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Evidence from policy research and the state’s own Department of Revenue suggests policies pushed by McGeehan would be costly.

McGeehan guided leaders of Steubenville, Ohio-based College of St. Joseph the Worker through the application process for an Economic Enhancement Grant that it was awarded by the West Virginia Water Development Authority at an Oct. 10 authority meeting.

The Economic Enhancement Grant Fund was created in 2022 via , which established the fund through $250 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to support water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades as well as what the law calls “infrastructure projects to enhance economic development and/or tourism.�

Most recipients have been towns, cities and public service districts getting support for water and wastewater improvement projects.

But the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund was used to direct up to $5 million to the College of St. Joseph the Worker, whose inaugural class began lessons this fall, after McGeehan touted the school to state officials, according to emails the Gazette-Mail obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In an Oct. 2 email to Brian Abraham, Gov. Jim Justice’s chief of staff, McGeehan sent a grant proposal from the college and link to its registration with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, citing a previous discussion with him and copying state House of Delegates Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, on the email.

“Thanks for the assistance on this, Brian ... you don’t know how much I genuinely appreciate it,� McGeehan wrote.

McGeehan, who did not respond to requests for comment, emailed a grant application completed by Jones to Water Development Authority executive director Marie Prezioso on Oct. 4.

The Water Development Authority board unanimously approved the grant award at a meeting at its ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä office six days later. The Water Development Authority is led by Justice. The Governor’s Office has not responded to requests for comment.

Counting the potential costs of abortion, border politics

Records the Gazette-Mail obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests revealing official state communications with school leaders and project authorizations showed no evidence of written approval from any of the secretaries of the departments of Commerce, Economic Development or Tourism, as required by HB 4566.

College of St. Joseph the Worker president Mike Sullivan said in a news release the nonprofit school was “extremely grateful to the state of West Virginiaâ€� for the Economic Enhancement Grant, which he said would allow it to expand into Weirton as it explores the possibility of a satellite campus in the ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä area.

In its expansion proposal, the college said its faculty have been “involved in supporting the developing conservative political vision for West Virginia� and cited “the abortion restriction� and “solidarity with Texas’ border.�

Justice, a Republican, signed into law a near-total abortion ban passed by the Legislature in 2022. Last year, Justice approved up to 50 West Virginia National Guard soldiers and airmen to deploy to Texas for up to 30 days in response to a request by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a fellow Republican, as part of support from the nation’s governors to respond to what Abbott claimed in a letter to Justice and other state chief executives was a “flood of illegal border activity.�

West Virginia paid over $900,000 in 2023 in sending volunteers from the West Virginia National Guard to the southern border as part of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star law enforcement initiative, .

Human rights advocates have said Operation Lone Star has criminalized migrants seeking safety, driven mass incarceration of people of color, relied on racial profiling and violated civil rights and anti-torture standards by holding migrants in jails without access to medical care or sufficient food.

In September, the College of St. Joseph the Worker received an endorsement from the Cardinal Newman Society, a 501c3 tax-exempt nonprofit that has recognized and promoted Catholic schools that adhere to anti-LGBTQ+ teachings and policies.

‘The Good, the True, and the Beautiful’

McGeehan, 45, is a Roman Catholic who received a master’s degree from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, according to his .

McGeehan cosponsored a state bill that advanced to a full House of Delegates vote in 2023 that — like the Water Development Authority’s support for the College of St. Joseph the Worker — would have used taxpayer dollars to fund nonprofits with certain “values.�

would have established an Institute for Civic Life to allocate state funds to nonprofits that advance what the bill called “classical virtue ethics in local communities, including, but not limited to those activities oriented towards the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.�

The bill did not define what constitutes “Good,� “True� or “Beautiful,� but the institute would have prioritized nonprofits that:

• Promote “traditional cultural values for civic lifeâ€� in local communities
• Promote “family growth, maintenance, and self-sufficiencyâ€�
• Encourage “local self-governance for civic engagementâ€� through creating new fraternal organizations

Under HB 3561, all funding for the institute would come from the state. The institute would have been governed by a board of directors consisting of up to seven West Virginia residents who had “distinguished themselves� in philosophy, ethics or charitable service.

