Why did an Ohio Catholic school get $5 million intended for water infrastructure in West Virginia?
A portion of the grant to The College of St. Joseph the Worker is intended for anti-abortion advocacy
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How did a Catholic school in Ohio manage to snag $5 million of taxpayer dollars from a fund reserved for water infrastructure improvements in West Virginia, even though the school openly admits a large chunk of that money will go towards anti-abortion advocacy?
Everything about this is shady, yet Republican lawmakers in the state are predictably doing nothing to prevent the transfer of money from happening.
In 2022, in the wake of COVID, the U.S. government passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, and West Virginia’s Water Development Authority soon announced that $250 million of that money under their purview would be distributed via what they called the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund. Basically, non-profits or government agencies could apply for money to build things like “a water system, a wastewater/sewer system, stormwater system or an economic development type project.” That’s all perfectly fine. After all, these were secular projects that would benefit people across the state.
When the agency released its list of grant recipients this past October, one of them raised some eyebrows: $5 million had been awarded to the College of St. Joseph the Worker, a private Catholic trade school based in Steubenville, Ohio.
The project consists of the acquisition, construction, and equipping of multiple education facilities for the in-class and on-site training of the five major construction trades of HVAC, carpentry, masonry, electrical, and plumbing (including areas for tools and equipment storage), materials for training, and all necessary appurtenances thereto
On one level, this might be okay. Even if this was a private Ohio-based Catholic institution, it’s possible they would be working on (secular) water-related projects to benefit the state of West Virginia. If you wanted to fight that in court, you’d have an uphill battle at this point.
But the description didn’t suggest anything like that. The summary said the money would go toward construction of buildings at the college so that they could teach various trades. West Virginia wasn’t going to be a direct beneficiary of any of this.
That grant, by the way, was the largest on the list. The next closest was worth $1,257,495, roughly a quarter of what the Catholic college would receive.
It was also bizarre because the college just opened up in the fall. This place doesn’t have a track record of success. They don’t have evidence that their graduates perform trade work in other states because they literally don’t have any graduates yet. The whole college exists in a small building next to an auto care store.
It seemed like they were just tapping into West Virginia’s coffers—with money intended for specific water projects—in order to build up a private religious school in ways that wouldn’t help West Virginia at all. Unless, of course, these students were being trained in order to later move to WV and build various projects… but that wasn’t guaranteed at all.
But wait! It gets worse! According to the grant application, acquired by reporter Steven Allen Adams of the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, the money wasn’t just for construction of these buildings!
According to information provided from several state agencies through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the College’s grant proposal for the $5 million would allow the school to expand across the river into West Virginia for several training programs, a satellite campus, scholarships, and the creation of a think tank focused on social conservative public policy.
Specifically, the grant would be used as follows:
$2,150,000 to create a “construction and real estate development company” in Weirton, West Virginia.
$1,650,000 to recruit West Virginia students (through scholarships and dorms) with the expectation that about 20% of them would return to the state after graduation.
$200,000 to create a second campus in West Virginia.
$1,000,000 for “advocacy activities.” Specifically, they intend to expand into bioethics ($250,000) and hope to build a research facility called “Center for the Common Good” in order to “support broadly life-affirming policy in West Virginia” ($750,000).
Wait, what?! They want that much money to promote anti-abortion policies?! And the state gave it to them?! Even though—I repeat—this money was intended for water infrastructure projects?! And even though the school is a registered non-profit, which means any “advocacy” would have to exclude lobbying work?
Adams later explained how this “research center” would function:
This think tank would focus on conservative public policy – specifically citing abortion and immigration/border policy as examples – using research, op-eds, speeches, educational tools, presentations, and proposals for the West Virginia Legislature.
How that helps West Virginia with water issues is anyone’s guess.
So how the hell did this happen?
