Local board members reflect on first meeting of West Virginia First Foundation

Board, former chair of the Marion County Chamber of Commerce and an executive with Mon Health, was elected in July to represent Region 4 on the foundation’s board. He said the 11-member board had a very productive first meeting.

“It’s a room full of doers, and we were able to accomplish a lot in a really quick timeline,” he said. “This is a foundation that’s being started from the ground up, and there was a lot to cover really quickly.”

The meeting included the election of officers, administrative details related to setting up bank accounts and a discussion of personnel matters, officials said during a press conference Monday afternoon.

Stutler, the superintendent of Harrison County Schools, was appointed to the board by Gov. Jim Justice. She was elected Monday to serve as secretary of the board’s executive committee.

“We’ll have meetings outside of the normal board meetings,” she said. “I was happy to do that.”

Monday’s meeting also included a discussion of the foundation’s bylaws and an overview of its finances, Stutler said.

The board consists of six members elected in regional meetings over the summer and five members appointed by Justice.

Region 4 includes county and local governments in Monongalia, Braxton, Lewis, Harrison, Marion, Preston, Taylor, Tucker, Barbour, Randolph, Gilmer, Doddridge and Upshur counties.

The board members, along with an executive director, will determine how the foundation will use 72.5% of the state’s opioid lawsuit settlement funds. Around 24% of the funds will go directly to local governments throughout the state. The state will hold the remaining funds in escrow.

Matthew Harvey, the prosecuting attorney for Jefferson County who was elected to serve as the board’s chair, said Monday that funds for county and local governments will be distributed “this calendar year.”

Board and Stutler both confirmed Harvey’s comment, saying the $73.5 million allotted for local governments is expected to be disbursed before the end of 2023.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is responsible for choosing an executive director candidate, who must be approved by the foundation’s board. On Monday, Morrisey said it was “premature” to make an announcement about a potential candidate.

“I’m optimistic that this is going to be an exciting opportunity for whoever is going to be named the executive director,” he said.

Potential executive directors were disused Monday after the public portion of the meeting, Board said.

“We expect them to be singularly focused on the issue of substance abuse and mitigating substance abuse here in the state of West Virginia,” he said. “We take that very seriously, and I’m excited because I think there are very good people that are presented in this matter.”

At the end of June, Morrisey announced that DRiWaterstone Human Capital of Arlington, Virginia, had been contracted to conduct the search for an executive director.

Board members want to chose the most qualified candidate, regardless of where they are from, Board said.

“This board is going to do its part to assure that whoever comes in is the absolute best person for the job,” he said. “We cannot allow us to be blinded by anything that would otherwise challenge this individual’s ability to help this state heal and to bring us out of this public health crisis.”

There isn’t yet a regular schedule for future board meetings, but a virtual meeting is scheduled for next week, according to Stutler.

“They’re talking [about]next week doing a [Microsoft] Teams meeting, like the first of next week,” she said. “That would be the whole board to do a follow-up. They wanted everybody to go home and kind of think about what all they had heard and get a handle on everything we heard in that little bit of time.”