1. United States
2. W.V.
3. Letter

Governor Morrisey, West Virginians deserve honesty, not political spin. Your administration is trying to rewrite what people are seeing with their own eyes. Families are being denied School Clothing Allowances while your communications office insists everything is fine and support will “match or exceed” last year’s levels. Those two realities cannot both be true. If West Virginia truly has a budget surplus measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars, why are children being told there isn’t enough money for basic necessities like school clothes? A surplus means the state has choices. Your administration is choosing tax cuts and political priorities over vulnerable children. Your statement also attempts to shift blame to prior administrations, COVID funding, and a broken eligibility system. Even if those problems are real, they do not excuse the decisions your administration is making today. You asked voters to trust you to govern, not to spend months pointing fingers while children lose assistance. You claim to be protecting TANF for the future while simultaneously reducing confidence in programs families depend on today. Fiscal responsibility should not mean balancing the books on the backs of low-income children, grandparents raising grandchildren, foster families, and working parents already struggling with rising costs. I’m also deeply concerned that your administration is presenting these cuts as unavoidable while Congress has enacted policies expected to reduce federal support for states over time. West Virginians deserve transparency about how federal policy changes will affect Medicaid, SNAP, and other safety-net programs—not messaging designed to obscure those impacts. I am asking you to: • Fully fund the School Clothing Allowance without reducing access for eligible children. • Release complete, transparent data showing applications received, approvals, denials, waitlists, and available funding. • Explain why state surplus dollars cannot be used to prevent eligible children from losing assistance. • Stop blaming previous administrations and take responsibility for the choices your administration is making today. Children should never become line items in a political messaging campaign. West Virginians elected leaders to solve problems—not manufacture excuses while families are left behind. Do your job. :::writing If you’re sending this specifically to Governor Morrisey, I can make it even sharper. If you’re sending it to legislators as well, I’d adjust the closing to urge them to reject any supplemental budget that fails to fully restore the School Clothing Allowance and require public reporting on TANF spending.