“Judge me by my deeds.”
That's the request from Gov. Jim Justice in his latest news conference Wednesday, where he said his family's empire is in good hands amid mounting hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and other legal liabilities, both personally and across businesses. I spent a lot of time trying to maintain that. finance.
“Our business continues to perform well and is doing very well,” Justice said.
The judge's defense demonstrated the latest disconnect between his words and the companies' actions.
Shortly thereafter, a judge said he had no knowledge that Greenbrier Hotel Co. owed more than $3.5 million in unpaid sales taxes, interest and penalties, according to a tax lien issued by the state Department of Taxation. He valued the assets at more than $50 million in a financial disclosure report he submitted in response to a request from him to run for Senate.
White Sulfur Springs-based Greenbrier Hotel Corp. has a total value of $3,521,047, according to seven tax liens issued in February by the state Department of Taxation, with a period beginning June 30, 2023. It was for three months until October 31st.
“I really don't know anything about this case,” the judge said at a press conference Wednesday. “I don't know anything in the world about this. It's all new news to me, but I'll check it out.”
The judge promised to hand over the management of the family to his children if he becomes president in 2017. The judge's daughter, Gillian Justice, is the president of the Greenbrier Hotel Corporation, and the governor's son, Jay Justice, is on the board. Co., Ltd.
But the governor has suggested in court proceedings and interviews since taking office that he remains knowledgeable about running coal companies.
“We continue to pay the bills,” the judge said Wednesday.
A series of court decisions and disputes An ever-growing series of court decisions and disputes suggests otherwise.
Roughly 300 West Virginia properties owned by Justice and his businesses, which owe about $400,000 in delinquent taxes, were put up for public auction in June.
About 95% of those properties were sold to other buyers for just over $500,000, according to a Gazette-Mail review of state auditor's office data.
Of the 281 properties secured by other bidders, 95 were in Justice's own name and sold for just over $75,000. Another 15 properties, which were scheduled for about $241,000, received no bids.
Properties in McDowell, Raleigh, and Wyoming counties participated in public auctions held in those counties.
A federal judge this month ordered one of Justice's coal companies to surrender a helicopter for failing to pay a nearly $13 million judgment in favor of the British Virgin Islands company.
That company, Carolen Investments Ltd., said Justice Bluestone Resources is under an obligation under a 2015 agreement to sell coal-producing properties and assets to Bluestone in exchange for cash payments and future royalty payments. He said that he had not fulfilled the requirements.
Last month, a Virginia Circuit Court judge formally denied an attempt by the judge, his family, and a company to preserve documents acknowledging more than $300 million in debt to Virginia bank Carter Bank & Trust. did.
Also last month, a Greenbrier County Circuit Court judge ruled that the Greenbrier Sports Club Corporation, which looms large over the justice's business empire, would not accept Carter Bank's planned auction to recover the club's major assets. A hearing is scheduled for April on a lawsuit seeking to block the move. They claim they are owed money through a 2015 trust deed.
The Greenbrier Sports Club is a private equity club that offers membership to anyone purchasing property at the Greenbrier Resort, owned by Jim Justice.
Some members of the club dispute the Justice family's ownership of the club, arguing instead that they retain an interest in it.
Last month, Indiana-based First Source Bank listed 45 properties, primarily Caterpillar and Ford construction equipment, that it intends to hold as collateral from Bluestone Resources, but First Source claims to have secured unpaid loans in a lawsuit filed against Justice's company for more than $4.5 million. .
Another Justice coal company, Southern Coal Corporation, will not comply with a federal court order ordering it to pay $503,985 in security for financial obligations to a Charleston-based workers' compensation and employers' liability insurance company. He said he couldn't do it.
Insurance company Brickstreet Mutual Insurance Company has filed a lawsuit against Southern, stemming from a judgment that Southern failed to meet its obligations under a 2015 workers' compensation and employer's liability insurance contract with Brickstreet. said he did not comply with orders.
In November 2023, Southern announced that it had failed to repay insurance claims to Brick Street since 2017, failed to pay Brick Street's invoices from May 2019 to June 2020, and actively mined coal. He admitted that he did not have any income, had no bank account, and lacked assets to repay the debt. be liquidated.
Last month, a judge held Southern Coal Corp. in civil contempt for the collateral debt and ordered Southern Coal Corp. to comply with a court order to pay the costs of maintaining the collateral within seven days. He was ordered to pay a fine of $2,500 per day. day to day.
“We will continue to pay our bills.”
Despite many of his business assets being at risk, Justice insisted Wednesday that his business empire is in good shape.
“We will continue to pay our bills,” the judge said. “In terms of the personal things that we have, our family has built an empire and things that employ so many people.”
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled against the Justice family coal company after a jury found the company failed to provide required notice to full-time employees before laying off more than 50 people starting in October 2019. It's been a year since he was awarded a judgment of approximately $1.75 million. Burke Mountain Mine Complex in McDowell County.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, a federal labor law, requires most employers with 100 or more employees to provide at least 60 calendar days' notice before a plant closure or mass layoff. There is.
