by Amelia Ferrell Knisely, West Virginia Watch
May 20, 2025

On a Thursday evening in Parkersburg, a group of local residents gathered to discuss West Virginia foster care — a system that is struggling from top to bottom with thousands of kids in care.

A moderator asked foster and biological parents, child welfare workers, judges and others to describe their experience with the system. 

Their responses: “Challenging.” “Overwhelming.” “Traumatizing.” “Broken.”

“Nobody would listen. Nobody would talk to me,” said Lisa Easter, who had more than 50 foster children in her home in 25 years. 

Julie Jones stopped fostering after Child Protective Services went months without checking on a newborn baby in her care. She was mailed a blank birth certificate and worried if the state was aware of the child’s whereabouts. “I couldn’t do it any longer,” she said.

In the corner of the room, new Department of Human Services Secretary Alex Mayer listened as people described a frustrating system riddled with inconsistencies, staffing shortages, an overwhelmed judicial system, limited support and children who have been victims of it all. 

Mayer, who came from South Dakota, believes it can be fixed. It’s going to take time, he says, but work is underway. He is focused on accountability, transparency and putting in processes that aren’t in place for consistency. He wants more in-state programs that can help kids with behavioral health struggles. 

“It’s going to be incremental over time,” Mayer said. “I think it’s going to be a long road until we have everything addressed confidently … You’ll be seeing here shortly some really positive steps.”

A federal judge recently said West Virginia’s foster care system has suffered from “shocking neglect” and “bureaucratic indifference.” 

There’s a shortage of social workers, support services and safe homes for children in a state that is fastest to remove children from homes and terminate parental rights. Too many children have ended up living in hotel rooms, and the state spent $70 million last year sending foster kids to out-of-state group homes. 

“The thing that was shocking to me was the number of kids in care,” Mayer said. 

There are more than 6,100 children in West Virginia foster care, and the number has skyrocketed during the state’s drug crisis. The state’s high poverty rate has contributed to the number, too.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey appointed 37–year-old Mayer to oversee DoHS.

Mayer will have to grapple with pervasive foster care problems as the Trump administration proposes cuts to programs that serve families in poverty and help vulnerable kids. The state could see a decline in federal funding, impacting programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that are intertwined with child welfare. DoHS also oversees Medicaid, SNAP and more.

“Child welfare is a very intricate, complex system, and there’s a lot of different players, which … obviously increases the level of complexity,” Mayer said. “I’ve been really intentional and just trying to get out to learn the system.”

Residents of Wood County attend a child welfare community listening session at the Wood County Resilience Center in Parkersburg, W.Va., on May 15, 2025. The meeting was facilitated by the West Virginia Department of Human Services. (Amelia Ferrell Knisely | West Virginia Watch)

‘I just have a passion for helping’

Mayer, who was adopted, spent time in the military before working at a residential facility that served people with severe mental illnesses He later worked in South Dakota’s state government, dealing with SNAP and child welfare. 

“Different steps in my life have led me down this path,” he said. “Over time, I think I’ve just developed this passion for solving problems, which I think has inherently then created this desire to support families and kids … I just have a passion for helping.”

He has spent the last few months traveling the state meeting with his staff, touring residential facilities and trying to understand how the system works. 

The federal government is continuing its oversight of West Virginia’s foster care system after it was flagged for sending too many children with disabilities to group homes. The state still sends children with disabilities to group homes and treatment centers at a rate three times the national average. 

Two-hundred and seventy children are in out-of-state facilities around the county — some miles away from their biological families — because the state doesn’t have enough in-state beds that can serve children’s complex needs. The state’s CPS workers are required to visit kids once a month. 

Mayer said he’s examining where the state could increase specialized care, like being able to serve children with aggressive or sexualized behaviors who aren’t able to be served in a traditional foster home.

“We don’t have placements for these kids. Well, that’s not an option anymore,” he said. “And, if those placements aren’t here … then we have to find a way to make that happen, because we want to keep kids as close as possible to their support network for a variety of reasons.”

There’s a shortage of foster families, and Mayer hopes to bolster recruitment and support services. 

He noted that a glaring shortage  of after school and summer programs for teens, which could be useful in helping working parents take in teenagers in foster care. Teens ages 13 to 17 are the most common age group in state foster care.

