New West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey says he has spent his first weeks in office getting back to basics.
“We’ve inherited a pretty big mess and we’re working diligently to fix it,” Morrisey says.
Morrisey officially took the Oath of Office on January 14th and, since then, he says he’s been trying to get a handle on what exactly was happening within the state Attorney General’s Office prior to his arrival.
The Republican beat longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw in the November General Election. McGraw had served as AG since 1992.
Morrisey says his team got little assistance with the transition.
“Some people were helpful. A lot of people were not and so we knew that this was going to be a big cleanup effort, but it’s an even greater challenge than we imagined,” Morrisey said on Wednesday’s MetroNews Talkline.
To start, Morrisey said he could find no centralized system for pending lawsuits and other legal actions. “There was no list of all of the outstanding cases that were handled by the office,” he said.
“To develop that list, you have to cobble together, get a lot of information from the other attorneys, look at other public sources. That’s just not how you run a railroad and we’re instituting basic management practices to make sure that the state gets the best possible legal representation.”
Once the cases are identified, the AG says they’re being evaluated to determine the next steps.
Morrisey says investments also have to be made in new technology for the AG’s Office. He says he wants to take, what he calls, a 1970s to 1980s era law firm, in terms of technology, and make it modern. Such upgrades, he says, will pay off in the long run.
“We’re trying to build a foundation on cement instead of sand,” he said. “We’re really tackling all of the basic management challenges that this office faces right away.”
Since taking office, Morrisey has made a number of new hires.
On Wednesday’s MetroNews Talkline, he announced the hiring of Gordon Ingold, a former State Police investigator. Ingold will work as an investigator within the AG’s Consumer Protection Division.