By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s administration agreed to pay a seven-figure sum of taxpayer money for consulting services on a federal rural health funding application heavily touted by Morrisey to a consulting firm that he once accused of fueling West Virginia’s opioid crisis.
Morrisey’s office agreed in September to pay $1.9 million in fees to McKinsey & Company Inc., Washington, D.C., a firm within a global McKinsey umbrella of firms, for six weeks of consulting on West Virginia’s application to the federal Rural Health Transformation program established in July through the Republican-crafted One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Morrisey has framed the plan application as a product of public input, saying at a Nov. 5 news conference in Charleston that his administration took “a very inclusive approach” to the application. It followed a statewide tele-townhall, his office said in a news release on the day the state reported it submitted the application to the federal government.
But the state’s agreement with McKinsey went unmentioned in the news conference and release. The $1.9 million fee sum signed off on by Governor’s Office Chief Financial Officer Jamion Wolford on Sept. 16 in the agreement, obtained by the Gazette-Mail through a Freedom of Information Act request, hadn’t been made public.
Image courtesy of Charleston Gazette-Mail