In West Virginia, from March 2007 to March 2008, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Child Protective Services received and did paperwork on 37,165 incidents of child abuse. From those, 26,904 cases were further investigated, said John Law, spokesperson for WVDHHR. Only 3,998 cases were found to be substantiated, or less than 20 percent of all investigated incident.

The lead sponsor of the bill, Delegate Jeff Eldridge, D-Lincoln, said that based on the statistics shown to him, the state spends as much as $18 million per year investigating and processing false abuse allegations. “If the fathers or mothers are truly abusing the spouse, this bill will hold them accountable. At the same time, if they’re not truly abusing them, then there will be penalties for whoever filed it. There are consequences to this behavior (Lewis).”

While everyone continues to complain about taxes, what kind of a break could 18 million per year give us? Of course, $331 million would go a lot farther.