Charges Possible Against West Virginia DHHR Employees

Kanawha County Prosecutor Mark Plants may order charges versus three West Virginia state workers who supposedly intervened with a multimillion-dollar marketing pact, according to the Charleston Daily Mail.

Department of Health and Human Resources’ Inspector General David Bishop recently handed Plants findings on the happening in question.  This resulted in two whistle blowing suits from DHHR workers who Bishop went after in his investigation.

One of the workers is Susan Perry, the department’s deputy secretary for legal affairs.  Assistant secretary John Law and general counsel Jennifer Taylor are also included.

The suits were put on file last month.  Perry and Taylor criticized the DHHR for a long list of mistakes that they attempted to fix before they were banished from their workplace by the department’s acting Secretary Rocco Fucillo.

The department’s in-house analysis, however, appears to put them blame on them.

A long search warrant in the middle of September litigated Perry, Taylor and Law of illegally getting in the way with the contract signing.

Bishop’s investigation gives more details.

“The basis of the investigation was laid out accurately in the search warrant,” Plants said Wednesday.

The attorney for Perry and Taylor essentially deemed the detailed search warrant a “press release”.  This suggests that the warrant could be for the DHHR to protect itself from soaring public abuse.  The warrant allowed DHHR to take hold of evidence that they already possessed.

Bishop would not publically speak about the findings or any other details of the situation.

“As a general rule, if it is a more complex type situation, you want to make sure you can get everybody the information you can,” Bishop said, recommending that a judge may demand a complete clarification of a warrant before it passes.

The workers are believed to have knocked other department members’ decision making in giving the contract to the top candidate.  An evaluation of West Virginia’s document acquisition exhibits plenty of evidence that DHHR gave the top potential buyer, Fahlgren Mortine of Ohio, a small margin of victory over hopeful buyer, the Arnold Agency from Charleston.

Plants stated that the case folder is in his office.  The case entails a notebook full of proof and witness declarations, to go with Bishop’s observations.

“These allegations are a white collar crime, and typically white collar crime is document-driven so it takes me more time to sift through the thousands of pages we have to sift through,” Plants said.

For the time being, the DHHR’s in-house evaluation is not going public.

DHHR has appointed an external legal group that will counter Perry and Taylor’s lawsuits on November 16.