There’s also a need for creating agency processes that will breed consistently in decision making across the state, Mayer said. Child welfare cases involve a number of stakeholders — judges, attorneys, CPS workers and others — who all have an opinion and sometimes decision making about a child’s future. 

“I think our practice model is one of those pieces that needs some real work,” he said.

Earlier this year, Mayer pushed back on a Republican-sponsored bill, which ultimately failed, that would have mandated an outside audit of the foster care system. Mayer vowed changes to lawmakers without a study. 

Potential federal funding changes under Trump

West Virginia’s foster care system relies on federal and state funding, and there’s some unpredictability in spending due to kids fluctuating in and out of care and the rising price of out-of-state facilities. 

Lawmakers, who have struggled in recent years to get a handle on the agency’s spending, allocated more than $300 million to foster care in their recently-passed budget. Their 2026 budget bill mandated that DoHS spend some money on designated line items to prevent the agency from shifting money around to pay bills. But Morrisey vetoed that idea, saying it was too restrictive for DoHS. 

The Republican governor,  who wants to reign in state spending, also vetoed line item funding for programs that support babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and foster children.

Mayer said that right now, he doesn’t think the department needs additional funding to tackle the crisis. It will likely rely on partnerships with the faith-based community, businesses and others that provide services to help children and families, he said.

“I think we just need to get more attention on what is it going to take?” he said. “I don’t know what that funding would be, or if it needs to be anything.”

The state’s federal funding could change since Republicans in Washington have proposed cuts to SNAP and Medicaid — a program that provides health insurance to West Virginia foster children and half of all children in the state. 

“We’ve been watching that really intently,” Mayer said regarding the potential federal changes.

This month, he has traveled around the state for additional foster care listening sessions in towns including Beckley, Burlington and Wheeling to hear from families, CPS workers and others. It’s important, he said. The outside firm leading the sessions will compile a report detailing problems and potential solutions.

“I’m kind of excited to see, you know, what we’re able to accomplish here,” he said.

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.

The post New Human Services secretary inherited a broken WV foster care system. He promises improvements. appeared first on westvirginiawatch.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content presents a detailed critique of the West Virginia foster care system, emphasizing systemic failures, staffing shortages, and the consequences of budget cuts, often associated with conservative fiscal policies. While it includes voices from government officials like Secretary Alex Mayer and Governor Patrick Morrisey (a Republican), it highlights concerns about the impact of Republican-led budget decisions and federal GOP proposals to cut social programs. The article maintains a focus on social welfare and support for vulnerable children, reflecting a perspective sympathetic to increased accountability and resources for public services, which is commonly aligned with center-left viewpoints. However, it maintains a balanced tone by including responses from government officials and avoiding overt partisan language.

SUMMARY: The weather for the upcoming week will start off nice with mostly sunny skies and a high of 76°F. A low-pressure system in the Dakotas will bring rain starting Tuesday night, continuing through Friday, with possible severe weather, including winds and hail. Rainfall amounts could reach up to one to two inches in some areas. The weather will be cooler than average in the Ohio Valley and parts of the North Central Plains, while warmer conditions are expected in Florida and on the West Coast. The weekend will bring some drier conditions, though nighttime showers may return by Sunday.

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U.S. House Republicans aim to ban state-level AI laws for 10 years

by Paige Gross, West Virginia Watch
May 19, 2025

A footnote in a budget bill U.S. House Republicans are trying to pass before Memorial Day is the first major signal for how Congress may address artificial intelligence legislation, as they seek to create a moratorium on any AI laws at the state level for 10 years.

The measure, advanced Wednesday as part of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s budget reconciliation proposal, says a state may not enforce any law or regulation on AI models and systems, or automated decision-making systems in the next 10 years. Exceptions would include laws that “remove legal impediments to, or facilitate the deployment or operation of” AI systems.

“No one believes that AI should be unregulated,” said California Rep. Jay Obernolte, a Republican member of the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, during a markup Wednesday. But he said he believes that responsibility should fall to Congress, not the states. 

The AI law moratorium was packaged with a budget line item proposing to spend $500 million modernizing federal IT programs with commercial AI systems through 2035.

This move by House Republicans is not really out of left field, said Travis Hall, director for State Engagement at tech policy and governance organization Center for Democracy and Technology. Many have been itching to create a preemptive federal law to supersede AI legislation in the states.

