Once again, West Virginia squandered millions of taxpayer dollars on jobs that never came

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Once again, West Virginia squandered millions of taxpayer dollars on jobs that never came

Here’s how more than $8 million, earmarked for creating local jobs, went out-of-state.

by Lucas Manfield
February 1st, 2021

In 2019, then-West Virginia Treasurer John Perdue had a problem.

Throughout the 2000s, West Virginia spent nearly $25 million on a controversial program that funneled state money to risky investments. They didn’t pan out, and Perdue wanted to tally up the losses and end the program for good.

But when state employees showed up at the agency tasked with overseeing the program, they were told that years of records weren’t available — and might have been destroyed.

Concerned, Perdue tipped off state auditors, who released a scathing report earlier this week that criticized both the underlying design of the program and the dizzying lack of state oversight that allowed more than $20 million in state funds to evaporate, at least $8 million of it out-of-state.

The seeds of this debacle are ancient history — the millions were given away over a decade ago. But the implications are not.

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