“These workers are wondering what's going to happen to them,” said Sam Brown Petsonk, a Beckley-based labor attorney who prosecuted the case on behalf of Raleigh County resident Jules Gauthier and other fired employees. “They didn't always have loving warnings about what was going to happen,” he told the Gazette-Mail. last year. “Our people deserve better than that.”
I'm happy to testify, but I don't actually do it
This week, another gap between Justice's words and actions resurfaced beyond the scope of his business empire.
In November, a judge said he was “willing to testify under oath” in a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions in West Virginia's correctional system, even though he has final say over key correctional funding streams. Despite this, I expected that I would have little to say on the matter.
The judge said at a press conference in November that he would “always welcome anyone who would like to testify under oath.” “But we don't want to waste any time on something we don't know anything about.”
The judge's comments come in response to a class-action lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the state-run Southern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility in Raleigh County, where nearly one-fifth of all inmate deaths occur in the state's local jails. was a reaction to the idea that he would testify. The incidents occurred from the beginning of 2009 until May 2023, according to data obtained by the Gazette through a Freedom of Information Act request.
In a proposal filed in federal court two weeks after a federal judge concluded that law enforcement officials intentionally suppressed evidence in the case, state officials would pay $4 million to settle the lawsuit. Agreed.
The plaintiffs, who are Southern District inmates, said the attorney general was knowledgeable about the issues raised in the case and had made the governor's office aware of more than $200 million in maintenance deferrals by the Department of Homeland Security. He pointed to testimony from former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeff Sandys that suggests this.
The plaintiffs allege that the state reversed $28.3 million in previously incurred compensation costs into federal coronavirus relief spending and transferred gifts, grants and contributions administered by the governor's office, rather than reimbursement to the compensation system. It cited a Gazette Mail report saying it was used to fund the account.
The Justice administration will spend $10 million of the $28.3 million to build a new baseball stadium at Marshall University in October 2022.
The judiciary will bring new scrutiny to the state's corrections system after U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar Abulhorn highlighted testimony that state officials failed to follow procedures on legal holds to share evidence in cases. promised.
“We are trying to make things right,” the judge said at a press conference in November.
But on Wednesday, a judge continued to seek to avoid out-of-court sworn testimony in another class-action lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions in the state's correctional system.
The judge said in a court filing Wednesday that he should be removed from office because the topics the plaintiffs want him to testify on fall within his “exercising the state's core prerogatives and policy-making discretion.” He argued that it shouldn't be done.
The lawsuit, filed in August 2023 on behalf of the state's incarcerated inmates, alleges unconstitutional overcrowding, understaffing, and deferred maintenance in the state's correctional facilities. are doing. The complaint alleges that the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sausire deprived inmates of basic human necessities and showed “deliberate indifference to the health and safety of inmates.” There is.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs seek to force the state to spend budget surplus funds to pay for all deferred maintenance repairs needed at the state's correctional facilities totaling at least $270 million. I'm looking for. The lawsuit cited depositions from former Homeland Security secretaries showing maintenance deferrals amounted to between $200 million and $277 million from January 2018 to July 2022.
The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiffs had inadequate food and that plaintiff Tyler Randall was exposed to mold and rodent feces at the Southwestern Regional Jail in Logan County.
The judge testified in November about his oversight of the state's corrections system, saying, “If that's what we have to do to make people feel better and happier, we're willing to do it.” said.
“Eyeballs” are deprived of funds
The judge has touted making education the state's “centerpiece” in his annual State of the State address.
However, under the jurisdiction of the United States, West Virginia is one of the few states that has sought and taken advantage of federal exemptions related to eligible coronavirus relief funds over multiple years. This waiver allows West Virginia to set aside the requirement that the state maintain support for elementary, secondary, and higher education relative to statewide spending in order to be eligible for COVID-19 relief funds. It has become possible.
The American Rescue Plan Act allows the Department of Education to grant waivers from these requirements “for the purpose of reducing the financial burden borne by states in preventing, preparing for, and responding to the coronavirus.”
West Virginia does not meet the 2023 performance standards for elementary, secondary, and higher education and is seeking a waiver. A fiscal impasse has kept the West Virginia Legislature from deliberating, with leadership scrapping some budget priorities, such as putting $50 million into an empty flood recovery fund, while setting aside plans to address those priorities later this spring. The possibility of a special session of Congress to do so was being considered.
Department of Education officials told the Gazette-Mail that five states have outstanding exemption applications. Seven other states have also approved waivers for fiscal year 2022, according to the agency's website.
In a Feb. 21 waiver application, the judge wrote in a letter to the Department of Education that West Virginia is on a trajectory to steadily increase per-pupil education spending, adding that inflation and He noted that spending in areas other than education is increasing at a larger rate. Labor shortages in correctional, nursing, and child welfare fields.
The waiver request has drawn criticism that the state is not spending enough on education.
Tying to Trump, trying to sort things out As he concluded his remarks at Wednesday's briefing, the judge, in self-defense mode, identified himself with former President Donald Trump, whose similarly legally tainted business empire is mired in debt. tied together.
“There are a lot of similarities,” Justice said. “He's got people who really push him in terms of what he's doing.”
The future of Justice's business empire shouldn't be a concern, he insisted.
“It looks like everything is going to be okay at the end of the day,” the governor said.
