AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE: JOURNALISM AND POLITICS IN WEST VIRGINIA

28. Caperton's Inheritance

Chapter 28 CAPERTON'S INHERITANCE WEST VIRGINIA'S THIRTIETH GOVERNOR, Gaston Caperton, took office under economic and political stresses similar to those faced by Kump in 1933. The state was almost bankrupt. Unemployment soared above the national average. Families were leaving the mountains in large numbers, hoping to find a better life elsewhere. The legacy the Moore administration left to the next governor included a mountain of debt, much of it documented in unpaid bills kept in cardboard boxes scattered around the governor's suite. Among other debts were thousands of unpaid tax refunds. The Human Services and Veterans Affairs departments owed the IRS $160,000 in back taxes. Other agencies and offices failed to meet their tax deadlines in 1987 and 1988, including the governor's office. As a result, more than a half million dollars in penalties was levied against the state in fiscal year 1988- 1989. "These are unnecessary charges," Caperton said about the IRS penalties, "resulting from delayed paperwork and bureaucratic inaction which I will not tolerate." Caperton inherited another debt from his predecessor, this one dating back to Moore's first term in office. Following the Buffalo Creek disaster in 1972, Moore's finance commissioner, John Gates, had agreed to pay the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for emergency work the Corps had performed at the disaster site. Three days before Moore left office at the end of his second term in 1977, the outgoing governor accepted a $1 million dollar settlement offer from Pittston Coal Company and absolved Pittston from any further liability as part of the settlement agreement. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Later, during Moore's third term as governor, it became known that West Virginia still owed the Corps of Engineers for the disaster cleanup; the bill totaled $3.7 million. Because of Moore's settlement with Pittston, the state could no longer collect anything from the coal company responsible for the illegal dam that had burst, leaving 125 people dead and four thousand more homeless. By the time Moore left office in January 1989, the state's debt to the Corps had mounted to $9.4 million in cleanup costs and interest charges. The amount of debt uncovered by the new Caperton administration was so extensive- almost half a billion dollars- that the $400 million package of new and higher taxes proposed by Caperton would not be sufficient to bring the budget back into balance. Strict economies would also be required, amounting to almost $100 million. The state's fiscal condition was so serious that two and a half years would elapse before West Virginia would be able to achieve a cash surplus in the general revenue budget. But the full extent of Caperton's inheritance from his predecessor was just coming to light. For months federal and state investigators had been delving into public and private records. Caperton had been in office less than six months when state officials began falling like dominoes. The resignation and early retirement of Manchin in the summer of 1989 was followed by the resignation of State Attorney General Charlie Brown. Brown and his ex-wife were embroiled in a child custody dispute at the time, in the course of which Brown made certain statements in public records relating to the dispute that were not only a political embarrassment to him but which nearly turned the child custody proceeding into a grand jury probe. At issue in the custody battle was Brown's alleged liaison with a former employee in his office. The only newspaper references to the case were based primarily on gossip because of tight restraints on news releases imposed by both Brown and county prosecutor Bill Forbes. In fact, the whole affair was pretty well contained behind the stone walls of the Kanawha County Courthouse - until someone leaked it to the Gazette. The result was a multimillion-dollar libel suit against the Gazette filed by Brown's former employee, Brenda Simon. The newspaper had alleged that Simon asked Brown for money in exchange for her silence about her pregnancy CAPERTON'S INHERITANCE in 1986. Simon denied that she received any money and called the story "dastardly , malicious, and false." The thirty-five-year-old woman, by then living in Columbus, Ohio, said that her husband had fathered the child, which died in infancy. She produced a death certificate to support her statement. Simon had worked in Brown's 1984 campaign...