Does West Virginia really need 7,700 government-owned vehicles?
A legislative audit is underway to try to answer that question.
West Virginia has more state vehicles per-capita than any of 15 Southern states, according to new data from the Southern Legislative Conference. West Virginia also has the second-largest state vehicle fleet based on the number of government employees.
There's one state vehicle in the Mountain State for every five government workers.
"As you can see from the actual numbers, we have way more vehicles than any other state, as a percentage of population," said Delegate Gary Howell, R-Mineral. "That's a waste of money, a waste of taxpayer money."
A comparison with North Carolina is striking. West Virginia and North Carolina keep about the same number of state vehicles, but North Carolina has five times the population and five times the number of government workers.
"We had always heard we had a huge number, compared to the other states," said Howell, chairman of the House Government Organization Committee. "It's incredible."
The House committee already has sent questions and requested documents from the state Fleet Management Office.
In response, the office reported the number of state-owned vehicles by agency.
The Department of Transportation has 2,536 of the vehicles - the most of any state agency. The Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, which includes the West Virginia State Police, has 1,692 government vehicles, followed by public colleges and universities, with 998, and the Department of Commerce, with 965 vehicles.
Light-duty trucks are the most popular type of vehicle in the West Virginia fleet. SUVs and cars rank closely behind. The fleet also includes 36 buses and two recreational vehicles.
The Ford brand dominates among government vehicles in West Virginia, with Fiat and General Motors the next-closest competitors.
A handful of vehicles in the state fleet stand out:
n Two Jaguar Land Rover SUVs, housed at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College. Officials there have told legislative staffers that the pricey SUVs are used for mine rescue operations, Howell said.
n West Virginia University owns a 2012 Fisker Karma, a luxury sports sedan with a base price of more than $100,000. WVU is using the vehicle for autonomous-driving research. WVU also has a Mercedes Benz E-class sedan.
n The Department of Military Affairs has two BMW 3 series cars and a Mercedes Benz - acquired through a civil forfeiture.
n The Division of Motor Vehicles has a 2011 Can-Am Spyder RT, a three-wheeled motorcycle used by the Governor's Highway Safety Program.
The Fleet Management Office has reported that state-vehicle orders are trending downward. State agencies purchased about 400 new vehicles during the past fiscal year, compared to 800 vehicles in each of the previous two years.
Howell said the number of state vehicles, which typically sport green license plates with white lettering and numbers, could be higher than 7,700.
In 2011, Fleet Management's executive director counted 9,350 government-owned vehicles. The state has bought 3,500 vehicles since then, but Howell doesn't know how many have been put out of service.
"The more questions we ask, trying to nail down exactly how many vehicles the state has, nobody seems to be able to actually answer that question, which is truly alarming," Howell said. "We've got to get better control over it."
Howell's committee, which is working with the Legislative Auditor's Office, also wants a list of state vehicles that carry "Class A" license plates - regular West Virginia tags, instead of the typical green plates.
Earlier this month, Legislative Auditor Aaron Allred wrote to state agency chiefs, asking for information about vehicles with Class A plates, and who's driving them. Class A plates - often used by undercover state law enforcement officers - prevent the public from identifying a vehicle as state-owned. Agencies face an Aug. 1 deadline to submit the information.
This isn't the first audit of the West Virginia government's vehicle fleet.
In 2009, a legislative audit cited rampant misuse of state vehicles. Auditors concluded that the government spent nearly $70 million a year to operate vehicles with little oversight on how the cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks were assigned or used. Fleet record-keeping was a mess.
The audit sparked legislation that established the Fleet Management Office. The agency has six full-time employees and a $9.6 million annual budget, with about $8 million dedicated to buying new vehicles each year.
As part of the audit, lawmakers hope to find out the number of state employees assigned "take-home" vehicles for commuting. Some state workers use the vehicles almost exclusively to commute from home to work, with little or no travel for state business. Individual agencies - not the Fleet Management Office - are supposed to track vehicle assignments.
"We don't even know if these vehicles are being underutilized or overutilized," Howell said. "There's no tracking system."
Reach Eric Eyre at ericeyre@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4869 or follow @ericeyre on Twitter.