At a Senate Commerce Committee session earlier this month, Chairman Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said it was in his plans to create “a regulatory sandbox for AI” that would prevent state overregulation and promote the United States’ AI industry. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, once open to AI regulations, testified that the country’s lack of regulation is what contributed to his success.

“I think it is no accident that that’s happening in America again and again and again, but we need to make sure that we build our systems and that we set our policy in a way where that continues to happen,” Altman said.  

As the language of the bill stands, Congress would prohibit enforcement of any existing laws on AI and decision-making systems, and nullify any potential laws that could be put forth over the next decade, Hall said. Though they discussed AI research last year, Congress has not put forward any guidelines or regulations on AI.

“I will say what feels very different and new about this particular provision … both in terms of conversations about artificial intelligence and in terms of other areas of tech and telecom policy, is the complete lack of any regulatory structure that would actually be preempting the state law,” Hall said.

States have been developing their own laws around AI and decision-making systems — software that helps analyze and sort data, commonly used for job applications, mortgage lending, banking and in other industries — over the last few years as they await federal legislation. At least 550 AI bills have been introduced across 45 states and Puerto Rico in 2025, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported.

Many of these state laws regulate how AI intertwines with data privacy, transparency and discrimination. Others regulate how children can access these tools, how they can be used in election processes and surround the concept of deepfakes, or computer-generated likenesses of real people.

While lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for federal AI legislation, Hall said he thinks industry pressure and President Donald Trump’s deregulated tech stance won’t allow Congress to effectively act on a preemptive law — “states are stepping into that vacuum themselves.”

On Friday, 40 state attorneys general signed a bipartisan letter to Congress opposing the limitation on state AI legislation. The letter urged Congress to develop a federal framework for AI governance for “high risk” systems that promotes transparency, testing and tool assessment, in addition to state legislation. The letter said existing laws were developed “over years through careful consideration and extensive stakeholder input from consumers, industry, and advocates.”

“In the face of Congressional inaction on the emergence of real-world harms raised by the use of AI, states are likely to be the forum for addressing such issues,” the letter said. “This bill would directly harm consumers, deprive them of rights currently held in many states, and prevent State AGs from fulfilling their mandate to protect consumers.”  

A widesweeping AI bill in California was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, citing similar industry pressure. Senate Bill 1047 would have required safety testing of costly AI models to determine whether they would likely lead to mass death, endanger public infrastructure or enable severe cyberattacks.

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Bay Area Democrat, has found more success with the Automated Decisions Safety Act this year, but said as a regulatory lawyer, she would favor having a federal approach.

“We don’t have a Congress that is going to do what our communities want, and so in the absence of their action, the states are stepping up,” she said.

The moratorium would kill the Automated Decisions Safety Act and nullify all of California’s AI legislation, as well as landmark laws like Colorado’s which will go into effect in February. State Rep. Brianna Titone, a sponsor of Colorado’s law, said people are hungry for some regulation.

“A 10 year moratorium of time is astronomical in terms of how quickly this technology is being developed,” she said in an email to States Newsroom. “To have a complete free-for-all on AI with no safeguards puts citizens at risk of situations we haven’t yet conceived of.”

Hall is skeptical that this provision will advance fully, saying he feels legislators will have a hard time trying to justify this moratorium in a budget bill relating to updating aging IT systems. But it’s a clear indication that the focus of this Congress is on deregulation, not accountability, he said.

“I do think that it’s unfortunate that the first statement coming out is one of abdication of responsibility,” Hall said, “as opposed to stepping up and doing the hard work of actually putting in place common sense and, like, actual protections for people that allows for innovation.”

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.

The post U.S. House Republicans aim to ban state-level AI laws for 10 years appeared first on westvirginiawatch.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

This content presents information about a legislative effort led by House Republicans to impose a moratorium on state AI regulations, framing it within the context of federal preemption and deregulation. It highlights perspectives favoring market-driven innovation and federal control (typically associated with conservative or center-right views), as well as concerns raised by Democrats, state officials, and advocacy groups about consumer protections and AI safety. The article balances reporting on Republican initiatives and Democratic/state opposition without heavy editorializing, but the emphasis on Republican leadership and deregulation agenda suggests a center-right slant.