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On the first Friday in April, members of the House of Delegates stood in prayer for flood victims in West Virginia. Soon afterwards, Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, asked the body to do something else to help them.
He proposed putting $50 million in the state budget to protect from future floods.
“We have the ability to do something earthly,” Hornbuckle said. “The power that we have — not just the divine power — but with a button and a pen that we all have to help out neighbors in the great state of West Virginia.”
Delegates rejected the idea, 75-19.
Nearly two months after southern West Virginia was devastated by severe flooding, lawmakers have once again not put money towards flood protection.
More than 300 residents in McDowell — one of the two counties hardest hit by the floods — haven’t cleaned out their homes yet, according to Rev. Brad Davis.
“There’s still a lot of need,” said Davis, who pastors five United Methodist churches in southern West Virginia.
Down in the Matoaka area in Mercer County, the community has mostly cleaned up from the floods. Now, folks are focusing on rebuilding what was lost.
“They’re still repairing, but they’re trying to live life as normal as we can right now,” said Matoaka native Alicia Vest. She has been helping with outreach efforts to neighbors in her community since the flooding began, so in early April, she was just beginning to clean up the mud on her own restaurant floors while she talked.
While folks rebuild and repair their communities, frustration is also brewing as no funding — either for a disaster relief package or future mitigation efforts — has been part of the state’s legislative conversation in the weeks following the deadly floods.
After the historic 2016 floods, West Virginia leaders created the State Resiliency Office and tasked it with protecting residents from future floods.
In 2023, lawmakers created a special trust fund to help the office protect communities, especially those with low-income households, from flooding as well as to implement recommendations from a state flood plan, completed in June 2024.
But lawmakers have never allocated money to that fund.
Neither version of this year’s budget proposed by the House of Delegates or the Senate currently allocates any money into the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. And Morrisey didn’t ask for funding in his budget proposal, either.
Robert Martin, director of the office, told a legislative committee in December 2023 that there were “probably projects right now we’d be able to execute if we had what we were looking to do either with federal or state dollars.”
And as of last November, the office was still looking to secure funding.
Hornbuckle attempted to amend the House’s budget bill, offering an amendment that would transfer $50 million from the state’s Rainy Day Fund into the flood fund. The Rainy Day Fund is a savings account that the state officials can use for emergencies — and have done, including for past flood disasters.
“This is an issue that’s not going away. We are probably the most ravaged state in the United States that’s been hit by flooding, and it’s worsening. And it’s worsening by the day,” he said. “We need the money, and we need it now.”
Del. Clay Riley, R-Harrison, urged the body to reject the amendment, saying that they were advised to not withdraw money from the state’s emergency fund because it could harm West Virginia’s bond rating. Last year, the Legislature approved a formula change that would put less money into the Rainy Day Fund and more into underfunded social programs.
Hornbuckle also introduced a measure earlier in the session that would have placed $250 million into the flood fund. However, that bill didn’t go anywhere.
When asked whether he thinks any money will be allocated to flood relief or mitigation efforts, Davis said, “I’m hopeful, but I don’t see it happening.”
“Why would they do it now when they’ve had all session?”
Reach reporter Sarah Elbeshbishi at sarah@mountainstatespotlight.org
