House Committee Approves Changes To West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Legislative Auditor’s Office
Steven Allen Adams Trending
CHARLESTON -- Changes were approved Friday to the commission that oversees West Virginia Public Broadcasting and to how the Legislative Auditor's Office functions.
The House Government Organization Committee recommended an amended version of Senate Bill 687 Friday to the full House of Delegates.
SB 687 makes changes to the scope of authority to the Legislative Auditor, which manages the Performance Evaluation and Research Division and the Post Audit Division. The position of Legislative Auditor was held for 30 years by Aaron Allred until his retirement at the end of 2023. Allred also held the title of Legislative Manager, which manages the day-to-day operations of the Joint Committee on Government and Finance when the Legislature is not in session.
Under current law, the Legislative Auditor conducts financial audits and performance audits of state departments and agencies, sometimes by statute and sometimes at the request of legislative leaders or other lawmakers. Performance evaluations look at the efficiency of a state agency and whether it is following State Code and the will of the Legislature. A post audit looks at the financial transactions of an agency.
SB 687 would put the Legislative Auditor under the authority of the Joint Committee on Government and Finance, and specifically under the authority of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. It clarifies that the Legislative Auditor does not have independent hiring authority, giving those powers to the joint committee. It eliminates fixed schedules for audits and makes audits up to the discretion of the Senate President and House Speaker.
The bill also removes requirements in code for audits to be conducted based on generally accepted government accounting standards used by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).
The committee amended the bill to remove a requirement that copies of completed audit reports be sent to the Department of Administration's Finance Division and the Attorney General's Office and to add language allowing the joint committee to direct agency reviews.
Opponents of the bill - such as House Minority Leader Pro Tempore Kayla Young, D-Kanawha - raised concerns about taking the accounting standards out of the bill and whether the bill provided authority for legislative leadership to limit the publication of audits and reports.
"As you all can probably tell, I really don't like this bill," Young said. "I think our Legislative Auditor's Office is incredibly important ... their independence, their accuracy, the way that they do things. We have one of the best Legislative Auditors in the country. We have had countless politicians in West Virginia go to prison because they weren't doing their job well. And since this auditor's office came in about 30 years ago, that has decreased massively. I think more transparency is absolutely always better. And that this bill removes a lot of the transparency."
House Government Organization Committee Vice Chairman Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, said SB 687 returns control of the Legislative Auditor to lawmakers versus having its own discretion.
"It's a good bill," McGeehan said. "It places elected officials and elevates us in code over an important office. And I think elected officials should be at the top of the food chain here. I don't know about some of my colleagues in the minority, but we tend to believe in hierarchy. The people elected us, and we should be directing which agencies to be audited since we are supposed to be closest to the people."
The committee also recommended Senate Bill 844, redesignating the Educational Broadcasting Authority as the Educational Broadcasting Commission, for passage to the full House. The bill reduces the number of members to the renamed EBA as well as their terms.
The bill also places authority to hire the executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB) in the hands of the cabinet secretary for the Department of Arts, Culture, and History, effectively putting an official of the Governor's Office in charge of WVPB and its educational and cultural programming, as well as its newsroom.
Randall Reid-Smith -- the cabinet secretary for the Department of Arts, Culture, and History - did not address the issues regarding supervision of the WVPB news division, but he said putting the executive director of WVPB within his department was meant to help streamline things.
"I feel that when we're together, we're stronger," Reid-Smith said. "And so nobody's out there by themselves ... this is just to strengthen us."