Will Gov. Justice ever take responsibility for anything that’s not a win for WV?

Gov. Jim Justice (sitting) visited Clendenin, W.Va., to present a $2 million Abandoned Mine Lands grant for the development of Gravity Adventure Park on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Office of the Gov. Jim Justice | Courtesy photo)

Often when reporters question Gov. Jim Justice during his weekly briefing, he immediately gets defensive, as if the reporter is accusing him of being wholly responsible for whatever they’re questioning.

He seems to not realize that as governor, he’s chief executive of West Virginia and should be prepared to respond to the questions put to him. His staff should be briefing him on what reporters are planning to ask, or what they suspect they’ll ask about.

Last week, West Virginia Watch reporter Amelia Ferrell Knisely was planning to cover a legislative interim meeting related to a tragic death at Hopemont Hospital, a state-run facility. Michael Caruso, secretary of the West Virginia Department of Health Facilities, and a representative from Hopemont were supposed to speak at the meeting, but it was canceled. Multiple legislators told Amelia that the governor’s office had canceled it.

The only time reporters can speak with the governor is during his weekly virtual briefing — which the governor was 30 minutes late to this week — so Amelia attended to ask him why the meeting was canceled. 

She asked Justice to “discuss why this meeting was canceled and was it in any effort to hide these details from the public, and what do you think needs to be done to prevent future incidents like this in our state-run hospitals?”

“Well Amelia, first of all, … I want you to know I could take big-time offense about your question because I’m not going to cover anything up,” Justice said, appearing to take big-time offense to her question.

“I don’t control and cancel legislative meetings. … It’s surely under investigation … No one on the planet is going to take things like this more seriously than me, and there is no chance on the planet that we’re ever, ever under any circumstances going to cancel something, cover something up, whatever it may be. Ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. Your question is just unfounded and it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

But her question wasn’t unfounded. Multiple people told her it was the governor’s office who canceled the meeting, so Amelia was doing her job as a reporter to get the governor’s side of the story. It would have been refreshing if Justice had simply responded: “Yes, my office canceled the meeting,” and then explained why.

This isn’t the only thing he refused to take responsibility for during last week’s briefing.

Randy Yohe of West Virginia Public Broadcasting told Justice there’s people “sounding the alarms” about water contamination in Wyoming County’s Indian Creek that is possibly coming from a mine owned by the Justice family’s company. Yohe asked Justice, as the governor and owner of the company, if there was anything he was planning on doing for the people so they could have clean drinking water. 

“I’m all for them having good clean drinking water, but you can‘t blame me on this one,” Justice said. “The companies that we have are so distantly involved with this it’s unbelievable. … DEP’s working on the issue … but this is somebody else’s problem. This is not created by something that we’ve done.”

First thing — these people are West Virginians, so no matter what, it’s the governor’s problem whether he owns the mine or not.

The rest is messy. The Department of Environmental Protection sued Pinn MC Wind Down Co. because the agency determined Pinn MC is the problem. The company then sued Bluestone Resources, owned by the Justice family, because it bought all of Pinn MC’s assets when it went bankrupt. Bluestone denies it is responsible for the mine’s violations, despite acknowledging the purchase. 

This week isn’t the first time that Justice has denied responsibility. 

A month ago at a briefing, MetroNews’ Brad McElhinny questioned Justice about the seven liens filed against The Greenbrier resort for $3.5 million in unpaid sales taxes. 

“I really don’t know anything about this one at all,” Justice said at the time about the company he owns and his daughter runs. “This one I really don’t know a thing in the world about it. Brand new news to me. But I’ll check it out.”

McElhinny gave him about three weeks before asking again during the April 10 briefing, adding that there was an additional $2.5 million in county property taxes. 

“Is the resort having trouble paying or is it willful disregard?” McElhinny asked.

“Brad, to be perfectly honest, maybe I should check,” Justice said. “I don’t know the details. I really don’t. Really and truly I can tell you that if you’ll just go back and look at the track record. …  Yet at the end of the day, things always get paid, don’t they?”

When most of us don’t pay rent, we’re evicted. Or if we don’t pay our mortgage, our house can be foreclosed on. If we don’t make car payments, our car is repossessed. When we don’t pay utilities on time, utilities are turned off. And a lot of West Virginians deal with that every day. And unfortunately a lot of people look down on those people who can’t afford their bills. So why is it OK for a billionaire — whoops, I’m sorry, millionaire — to not pay their bills on time? 

It’s time for Justice to start owning up to things. It’s not helpful to anyone for him to try to pass off that he’s perfect. West Virginians need a governor who isn’t telling us “the flowers are pretty and we’re proud of ourselves” when there’s tornadoes, floods, contaminated water and people dying under state care.

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