Author: Liz McCormick

Liz is WVPB's Webmaster/Digital Coordinator and Eastern Panhandle Bureau Chief, based in Shepherdstown, WV on Shepherd University's campus. Liz is a native of Charleston, West Virginia. She received a M.A. in Strategic Communication from American University in 2022 and a B.A. in Communication and New Media from Shepherd in 2014. Prior to her role as webmaster, Liz was WVPB's Eastern Panhandle reporter from 2014-2022, the House of Delegates reporter on "The Legislature Today" from 2015-2017, and she covered K-12/higher education from 2020-2022. Liz has also worked as a technical assistant and associate producer on "The Legislature Today."

Review of Athletic Commission Seeks Financial Stability

A Government Organization subcommittee reviewed an evaluation of the state Athletic Commission today and recommendations to improve the agency’s bottom line.

Two representatives from the state Performance Evaluation and Research Division presented their review of the Athletic Commission, which oversees boxing and mixed martial arts competitions in West Virginia.

The representatives expressed concern over the commission’s ability to support itself financially, saying since 2010, the commission hasn’t taken in enough revenues to support its expenditures.

The representatives recommended the Athletic Commission be rolled into the State Lottery Commission so administrative duties and costs could be shared. The evaluation team also recommended increasing or eliminating their annual expense limit of 55 hundred dollars.

BOE Recommends Lawmakers Revisit State Aid Formula

A committee appointed by the West Virginia Board of Education has spent the past 18 months studying how they can better provide services regionally to the county school systems. They presented the final report to lawmakers yesterday which included a recommendation for the upcoming session.

Tom Campbell, a member of the West Virginia Board of Education, recommends senators and delegates take a second look at the state aid formula this year. That formula determines how much state funding each county receives based on the number of students in their schools.

Campbell argued smaller counties are having trouble providing basic services because as their student population shrinks, so do their state dollars.

“There’s so much variation in the state,” noted Campbell, “and what’s been coming so much more different than it used to be is the difference in size of the small counties to the large counties. It’s a larger disparity, and the small counties are getting so small that there’s certain basic expenses that have to be provided.”

He says he’d like to see the legislature reconsider how much aid is going to those smaller counties regardless of the number of students they serve.

List of Restricted Pets Revisited and Adjusted

The state Department of Agriculture’s proposed list of restricted pets in West Virginia was revisited by members of the Legislative Rule Making Committee yesterday.

After intense criticism from the public and conflict between members of the Committee and the Department of Agriculture, Senator Herb Snyder proposed an amendment Monday removing a handful of animals from the list.

He told members of the committee his amendment’s intent was to bring the restricted list back to being about dangerous animals or invasive species that could cause environmental or physical harm to West Virginians, things like crayfish.

The committee also removed certain types of snakes from the restricted list, but West Virginians won’t be allowed to keep poisonous snakes like copperheads as pets.

West Virginians who already own animals that may soon be on the restricted list must get a permit to keep their pet.

The new rule will go before the full Legislature in January for approval before it takes effect.

Meet Delegate-Elect for the 65th District, Jill Upson

On Election Day last week, Republican Jill Upson defeated Democrat Tiffany Lawrence for the House of Delegates in the 65^th District.

Jill Upson was born in California. After marrying her husband who works in the military, they had to relocate every two years. Eleven years ago, she and her husband moved to Charles Town in Jefferson County. Upson decided then she didn’t want to live anywhere else.

“When we got to this area, I just fell in love with it, and I just decided I’m done, that’s it, I’m going to stay here,” Upson said, “And so he continued to receive orders, and move every two years, and I still stayed put. He’s been all over the place, but I stayed and raised my children in Jefferson County.”

Around 2009, after identifying as A-political for most of her life, Upson became interested in politics and specifically, Republican ideology. She started working with other candidates by volunteering and going door-to-door to interact with potential voters on their behalf. When the House of Delegates seat in the 65^th District became available in 2012, Upson almost didn’t run.

“I initially said, no, that I wasn’t interested, and just through an entire series of events that occurred in my life, I decided that this was probably a good time to go ahead and give it a try.”

Upson lost in the 2012 election to Tiffany Lawrence, but this year the outcome was different. Her win surprised her.

“What happened was the day of the election, I was online looking at the different projections, and they said that I probably wouldn’t win, they said that the incumbent had a lot more money, and obviously incumbency is a benefit, and they just said that, you know, with the larger turnout that they were seeing, that they were thinking that I wasn’t going to win. So I was very surprised when I ended up winning by the margin with which I won, I mean that was really a pleasant surprise.”