When college officials announced that they received the grant, they said they planned to invest $10 million in expansion, with half that money now coming from West Virginia taxpayers. That press release didn’t say anything about the “advocacy” aspect of the grant. Incidentally, the $5 million grant is far more than the school’s entire net worth right now, according to the Coal Valley News:
The $5 million is nearly double the $2,583,421 that College of St. Joseph the Worker Inc. reported as its fair market value of all assets for calendar year 2023, according to its IRS tax records. The College of St. Joseph the Worker Inc. reported receiving $806,701 in contributions, gifts and grants for calendar year 2023 — less than a sixth of the state’s $5 million grant.
That makes the planned $10 million overall investment even more questionable since they don’t have anywhere near that kind of money.
Republican WV lawmaker Del. Pat McGeehan, who was directly involved in facilitating the school’s grant application, praised the move just before Christmas, saying, “I’m thrilled about this project for our people in the Northern Panhandle, especially for our young men and women.” He added that this project was bigger than just infrastructure:
“The College of Saint Joseph the Worker is unique, insofar as it offers a holistic approach to shaping young men and women — one reason why I’m excited about it,” McGeehan said. “Nowhere in in the United States is there an institution that simultaneously trains the mind in the humanities while also in the manual trades.”
…
“Many of the problems our state suffers from are downstream of faltering local communities, weakened family bonds, and a younger generation without practical skills, who are quite often steeped in university debt,” McGeehan continued. “I’ll continue to do what I can to help reverse this trend.”
By that logic, a school that offered to build the state a single water tank could apply for water infrastructure funding even if a significant portion of the money would be spent training anti-LGBTQ activists.
When the Parkersburg News and Sentinel asked WV officials about this, the reporter got the cold shoulder:
When asked about whether it was appropriate for EEGF dollars to be used to create a conservative public policy think tank, the Governor’s Office avoided the question.
“Any additional educational or ethical components mentioned in the application are secondary and fall outside the scope of the administration’s main focus: to get newly-trained workers in the workforce as quickly as possible,” [C.J. Harvey, communications director for Gov. Jim Justice] said.
They’re not secondary. They’re part of the project! They were listed in the application! A million dollars is a million dollars, even if “advocacy” was the last thing mentioned in the list.
The problem isn’t just the awarding of this grant for dubious reasons; there may also have been some laws broken. All funds dispensed through the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund are supposed to be approved by three different cabinet officials, including the Secretary of Economic Development. But the WDA Executive Director Marie Prezioso said she didn’t have those recommendations on file.
What’s also bizarre about this grant is that West Virginia has plenty of trade schools already, including in the Northern Panhandle. They could have encouraged those schools to apply for grants that would have benefitted state residents—and students at those colleges; instead they threw millions of dollars across the state border so that maybe, one day in the future, some of it might return to them. It makes no sense at all. Unless water was just the vehicle this college used to get a generous taxpayer-funded donation for their anti-abortion activism.
State Senator-elect Joey Garcia, a Democrat, called this whole move “unsettling” in a post online:
The state’s Democratic Party and the ACLU also criticized the grant, with the ACLU saying it would be “monitoring the situation,” suggesting a lawsuit could be forthcoming:
“Tens of thousands of West Virginians lack clean drinking water. Funneling $5 million in West Virginia Water Development funds to a highly partisan, out-of-state religious organization is reprehensible and wholly inappropriate,” said ACLU-WV Director Eli Baumwell. “Public money should not be used to promote private, religious interests in other states. We will be monitoring the situation and are prepared to intervene if necessary.”
“This decision is an insult to every West Virginian who is struggling to access clean drinking water,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Del. Mike Pushkin. “West Virginia tax dollars should support clean drinking water and functional infrastructure, not funding for out-of-state pet projects.”
Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough elected Democrats in the state to call for an investigation. If Republicans aren’t going to do anything, nothing will happen. A lawsuit may be the only way to claw the money back.
As if the world needed another example of the disconnect between religion and morality. Not one cent of public money should ever go to any religious organization for any reason.
Holy water doesn't make itself. You need highly skilled and trained workers to say the right magic words.