Entities owned by Jim Justice, from his famous Greenbrier resort to mining and agriculture companies, owe at least $3.9 million in delinquent property taxes to at least six cash-strapped Southern West Virginia counties for the just-completed tax year, records show.
Justice's companies owe property taxes on real estate and personal property in Greenbrier, Raleigh, McDowell, Wyoming, Monroe and Fayette counties.
Property taxes in West Virginia (for the second half of the year) were first due March 1 and became delinquent April 1.
Justice, the state's richest man and the leading Democratic candidate for governor, owns 97 privately held businesses, according to a financial disclosure filed with the West Virginia Ethics Commission.
At least 15 of those companies, plus Justice personally, owe West Virginia property taxes from the past year.
Justice, through a campaign spokesman, declined an interview request.
"The accounting division pays our property taxes every year in April," Terry Miller, an accountant for Justice's companies, said in a prepared statement. "This year is no different and the taxes will absolutely be paid."
Justice faces former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin and state Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler in the May 10 Democratic primary for governor.
In Greenbrier County, Justice has four companies that are delinquent on more than $1.97 million in property taxes. The vast majority of that, more than $1.94 million, is owed by the Greenbrier Hotel Corp., the parent company of The Greenbrier resort, which Justice bought out of bankruptcy in 2009.
Justice-owned companies have paid taxes on some properties. For instance, Greenbrier Hotel Corp. owes that $1.94 million on 15 unpaid 2015 property tax tickets, ranging from as little as $5.19 to as much as $1.5 million.
But Greenbrier Hotel Corp. also paid 81 2015 property tax tickets back in December, totaling more than $322,000.
Greenbrier County Sheriff Jan Cahill, whose office is responsible for collecting property taxes, said it's not uncommon for big taxpayers to still be delinquent in the middle of April, noting that it's often so busy that his office schedules vacations around that time.
"That's actually pretty consistent, that a lot of people with large bills come in at the last week of April," Cahill said. "It's not really anything unique to his situation."
James C. Justice Companies and the Justice-owned Greenbrier Medical Institute and Greenbrier Clinic Inc. also owe delinquent taxes in Greenbrier County.
Cahill would not say if Justice's companies were consistently delinquent, but he noted that the county has never had to put any of his property up for auction in the fall, which it does when taxes remain unpaid.
Other county sheriffs were a little less generous in their assessments, although they were confident that the tax bills eventually would be paid.
Two Justice-owned companies, Justice Family Farms and Bellwood Corp. owe a bit more than $157,000 in delinquent property taxes to Monroe County, where Justice owns farms and the Stoney Brook Plantation, a 15,000-acre hunting and fishing preserve.
Justice also was delinquent on his Monroe County taxes last fall, to the tune of about $100,000, and had his name published in the Monroe Watchman, a weekly newspaper.
Justice is one of the two biggest taxpayers in the county, which has an annual budget of a little over $3 million. Two-thirds of the budget goes to the county's schools, while the rest goes for county operations.
"I can't say that it's not happened before; I'll just leave it at that," Monroe County Sheriff Mike Gravely said Thursday. "Anytime that we don't get our tax money paid, obviously it puts us in a little bit of a problem area in paying things that we need to pay - schools, we need to use the property tax to pay our jail bills, just to run the county in general. We're a small county, so every little bit helps."
Justice-owned companies owe debts of nearly $93,000 in Raleigh County and about $10,000 in Fayette County.
After Greenbrier County, Justice's biggest tax debts are in the two counties where almost all of his West Virginia coal mines are located - Wyoming and McDowell counties.
In Wyoming County, five Justice-owned companies, all mining related, owe nearly $935,000 in delinquent taxes.
Six Justice mining-related companies - Bluestone Coal Corp., Bluestone Equipment Management, National Resources, Justice Energy, Justice Highwall Mining and Double Bonus Coal - plus Justice himself, owe more than $737,000 in delinquent taxes to McDowell County.
McDowell County Sheriff Martin West noted that, last year, Justice began paying back-tax debts that his mining companies had accrued when Justice didn't own them. The debts were accrued after Justice sold the companies to Russian-based Mechel OAO in 2009, but before he bought them back for pennies on the dollar in 2014.
West said that after Justice began paying the taxes, he got calls from officials in Kentucky counties where Justice-owned companies owed millions, asking how West was able to get him to pay.
"We never sued him, but threatened to sue," West said. "I called his headquarters and talked to him on the phone, and they made payments."
Property taxes must be paid by April 30, to avoid having one's name printed in the local paper.
"After the deadline, if it's not paid, then we'll do the same thing," West said. "He don't like paying bills, evidently."
McDowell County is, by most any measure, the poorest county in West Virginia and among the poorest in the country. There are few working mines left in the county and Wal-Mart recently closed a store in Kimball.
West said the county commission recently announced that the sheriff's department budget would be cut by $240,000. They're looking at laying off two deputies, one tax department worker and cutting wages by 10 percent on July 1, West said.
"It's going to be tough getting any money in to maintain the county budget," West said. "Wal-Mart left, 140 some employees, we have no mines operating - we got a few small mines surviving - and there's no other business here. That's why we're in bad conditions."
Unpaid debts, be they for property taxes, business disputes or mine safety fines, are not new for Justice and are well documented.
Most recently, a federal judge found a Justice coal company in contempt of court over an unpaid debt to a construction company that was originally rung up by Mechel.
After three years of haggling, and the contempt order, Justice's company has now paid back the debt and his lawyers have asked the judge to reconsider the $1.2 million fine she levied, saying they were not informed of the debt the Russian company had accrued.
Justice's lawyers wrote that the company's officers, including Justice and his son, had been unaware of the contempt order until asked about it by a Gazette-Mail reporter.
In a November interview, Justice said that with his many businesses and projects, sometimes he would fall behind on a debt. He compared it to accidentally wearing different-colored socks.
"I'm going to make mistakes," Justice said in November. "If we get behind or there's something that's not paid - it always gets paid."
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.