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A clip from Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing” came to mind last week. C.J. Cregg, the press secretary for fictional President Josiah Bartlet, confronts reporter Danny Concannon, who is writing a story after obtaining a document laying out the president’s first-term fails.
Cregg is not happy about this, but Concannon defends the piece, arguing that just because it’s bad news for the Bartlet White House doesn’t mean it’s not news.
"None of this is our fault. ... You guys are stuck in the mud around here, and none of it is the fault of the press," Concannon shouts at Cregg.
As journalists, it's our job to report what is happening accurately. And if a government official steps on a metaphorical rake and smacks themselves in the face repeatedly, that same politician cannot get mad at the media for accurately reporting they stepped on a rake.
That appears to be what happened last Wednesday after Gov. Patrick Morrisey had the West Virginia Office of Energy send a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy backing out of potentially being chosen for a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus, seemingly folding after more details came out about the state’s pitch.
This came after earlier reporting last week by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and WV MetroNews that went into detail on the memorandum of understanding Morrisey signed with the DOE on Sept. 2 and the response submitted by the Office of Energy to the DOE’s request for information dated April 1.
No one should have been surprised that the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel was part of the state’s plans. The DOE made it clear that a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus would co-locate "functions such as fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing used nuclear fuel, and disposition of waste" all on one site.
It was a requirement of the Sept. 2 MOU for the state to include a plan for storage in the host agreement. And the request for information response lays out the details of the state’s NLIC plan, including naming the creation of a consolidated interim storage facility as priority one and research into permanent storage in boreholes or engineered caverns as priority two.
When the Gazette-Mail ran a story Sept. 25 in great detail about the state's proposal, including a focus on interim spent nuclear fuel storage, there was a freakout. That led Morrisey to attack the Gazette-Mail and stating bluntly that "West Virginia will not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste. Period."
Yes, the Gazette-Mail did focus mostly on the nuclear waste issue, but reporter Mike Tony did not get the story wrong. When WV MetroNews Statewide Correspondent Brad McElhinny, after writing about the MOU, asked about how the state could refuse to store spent nuclear fuel when the MOU clearly requires the state to include a plan for such storage, he was told by a spokesperson for Morrisey that the governor's order trumps a "bureaucratic letter."
But by last Wednesday evening, I was breaking the news that West Virginia would no longer seek an NLIC and would not submit a host agreement to the DOE. The media scrutiny of the NLIC proposal was not what caused this. The governor could have always moved forward.
Look, the other five states invited to submit proposals had more than a two-month head start. After doing a quick Google search, it seems like some of these states, such as Idaho and Oklahoma, have done a better job of involving local communities and legislators. Those states all seem to understand what was being asked of them and are moving forward. Did Morrisey not understand?
I get we had less than 30 days to put together a host agreement, but were we seriously not involving the West Virginia Legislature? The document we prepared for the DOE on April 1 lists four possible campus sites, including one in Jefferson County and two in Jackson County.
The DOE first announced the NLIC program in January and the deadline for states to submit responses for requests for information to the DOE was April 1, with the original five states selected in July. In five months, how is it that it took a Freedom of Information Act request filed two weeks ago for these communities to discover they could be a host?
Nuclear energy is one of the safest forms of energy because it has to be. It's one of the most regulated forms of energy. Interim storage on-site at current nuclear power plants is safe. That doesn’t mean that there are not risks. The Morrisey administration could have been working to educate these four local communities for months.
For reasons that remain unknown, West Virginia wasn’t added to the list of states selected in the NLIC project until September. I don't know who, but I suspect someone spent some political capital to get West Virginia on the list. There are already concerns that Morrisey’s rash action to withdraw could burn some bridges with DOE on other projects the state wants.
This fiasco is just another example of Morrisey and the Governor's Office maintaining a tight grip over messaging and decision-making and not letting their departments and agencies do their jobs. This was a rake that simply didn't have to be stepped on. But Morrisey did and it was our job to describe it.
There are plenty of good things going on under Morrisey’s leadership, such as announcements about billions of potential investments, new energy projects, water and wastewater infrastructure checks being delivered, federal rural healthcare grants being handed out, and more.
But for every one of these good stories, there are stories about the botched pause of TANF dollars for the alleged structural deficit we never seem to hear about anymore, struggles with GOP lawmakers, micromanagement, Morrisey’s focus on personal political fundraising, and the exodus of talented state officials. And again, none of this is the fault of the press.
"I know you're frustrated," Concannon said to Cregg, "but it ain’t nothing compared to the frustration of the people who voted for you."