The House Committee on Finance heard a presentation from the West Virginia Office of the Attorney General during their committee meeting at 9 a.m. on Jan. 11 in 460-M.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey presented an overview of the office’s responsibilities, followed by a presentation of the office’s financial standing and requests for the fiscal year of 2019.
Morrissey reported that his office facilitated approximately $40 million over the course of the last five fiscal years, and approximately $13 million in savings since Dec. 2015, primarily through the office’s work to reduce Social Security fraud reduction.
Morrissey emphasized the ability of his office to locate and reduce financial fraud within the state of West Virginia, and maintained that any reduction of his staff in the year of 2019 would reduce this efficiency and add to cost through increasing a greater reliance on outside counsel to carry out the tasks of the office. For this reason, Morrissey requests state appropriations to his office that are equivalent to the amount of money they received in the fiscal year of 2018, and within the constraints of the budget recommendations.
“We are aggressive when it comes to finding fraud,” Morrissey said. “You will get a return on your investment.”
As far as budget requests for the fiscal year of 2019, Morrissey asked the Finance Committee to consider transferring the jurisdiction of the Medicare Fraud Control Unit to the hands of the Attorney General’s Office. Morrissey said that 43 states allocate the responsibility of finding Medicare fraud to the attorney general’s office, and that West Virginia should not be an outlier in this matter.
“We have the fraud experience,” said Morrissey. “And from a fiscal integrity perspective, it’s nice to have a fresh pair of outside eyes to examine this issue.”
The West Virginia Attorney General’s Office ultimately stated a goal for 2019 to streamline operations in order to save taxpayer dollars and maintain transparency.
Delegate Paul Espinosa (R-Jefferson, District 66) said he was eager to work with the Attorney General’s Office on this matter. He spoke upon the idea that because the Department of Health and Human Services has the second largest budget after education, that he appreciates the amount of discretion that this budget request would bring to the state on the issue of fraud.