HB 3561 originated in the House Government Organization Committee, of which McGeehan is vice chair. After the committee advanced HB 3561, the full House rejected it in a 51-42 vote.

McGeehan sought to ban abortion billboards

In February 2024, McGeehan introduced a bill that would have prohibited creating, maintaining or funding billboards displaying messages about the availability of abortions in states bordering West Virginia.

“The greater power to completely ban abortions includes within it the lesser power to ban advertising for abortions,� asserted McGeehan’s , which stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill contended billboards being erected near West Virginia’s borders were targeting state residents in “such a manner [that] erodes interstate comity.�

It’s legal to travel to another state to get an abortion.

A 2023 , a reproductive health policy group, found the proportion of patients traveling to other states to obtain abortion care had doubled in recent years, reaching nearly one in five in the first half of 2023, compared with one in 10 in 2020. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 held the U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to abortion, overruling the 49-year precedent set by its Roe v. Wade decision that established that right legally.

Research found the 16 states with the strictest abortion bans cost the U.S. economy $68 billion annually due to those policies. The analysis from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a think tank that advocates economic equity for women, found the costs came from reduced labor force participation and lower earnings for women, as well as higher employee turnover rates and more lost work hours.

The average annual economic loss in West Virginia was roughly $977.4 million, the study found. Labor force participation among women ages 15 to 44 would have been 1.5% higher in West Virginia without its ban, per the analysis. Only Louisiana and Mississippi were missing out on higher percentages of labor force participation among women in that age group, according to the study.

Last year, McGeehan also sponsored , which would have declared a right to life guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for human beings “at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization or cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.�

HB 4464 stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

Last year’s McGeehan-sponsored would have abolished West Virginia’s personal income tax at what the Department of Revenue estimated would be a multibillion-dollar cost to the state. In a fiscal note assigned to the bill, The department projected HB 4366 would lower General Revenue fund collections by $809.3 million in fiscal year 2025 and by $2.1 billion in fiscal year 2026, which would have been the first full fiscal year of effect.

HB 4366 died in the House Finance Committee.

Most states levy a tax on personal income. West Virginia decreased its personal income tax in October through Senate Bill 2033, which the Department of Revenue projected would lower fiscal year 2025 revenue collections by roughly $46 million, with similar declines in future years.

Advocates for a stronger social safety net in West Virginia have argued state leaders’ prioritization of tax cuts has kept the state from making critical investments in public services.

“If the state fails to invest adequately in schools, early childhood education, first responders, and infrastructure, we will be a less desirable place for businesses and families to locate, thus undermining the premise and goals of tax cuts as a magnet,� Kelly Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, last year for the left-leaning policy research nonprofit questioning state leaders’ emphasis on income tax cuts.

‘They despise our way of life’

The Water Development Authority’s approval of $5 million in Economic Enhancement Grant support for the College of St. Joseph the Worker has drawn heavy scrutiny since the Gazette-Mail reported it last weekend.

“It’s extremely alarming for us to be spending that type of money which is to be designated for water and sewer on an education facility that’s not even located in our state,� then-Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., said in a Dec. 28 phone interview. “That’s very alarming to me, how that could be done.�

“Funneling $5 million in water development funds to a partisan, out-of-state religious organization is wholly inappropriate,� the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia said in a Tuesday statement on X.

But there’s potential for further legislation embraced by anti-abortionists in line with past measures backed by McGeehan and other Republicans, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, in the 2025 regular legislative session that starts next month.

Last year, the Senate passed , legislation that stalled in the House that would have required public schools to show a video to eighth- and 10th-graders from anti-abortion group Live Action of “the fertilization process and every stage of human development inside the uterus.�

McGeehan returns as part of that GOP supermajority after an election cycle in which he drew campaign support from the West Virginia Realtors PAC (political action committee), West Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, United Mine Workers of America, and West Virginia Building & Construction Trades PAC, according to campaign finance reports.

McGeehan made it clear during a 2023 House floor speech that he doesn’t welcome some other out-of-staters looking to West Virginia for expansion.

McGeehan wasn’t rolling out a welcome mat for backers of Form Energy, railing against them in a speech objecting to an appropriations bill that became law in supplying $105 million for a Form Energy battery plant on the site of the old Weirton Steel property. Those backers have included Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an energy transition acceleration network.

“They despise our way of life,� McGeehan said.