Upson upset Lawrence with 56 percent of the total vote. She says she’ll stand for more conservative values in Charleston.

“Well I stand for fiscal conservative policies. I ran on enhancing education, restructuring our tax policy, on regulatory policies, and my tagline was ‘freedom and opportunity,’ so obviously individual freedom and economic opportunity.”

Upson says she has a list of things she wants to work on once she’s in office.

“The first thing I want to look at is, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce came out with several policies that they put forth during the last legislative session that they felt would help spur economic growth, so I’d like to work with my colleagues in the legislature to really look at ways that we can start to implement some of those policies.”

Her ultimate goal is to always remember the voters who put her in office. She says she wants to be open and listen to the people, keeping their needs in mind and the lines of communication open between the Eastern Panhandle and Charleston.

W.Va. 2014 Rate of Late Preterm Births at 9.1% in March of Dimes Report Card

West Virginia once again earns a “C” on the 2014 March of Dimes Premature Birth Report Card.

This year, the rate of late preterm births in West Virginia is at 9.1%.

West Virginia’s preterm birth rate was 12.5% percent in 2013, down from 14% in 2006. The state has received a “C” again this year on its report card.

The national preterm birth rate fell to 11.4 percent in 2013 – the lowest in 17 years — meeting the federal Healthy People 2020 goal seven years early. Despite this progress, the nation as a whole still received a “C” on its annual report card.

The US has the highest rate of preterm birth of any high resource country.

West Virginia is part of a national trend toward improved preterm birth rates.

W.Va. Native Curtis Fleming Teaches School Kids About Fly Fishing

Curtis Fleming explains fly fishing to school children from around the state.

The Outdoor Channel features a show titled, Fly Rod Chronicles with Curtis Fleming. It makes stops across the country to feature different places to fly fish. Last week, the show stopped at Cabins, West Virginia in Grant County to hold an event to push for kids to go outside and fly fish. Among the participants, were two students from the Chestnut Mountain Ranch School in Morgantown. It’s a Christian school that serves troubled boys. One of the students talked about the qualities of fly fishing that might help him and others like him in his therapy.

On a warm fall day, this group of about a dozen middle school aged kids eagerly watch for fish in the local stream in Cabins, West Virginia just outside of Petersburg. They’re here to learn about fly fishing from West Virginia native, Curtis Fleming and his crew of pro-fly fishers.

Among the dozen children, two of them are from the Chestnut Mountain Ranch School in Morgantown that serves troubled boys. It’s a Christian-centered school that aims to help boys who are in crisis at home or within themselves.

Kyler Grimes is a 6^th grader at Chestnut Mountain Ranch, and he says fly fishing helps him calm down and take his mind off things.

“Just calming, the relaxation, and when you’re casting…it’s just like the history between fly fishing and the history of fish. It just goes through your mind how long they’ve been here and has been here,” Grimes said.

Bradley Clodfelter is a teacher at Chestnut Mountain Ranch who started a Fly Fishing 101 class after watching Fly Rod Chronicles on television. Grimes is a student in his class.

“Basically what we do in that class is we teach them the basic biology of a nymph, and the lifecycle of nymphs,” explained Clodfelter, “They’re actually required to do a presentation at the end of the class, and it’s a PowerPoint presentation. They learn how to cast. We try to get them out on a stream and teach them how to catch a fish.”

Clodfelter says his class also teaches life-lessons.

“We’re able to work through just…frustration, anger issues…patience. We’re learning about that out here,” said Clodfelter, “It is difficult sometimes to catch fish, and you get your fly tangled up in a tree, and you just have to learn patience there. Also, you learn how to take care of the environment, what we’ve been given, and a lot of times, you know, they like to destroy it, so we want to teach them how to take care of it.”

Curtis Fleming, the host of Fly Rod Chronicles, often works with Project Healing Water, a wounded veteran program that aids vets through fly fishing. He compares the work he does with veterans to the work that Chestnut Mountain Ranch does with troubled boys.

“Just like what we do with wounded vets that come back, it helps them let go of the pain. Okay? And kids today that comes through that’s been troubled or having problems, when you get them outdoors and you get them fly fishing, they forget all about their problems,” Fleming said, “I always tell people that you cannot worry and fly fish. You just can’t do both at the same time.”

Fleming hopes as the day comes to a close that the kids who participated in his event will leave with a new love for fly fishing. He also hopes it will help motivate them to go outside and stay active.