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It's no wonder the federal government doesn't really know how to interact with West Virginia state agencies.
Sometimes we're ahead of the game, other times we are slow spenders -- and others, it appears we simply do not do what we said we would do.
The latter is the case with more than half a million dollars the state requested from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention back in 2020.
The money was to be used to collect firearm injury data from emergency rooms and use that information to prevent and respond to future shootings, according to a report by Mountain State Spotlight.
Between 2016 and 2021, firearms were the third-leading cause of injury deaths in West Virginia. Under the pretense that officials at the state Department of Health wanted to do something about that, they asked for funding and got it.
They collected data, sure -- even came up with the beginnings of a plan, according to Mountain State Spotlight.
Elements of that plan included connecting older adults with lock boxes and new gun owners with safety classes.
It was implementing that plan that didn't seem worth the effort.
Now, the CDC wants its money back.
Well, $454,000 of the $525,000 allocated, anyway.
Mountain State Spotlight says when it asked West Virginia Department of Health spokesperson Annie Moore why the money was not used for its intended purpose, she did not give an answer.
And according to the news organization, the failure to make good on its first round of assurances has also cost West Virginia further funding.
Mountain State Spotlight reports the CDC did not award the state health department money as part of the next round of firearm protection grants.
"I would say that's a loss of an opportunity," Kayla Shaw, executive director of the senior center in Pocahontas County, told Mountain State Spotlight.
That's putting it politely.
We know there wasn't (initially) a lack of money. There doesn't seem to have been a lack of workers or willing partners to get the ball rolling.
No, this failure was purely a lack of will.
And that is a shame.