As we have observed before, in an ideal world, government would protect those who need protection most. Sadly, those people do not usually have money and political power, so they tend to fall through the cracks.
West Virginia’s Child Protective Services agency is no stranger to criticism. The agency investigates only about half of its cases within a legally required timeframe. It sometimes has had difficulty determining whether or not specific cases were investigated at all. Just last fall, the agency said it couldn’t find records to prove that investigators had looked into a report about children who were found living in a shed without running water or a toilet.
So when police found 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller starved to death in her own home in April, people naturally had questions about what the state might have known about it.
Department of Human Services Secretary Cynthia Persily now says that her workers never got a report about the girl and the agency “was therefore not involved in the life of this child prior to her passing,” West Virginia Watch reports.
“We are doing everything in the department’s power to investigate the complex set of circumstances surrounding this tragedy,” Persily wrote in a statement.
That contradicts widely reported indications that the agency did know what was going on.
“Neighbors said that they called CPS about Kynnedi, and, through the Freedom of Information Act, media outlets have shared documents showing that West Virginia State Police said they’d made a CPS referral about the girl in March 2023,” West Virginia Watch writes.
And even Persily admits that investigators had been notified about the family in two previous cases, in 2009 and 2017, but she insists those “have nothing to do with the death of this young lady.”
“We are extremely disappointed by the disclosure of information relating to those prior matters by an anonymous informant and by members of the local media,” Persily said. “The department is prepared to make any and all criminal referrals to the appropriate authorities regarding this disclosure.”
Department of Human Services Secretary Cynthia Persily says her agency didn’t know about a teenager starving to death in a West Virginia home, despite two previous reports about the family. (Will Price | West Virginia Legislative Photography)
“Black lung” disease is a dreadful condition where silica dust from digging underground clogs the lungs of miners, leaving them unable to breathe.
The federal government has a compensation program for affected miners, and recently imposed tighter limits on how much rock dust can be in the air in mines, but it is not enough, experts told U.S. senators at a hearing this week, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reports.
“The black lung benefit system as currently designed now does not work for miners like Paul,” one of his patients who was denied benefits three times despite a clear diagnosis, testified Dr. Drew Harris, the medical director of the black lung clinic at the University of Virginia, the largest such clinic in the country.
The benefit system suffers from a basic power imbalance, as workers seeking benefits are opposed by their employers, witnesses testified.
“A coal miner who is sick and can’t work is trying to get benefits against an attorney who is making $400,000 a year,” said Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers Association and a former miner. “They have access to doctors from all over the United States, and that coal miner doesn’t have that.”
Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey hopes to improve the system with a bill that would make it easier to apply for benefits, make it harder for companies to oppose applications, and provide afflicted miners with attorneys fees in certain cases.
“My bill will ensure that every coal miner who is suffering from black lung disease receives the benefits that they and their families are entitled to,” Casey said in a statement. “With the most serious black lung cases still on the rise, we owe it to our miners to make damn sure they get the care and benefits they’ve earned.”
But even if the benefits system worked fairly and efficiently, the compensation fund faces a funding crunch, said Cindy Brown Barnes, the managing director of the Government Accountability Office’s Education, Workforce and Income Security team.
“The trust fund has serious financial challenges,” Barnes said. “Based on the Department of Labor’s projection, the trust debt could exceed $13 billion by 2050.”
Everything will be fine as long as you don’t breathe in and out. (Getty Images)
In Missouri, lawmakers decided to go home before passing a popular bill that would have ended the practice of seizing the Social Security benefits of foster children, in effect forcing kids to pay for their own care, the Missouri Independent reports.
The legislature adjourned early amid unrelated GOP infighting in the state senate, leaving foster children facing another year of losing about $6 million in Social Security payments.
“It’s more than disappointing,” said state Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder, a Scott City Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors. “It is a disservice to every taxpayer and voter in this state for our Senate to run the way that it is.”
“When we have bills that matter to people’s lives — to children’s lives — right there ready to be taken up and passed, and instead of doing that, the actual work that we’ve been sent there to do, we play games and fight and say, if this bill isn’t gonna get done, nothing’s gonna get done. It’s insane,” Rehder said.
Such seizures used to be common across the country, but advocates have argued that the money is better saved for the future. At least three states have halted the practice in recent years and Missouri had seemed on track to join them.
“By failing to make this change,” said Lori Ross, founder and CEO of the nonprofit FosterAdopt Connect, “we are preventing our state’s most vulnerable children from accessing a critical means of support when they age out of the system and must navigate the world alone.”
