CHARLESTON — Members of a committee in the West Virginia House of Delegates are hoping to provide non-uniformed staff in the state’s jails and prisons their own pay raise after passing a pay raise bill for correctional officers over the summer.

The House Committee on Jails and Prisons recommended House Bill 4734 for passage Thursday, sending the bill to the House Finance Committee for further review.

HB 4734 would provide a pay increase to state correctional workers. The bill would apply only to non-unformed full-time administrative staff of the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR).

Employees with three years or more of service with DCR would receive a 3 percent pay equity salary adjustment beginning July 1. New DCR employees or DCR employees with less than three years of employment would receive a 3 percent salary increase once they reach the third year of employment.

“It’s 3 percent. I wish it could be 15 percent, but it’s 3 percent and I’m hoping we can get it through both houses and get it on the Governor’s desk,” said House Jails and Prisons Committee Chairman David Kelly, R-Tyler.

According to a fiscal note from the Department of Homeland Security which oversees DCR, the estimated total cost would be $14.1 million in fiscal year 2025 and $15.2 million upon full implementation.

Justice signed six corrections bills following a special legislative session last August, including Senate Bill 1005, providing $21.1 million to increase the starting pay and change pay scales for correctional officers; and Senate Bills 1003 and 1004, providing nearly $6 million for one-time bonuses for support staff in the correctional system beginning in October.

“We realized during the special session that we weren’t going to be able to do what we considered to be enough,” Kelly said. “This is an attempt to say, ‘hey, we appreciate everything you’re doing and everything you’ve done.'”

West Virginia has been under its second state of emergency for correctional officer and staff vacancies in the state’s system of 11 prisons, 10 regional jails, 10 juvenile centers and three work-release sites since August 2022. State corrections officials have reported in recent months that the pay raises for correctional officers passed last summer have helped reverse the vacancy trend. Sign-on bonuses and other incentives have seen more people go through training at the state’s correctional academy, with seven new classes of officers since May 2023 and a new class that began training in January.

The West Virginia National Guard continues to assist DCR with staffing shortages, though a plan is in the works to begin reducing the number of guard members in jails and prisons, such as the Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County.

“I wish we were doing more, but this is good,” said Del. Elliott Pritt, R-Fayette. “I have a lot of Mount Olive prison employees in the district that I represent, and a lot of the non-uniformed staff have been routinely reaching out to me since August … asking what’s the news, what’s the update? We need to do this and I wish we were doing more, but this is a good start.”