Chafin examines FOIA response
From Sunshine Review
April 21, 2009 State Senate Majority Leader H. Truman Chafin filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the federal dollars awarded to the West Virginia Turnpike and the Department of Transportation responded with an 84-page grouping of charts, fact sheets and flow charts that may not satisfy his questions.[1][edit] FOIA request
Chafin said he would file a second FOIA request with the DOT if necessary. He planned to hold a Friday, May 22, public hearing at the Mercer County Courthouse on a proposed turnpike toll increase that members of the state Parkways Economic Development and Tourism Authority seek.
“I want some specific answers before they have those hearings,” Chafin said.
Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth (R-Mercer) had disclosed that the turnpike was eligible for federal funding, a different note than Mercer County officials had previously been told. Chafin said that because the turnpike was in the federal interstate system, the state received federal highway dollars for the turnpike. Chafin and Caruth said that the toll money on the road was spent on other highway projects rather than the maintenance and upkeep of the turnpike.[1]
[edit] Expense director
The FOIA response answered the question: “who directed the expenditure” of the federal funds. Anthony G. Halkias, director of the legal division for the DOT, issued the response, saying the secretary of transportation, commissioner of highways, and/or state highway engineer or the respective delegates woudl have made the decisions about the funds' expenditure.
Chafin asked for the total amount of federal funding the state received for maintenance of the 88-mile turnpike between Princeton and Charleston. The FOIA response gives details about interstate maintenance fund appropriations per fiscal year by the DOH over a decade long period.
The funds are allocated by a formula that the Federal Highway Administration established, only a portion of which is based on miles.
“For that reason, the amount of IM (interstate maintenance) funding attributable to the turnpike miles is not segregable,” Halkias detailed in the FOIA response.
The FOIA response shows what projects received interstate maintenance money, including seventeen projects from Mercer County.
Halkias states the DOH has “made every effort” to comply with Chafin’s FOIA request, and therefore the DOT is not responsibile for anymore responses to Chafin's query. Halkias wrote that Chafin may “institute proceedings for injunctive or declaratory relief in the circuit court of Kanawha County” if he disagrees with that determination.[1]
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