Stephen Reed: Dude, Who Wrecked Our Car?

By Stephen N. Reed
Huntington News Network Columnist

CHARLESTON (HNN) --- Leave it to Charleston's supersleuth, Wanda Carney, to crack wide open another controversy in our state government.  Carney is co-founder of the non-profit watchdog organization, "West Virginia Wants to Know," whose mission it is to investigate corrupt and wasteful practices in state government.
 
She and her cohort, Tifney Terry, were the ones responsible for dogging Jerry Mezzatesta until he was finally booted as chairman of the House Education Committee for using his position to gain state grants for Hampshire County--while collecting a nice additional "side income" of $60,000 as a so-called "community specialist" for the Hampshire County Board of Education.
 
Now Carney is hot on the trail of another mystery, this time in an obscure warehouse
on Charleston's East End.  The warehouse is rented by Attorney General Darrell McGraw's office, and Carney went over to check it out this week to look into the huge new purchase
($140,000) of trinkets with McGraw's name on them. 
 
Carney saw that the door to the warehouse was open and with her trusty camera thought she'd take a few pictures of the unseemly number of boxes of trinkets, paid for with state government money to the greater glory of Attorney General McGraw.
 
To her surprise, McGraw's Chief Deputy, Fran Hughes, was there with an assistant.
But according to Carney, no one was more surprised than Hughes at seeing Carney
there.  Carney says that Hughes told her she wasn't allowed in, but Carney reminded
her that this was a publicly paid-for facility and proceeded to take pictures of the
boxes and boxes of trinkets.
 
All of this would have just been routine good fun except for what happened next.
 
According to Carney, she turned and saw a 2000 silver Dodge Intrepid, a car very
much like several other cars in the Attorney General's fleet.  But this one was smashed
up badly in the rear, probably totaled.  Carney, in a touch of melodrama, said to Fran
Hughes, "Oh my!  Did someone get hurt in this car?"
 
But by that time, Carney says Hughes was on the cell phone to her boss, asking him
what she should do about Carney being in the facility.
 
Carney, ever resourceful, took pictures not only of the boxes and boxes of trinkets, but
also made sure to get some photos of the smashed up car, which looked odd sitting
in a warehouse like that.  She also got the car's VIN number to identify it properly.
 
And that was Carney's excellent adventure for the day.
 
On Thursday afternoon, after this story was broken on my afternoon radio show on
WVTS, Supertalk 950 AM, I went down to talk with Fran Hughes, who had been good
enough to come on early in my show to talk about the trinkets and Debra Whanger's
recent dismissal over them.  Carney had come on later to discuss the car, so I wanted
to hear Hughes' side of the story.
 
Hughes told me that the smashed up silver 2000 Dodge Intrepid did not originally belong
to the Attorney General's office.  She said that they had bought it from the state government's surplus property office for "spare parts" for other cars in the fleet.  She
said she had no idea how the car got wrecked and that no one in the Attorney General's
office had anything to do with the wreck.  I might add that it was Hughes who brought
up the car and all its details before she even heard what I was there to ask her.
 
Will Carney be able to prove that this was one of the Attorney General's cars BEFORE
the accident occurred?  And what about the Carfax report, soon to be posted on Carney's
website (www.wvwantstoknow.com) that states that no accident report was ever filed?
 
Whoever is responsible for this accident has a lot of explaining to do, as any state vehicle that is in an accident must be reported to the Board of Risk Management.  It's the law.
 
Surely the Attorney General could help illumine us on that particular section of the state
code?  Or perhaps even his brother, the Supreme Court Justice, Warren McGraw?  They're
bright fellows and both students of the law, after all.
 
If this car was indeed assigned to the Attorney General's office before the accident, well,
someone's credibility is going to be out the window.  And then West Virginia will want to
know, not from Fran Hughes, but from Attorney General Darrell McGraw himself:
 
"Dude, who wrecked our car?"
 
Stephen N. Reed is a talk radio host on Charleston's Supertalk 950, WVTS-AM.