secretary of the West Virginia Department of Human Services, told lawmakers Tuesday that the Office of Technology was not deleting former state employee emails following legal issues where DHHR emails for former officials were deleted.

CHARLESTON — As the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources prepares to split into three new departments at the end of the year, lawmakers are concerned the split is in name only, with the departments maintaining the same bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers remain troubled by recent issues within DHHR to hold onto emails being sought in a federal foster care class action lawsuit which were deleted after DHHR failed to follow up with the state’s IT provider to save the emails of former high-level officials.

Members of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Health and Human Resources Accountability met Tuesday afternoon during December interim meetings at the Capitol.

House Bill 2006, relating to reorganizing DHHR, was passed by the Legislature during the 2023 regular session and signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice earlier this year. The bill went into effect in May.

HB 2006 terminates DHHR and splits it into the three new departments effective Jan. 1: the Department of Health, the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health Facilities. The new cabinet secretaries for the three departments will directly report to the governor.

Justice announced the three new cabinet secretaries in May: Dr. Sherri Young (Department of Health, Dr. Cynthia Persily (Department of Human Services) and Michael Caruso (Department of Health Facilities). The three departments will share one central Office of Shared Administration for administrative support services similar to the current structure of the departments of Commerce, Tourism and Economic Development.

The new DHHR departments have until June 30, 2024, to create this new Office of Shared Administration, but the incoming secretaries presented lawmakers Tuesday with draft organizational charts for the Office of Shared Services, consisting of an Office of Finance, an Office of Human Resources Management, an Office of Constituent Services, an Office of Communications, an Office of Operations and an Office of Management Information Services.

According to Young, who is interim DHHR cabinet secretary until Jan. 1, the Office of Shared Administration will have 422 full-time employees. But while lawmakers were hoping splitting DHHR into three departments and sharing services would cut down on bureaucracy, the Office of Shared Administration appears similar to what already exists within the DHHR Office of the Cabinet Secretary.

“I would be less than honest if I didn’t say that It seems like there’s a lot of duplication of services in these organizational charts,” said Delegate Heather Tully, R-Nicholas. “It seems like this organization is very top heavy.”

Lawmakers also asked Persily, the new Department of Human Services cabinet secretary, about issues surrounding the retention of emails from former high-level DHHR officials. Attorneys representing the state’s foster children in a federal class action lawsuit filed in 2019 are seeking sanctions against DHHR for not preserving emails.

In an Oct. 6 letter to the foster care attorneys, attorneys representing DHHR admitted that emails for seven named defendants were deleted by the state Office of Technology despite litigation holds. The office has a policy of deleting emails for former state employees after 30 days, providing time for departments and agencies to download and preserve those electronic files.

Persily said that DHHR attorneys are now sending litigation holds to employees subject to those holds and to the Office of Technology, which has now developed a new litigation hold request form requiring the names of those employees whose electronic files must be preserved.

“Right now … the state is not removing any emails for any employee who leave the service of the state until they get a system in place … where they can archive the emails of individuals who are under a litigation hold or who could potentially be under a litigation hold,” Persily said. “There are probably people, regardless of whether or not they’re under a specific litigation hold, whose emails should not be destroyed.”

DHHR officials plan to have a roundtable discussion Friday to finalize its organizational tree for the Office of Shared Administration. But Tully said she sees no real change to how the department will operate once it splits into three.

“I think when you have a bloated bureaucracy like this, it increases your likelihood of having errors … . I think it dilutes a sense of responsibility and creates confusion. So, I hope that maybe Friday we may have more clarity, but I do have very, very grave concerns about this.”