West Virginia's DOT Let Consultant Spending Grow 96% in 2 Years
Summary
An independent audit of West Virginia's Department of Transportation, commissioned by Gov. Patrick Morrisey, found the Division of Highways let annual consultant spending grow 96% in two years -- from about $92 million to $180 million -- while paying consultants roughly 90% more than staff for the same work. In one case the state avoided a raise of under $10,000, then paid $119,000 more a year for a consulting firm to do the identical job. A related finding traced weak contractor oversight -- unfinished permits, thin schedule reviews, lenient performance grading -- to up to $33 million more in preventable annual costs statewide.
A "body swap," not a strategy
Auditors trace the growth to a specific pattern: as staff engineers leave DOH -- driven out, the audit found, by pay that lags neighboring states and by limited advancement -- the division backfills their exact jobs with consultants, hour for hour, on what BDO calls a "body swap" basis rather than the outcomes-based contracting most agencies use. The audit calls this "particularly costly and not considered a best practice," and offers two documented examples.
One engineer asked for a 5% raise; DOH said no, he resigned, and a consulting firm hired him to keep doing the same job -- at a $250,000 annual contract cost against the roughly $131,000 it would have cost to keep him on staff, a $119,000 premium the audit attributes to the state's refusal to spend under $10,000 more on salary. Separately, a three-engineer division whose combined staff cost was about $540,000 a year was dissolved; the work still had to get done, so DOH hired a consulting firm to do it for $1 million a year, 85% more than the staff it replaced.
View data as table
| FY2023 | 92,000,000 | approximately $92 million |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | 180,000,000 | approximately $180 million -- a 96% increase in two years |
The DOT's own "dirty permits"
Consultants aren't DOH's biggest expense -- contractors are, accounting for about 46% of total department costs. The audit's Finding 8 documents how weak oversight lets contractor costs run higher than they should across a project's life. Staff told auditors that some projects historically moved into construction before permits, right-of-way, or utility coordination were fully secured -- incomplete approvals staff call "dirty permits," which force contractors to pause work, re-sequence, or remobilize once problems surface. On one $35 million project, unresolved prerequisites triggered change orders and inefficiency claims that added $2 million to annual costs.
On a separate $35 million contract, thin review of contractor-submitted schedules under the state's required Critical Path Management process let claims for extra time and cost go largely unchallenged, adding roughly $1 million. Centralized change-order approvals have cost about $200,000 in interest over five years from delay alone, and a contractor-closeout grading system that rates nearly everyone highly let one contractor bill $30,000 in avoidable consultant time to sort out invoices it mismanaged, with no rating consequence to show for it.
View data as table
| Delays from "dirty permits" | 2,000,000 | $2 million |
|---|---|---|
| Insufficient schedule (CPM) review | 1,000,000 | $1 million |
| Change-order approval delays (interest) | 40,000 | $40,000 |
| Inaccurate contractor ratings | 30,000 | $30,000 |
What the audit adds up to, and who owes what
Across all 14 findings and every division of the department, BDO put total potential annual savings at $50,622,000. Two findings alone -- consultant cost management and contractor oversight -- account for $35.4 million of that, or about 70%. The audit's fix for the consultant problem carries a one- to two-year timeline and requires DOH to actually change hiring practice: the Secretary, Steven "Todd" Rumbaugh, has said he intends to replace 30 to 40 consultants with staff engineers, which paired with a 10% salary increase would net an estimated $2.4 million a year.
The contractor-oversight fix is rated low-cost and one year to implement -- mostly a matter of DOH enforcing its own permitting rules and retraining staff on schedule review, which the audit estimates could return up to $33 million annually if District 3's rate of inefficiency, about 3% of its $100 million in FY2025 contractor spending, holds statewide against West Virginia's $1 billion in annual contractor payments. The audit was one of three Morrisey ordered as part of a package that, combined with internal state-government reviews⧉, the administration says identified more than $168 million in potential annual savings statewide -- with 's $50.6 million the largest single piece.
