Oak Hill, WV (WOAY) – State Sen. Brian Helton, R-9th District, is calling for a legislative oversight hearing to determine how money from West Virginia’s school clothing voucher program is being spent, after the state shut down this year’s applications.
The School Clothing Allowance Program provides lower-income families a $200 voucher for back-to-school clothing through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The state opened applications July 20 and closed them seven days later, saying the money had run out after 52,000 applications.
The shutdown came weeks after West Virginia reported a $370 million surplus, and it drew criticism from state Treasurer Larry Pack.
A week after applications closed, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said he had been told nearly half the voucher money was being pulled out as cash at ATMs.
Helton said the ATM withdrawals concern him.
“As chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, I’m going to work tirelessly through our legislative oversight process to figure out where that money’s going and why it’s available as a cash benefit to adults to be able to utilize an ATM instead of going directly towards its intended purpose, which is to help children have clothing,” Helton said.
He wants the voucher cards restricted so the funds can be used only for children’s clothing.
“My committee, we’re going to go full tilt to work with the governor’s office to make sure we uncover how this happened, and we uncover how we can eliminate this moving forward for West Virginians and our most vulnerable children across our state,” he said.
Helton also argued the program was tracking close to last year’s participation when it was halted.
“Last year, there were 57,000 total applicants. This year, when the program was brought to a halt, it was at 52,000. And now that doesn’t account for the mail-in applications that come in and the applications that come in from offices across the state. So it appears the funding level is going to be at or near what it was in the previous year,” he said.
Helton said the oversight work will begin right away.
“We’re going to have our oversight meeting on this next week … we’re going to have people from the department come in and testify to this and talk about how this occurred, talk about the details in and out of this, so that we can come up with solutions of how we solve it moving forward. Because we have to eliminate this possibility,” he said.
