Chief Joe Bowens, Fort Gay VFP
Wayne County Commissioner, Jeff Maddox
Fort Gay Volunteer Fire Department is missing out on State Funding due to years of non-compliance with State Audits. The recent embezzlement arrests and resignations of the former Fort Gay mayor Joetta Hatfield and treasurer and recorder Sheila Bowen has brought attention to the fire department in the small Wayne County town which has its own financial troubles.
The Fort Gay Volunteer Fire Department, where Sheila Bowen’s husband, Joe, is the chief, has not submitted their required bank statements to the state in years, which means they have missed out on about $126,195 in state funding and are at risk of losing more.
The West Virginia Legislative Auditor’s Office says Fort Gay is the only fire department that has repeatedly not complied and not proposed any solutions or pathways to compliance.
Wayne County Commission President Jeff Maddox first expressed his disappointment in the embezzlement charges against Hatfield and former recorder Sheila Bowen that allege the two worked together over the span of 5 years to reroute about $200,000 from town accounts to their own personal accounts or to pay their own bills.
Then, Maddox expressed his concerns about the Fort Gay Volunteer Fire Department. “The only thing that troubles me greatly is that this past year, there was a state allotment of funds that was supposed to go to the Fort Gay Fire Department in excess of $100,000,” Maddox said.
The Legislative Auditor’s Office is required to audit each of the 400 volunteer fire departments in the state at least once every 5 years conducted by the Post Audit Division. However, the departments who are audited are the ones who receive the state funding from the quarterly funding distribution because that is the money that the Post Audit Division is looking over.
Every year each department is subject to an annual filing requirement where they must submit bank statements of their state funding spending to the state. Failure to do so results in the withholding of funds. The department is sent two delinquency letters each quarter reminding them of their non-compliance. They explained once a department loses out on funding, it is then reallocated to other departments in compliance.
“Therefore, that money was lost,” Maddox said at last week’s meeting. “It’s gone. They don’t even have a chance to redeem it.”
If the department were to come into compliance, they could then receive their funding in escrow. They said that Fort Gay has recently started to supply the Post Audit Division with some of the required information, but said they are still working with the department on sending in more to totally be in compliance.
If they are able to supply it by February 1 of this year, they would then get their state funding distributions which would then become subject to audit.