- West Virginia 's Division of Highways let consultant spending grow 96% in two years -- from about $92 million to $180 million -- driven by a 'body swap' practice of replacing departed staff engineers with consultants at roughly 90% higher pay for identical work.
- In one documented case, the state avoided a raise of under $10,000, then paid $119,000 more a year to have the same engineer's job done by a consulting firm; a dissolved three-engineer division was similarly replaced by a $1 million consulting contract, 85% above its former staff cost.
- A separate finding on contractor oversight -- 'dirty permits,' thin schedule review, lenient performance grading -- documented roughly $3 million in avoidable annual costs in one district alone and, extrapolated statewide, projects up to $33 million more a year in preventable spending.
- The audit's 14 findings total $50.6 million in potential annual savings; consultant and contractor management alone account for 70% of that figure, and 's Secretary has indicated an intention to replace 30 to 40 consultant positions with staff.
All figures come from BDO USA's performance evaluation audit of the West Virginia Department of Transportation, commissioned by Gov. Patrick Morrisey's office and released May 18, 2026. This piece independently recomputed the dollar and percentage premiums for both staff-to-consultant replacement examples, District 3's total inefficiency cost and its share of that district's contractor spending, the combined dollar total and share of statewide savings represented by the consultant and contractor-management findings, and the consistency of the audit's own personnel/other-than-personnel savings subtotals against its stated grand total; all match figures either stated directly in the report or reproducible from its own numbers.
Sources(3) ▾
- BDO USA, P.C., for the West Virginia Office of the Governor, Department of Transportation Performance Evaluation Audit: Observations and Recommendations (2026-05-18) — The primary document -- an independent performance evaluation audit of the West Virginia Department of Transportation (), commissioned by Gov. Patrick Morrisey's administration and conducted by BDO USA under Executive Order 5-25. Source for the overview and peer comparison, all 14 numbered findings, the Savings Breakdown Table (p.6), the Consultant Cost Management finding's spending-growth data and staff-replacement anecdotes (Finding 7, pp.39-42), the Contractor Management and Performance finding's 'dirty permits' and oversight-gap analysis (Finding 8, pp.43-46), and the Approach/Acknowledgments sections. governor.wv.gov · original document
- West Virginia Office of the Governor Patrick Morrisey, Governor Morrisey Identifies More Than $168 Million in Potential Savings Across State Government (2026-05-18) — Confirms the audit's release date, the total $168 million combined savings figure across internal reviews plus three agency audits, the Governor's quote on the originating executive order, and links to all three audit PDFs including the report used as the primary document here. governor.wv.gov · original document
- West Virginia State Auditor's Office (Auditor Mark A. Hunt), Public Integrity & Fraud Unit -- West Virginia State Auditor's Office (2026-07-19) — Confirms the West Virginia State Auditor's statutory role (W.Va. Code Section 12-4A-4) as the designated reporting agency for waste, fraud, and abuse of state funds, and the Public Integrity & Fraud Unit's public hotline, phone, mailing address, and online complaint form -- the office a citizen would use to report exactly the kind of state-contracting waste this audit documents. wvsao.gov · original document
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West Virginia's Department of Transportation () runs the state's roads, bridges, and DMV -- and by the most centralized model in the country: its Division of Highways (DOH) directly manages 88% of all public road miles in the state, against a national average of roughly 20%. A performance audit BDO USA conducted for Gov. Patrick Morrisey's office⧉, released May 18, 2026 under an executive order the governor signed on his first day in office, found DOH's annual spending on outside consultants grew from approximately $92 million in fiscal year 2023 to approximately $180 million in fiscal year 2025 -- a 96% increase that auditors say outpaced growth in both staff and contractor costs over the same period. DOH's own estimate: the average consultant costs about 90% more than the staff rate for the same work.