All Things Considered Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

West Virginia House Votes To Impeach All 4 State Supreme Court Justices

Updated at 10:25 a.m. ET Tuesday

West Virginia’s House of Delegates voted to impeach all four justices on the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals on Monday.

Three of them, Chief Justice Margaret Workman and Justices Allen Loughry and Elizabeth Walker, now face impeachment trials in the state Senate.

The fourth, Justice Robin Davis, announced her retirement on Tuesday, just hours after her impeachment. A fifth justice on the court resigned before impeachment proceedings began.

Workman, Loughry, Walker and Davis have all been impeached for failing to carry out their administrative duties. Loughry, Workman and Davis also were impeached for paying retired senior status judges more than the law allowed.

Davis and Loughry were impeached for the use of state money to renovate their offices — but Walker and Workman, who spent less on renovations than their colleagues, were cleared of impeachment charges over the expenses.

Loughry was also impeached for using state vehicles and computers.

All told, 11 articles of impeachment were adopted.

Loughry was the first to be impeached Monday. After two hours of debate, an article of impeachment against him was approved in a matter of seconds, by a final vote of 64-33. The tally easily exceeded the 51 votes needed to go forward with trial proceedings.

Any justices who are impeached in the House are then tried in the Senate, with lawmakers from the upper chamber serving as jurors and deciding whether to remove the justices from office.

The votes came one week after the state House Judiciary Committee approved 14 articles of impeachment against the four justices who currently sit on the Supreme Court of Appeals, accusing the judges of “maladministration, corruption, incompetency, neglect of duty.” They came under fire last year, when it was reported that they had spent more than $3 million to renovate their offices.

Loughry also is facing a federal criminal case, after a grand jury indicted him in June on fraud and a number of other charges, including misuse of a state vehicle and moving an expensive desk from his Capitol office to his home.

The 14 articles are listed in House Resolution 202. Article I, targeting Loughry, was the first to come up for a vote Monday, following debate that focused on a lack of an official definition for “maladministration,” as well as broader issues of the separation of powers between branches of state government.

Article I calls out Loughry for using state money to buy a nearly $32,000 couch and a decorative floor inlay for almost $34,000 — part of approximately $363,000 he spent to renovate his office.

Davis spent more than $500,000 on renovating her office.

Walker spent $131,000 on office renovations, and Workman spent $111,000; neither was ultimately impeached over their renovations.

As the House discussed impeaching Loughry and the other justices, an amendment was introduced that would have recommended censure rather than removal from office. It was soundly rejected, with only five votes in favor.

The outcome of the impeachment effort could allow West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice — a former Democrat who is now a Republican — to appoint the majority of the justices on the state’s highest court. The state has a deadline of 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday to trigger a special election for any vacancies on the high court’s bench. After that, any open seats would be filled by appointment, with the new justices serving until the next regular election.

By law, West Virginia has five Supreme Court justices, who serve 12-year terms. But Justice Menis Ketchum resigned in July, announcing his retirement just before the first impeachment proceedings were to begin. Ketchum’s seat will be filled by special election this November.

In 2015, West Virginia’s Supreme Court elections became nonpartisan. But all of the current justices have previously run for office on behalf of the two main parties. Loughry won office as a Republican, and Walker ran as a Republican in 2008 before she was elected in a nonpartisan vote in 2016. Workman, Davis and Ketchum were elected as Democrats.

You can follow the impeachment proceedings via a live blog from West Virginia Public Broadcasting. The House debate is also being streamed on YouTube.

WVPB Host and Composer Matt Jackfert on Performance Today

An original composition by WVPB host Matt Jackfert is being featured Friday on the public radio program Performance Today.

Listen Here

The national broadcast is part of their Summer Road Trip. The featured piece is called “Vandalia,” which is titled after the proposed name for the state of West Virginia as well as the festival that takes place in Charleston every year.

In 2012, the West Virginia Youth Symphony Orchestra commissioned and later performed “Vandalia” during its tour of Europe. The featured performance took place in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, which is the sister city of Charleston, WV. That day, the WVYSO students played with passion and precision for a sold-out crowd at the State Opera House in Banska Bystrica.

Matt Jackfert composes music for WVPB in addition to his own commissions. Jackfert has written the themes to West Virginia Morning, The Legislature Today, Viewpoint, and has scored the film Jay: A Rockefeller’s Journey.

This year Jackfert has been played by the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, has received the West Virginia Music Teacher’s Association Commissioned Composer Award, and was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Awards.

You can find more of his music at http://jackfert.com

Timing Is Everything: A Note On NPR's Clock Changes

There’s a structure to what you hear on West Virginia Public Radio that’s about to change.

Each show on the station is governed by a “clock.” These graphical representations of each hour lay out what happens in a program and when.

Whether it’s a newscast, a promotion for what is coming up later in the show, or a regular segment such as West Virginia Morning or the Marketplace Morning Report, it all happens at a precise time according to the clock. This clock is how we coordinate between hosts that are in NPR’s studios in Washington, D.C. and beyond, and West Virginia Public Radio’s hosts who are in our studios in Charleston, so we don’t end up talking over each other.

For years these broadcast “clocks” have remained the same. But how we listen to the radio and get our news has changed radically.

Over the last year, NPR has been redesigning the show clocks with a team of Program Directors from stations across the country. We spent countless hours on conference calls and in face to face meetings, going over every minute of the shows. We evaluated and debated when we should be telling you about local business sponsors and when we should be starting the big story of the day. We considered research about how people’s morning routines differ from their afternoon routines. That affects how often we need to tell you about the weather. Lots of thought went into what you will hear during each second of the shows when the new clocks go into effect on Monday, November 17th.

Some of the adjustments are really small and you probably won’t notice them. Others are more substantial. For instance, the times when you hear news updates in Morning Edition are changing. Instead of a newscast at the beginning of each half hour, you’ll hear news updates every twenty minutes during the program. Some segments, such as West Virginia Morning, will air at a different time.

The bottom line is, if you know when to walk the dog or leave the house based on when something happens on the radio, you might want to keep your watch handy until you get to know the rhythm of the new “clocks.”

Here are a few changes to note:

6:30:30 This Week in West Virginia History
7:30:00 West Virginia Morning
8:30:30 StarDate
4:48:00 This Week in West Virginia History

Tina Fey Continues to Uncover 'The Hidden World of Girls'

Host Tina Fey, star of 30 Rock, author of Bossypants and Saturday Night Live alumna, takes listeners around the world into the secret life of girls—from the dunes of the Sahara to a slumber party in Manhattan, from the dancehalls of Jamaica to a racetrack in Ramallah—and reveals some of her own hidden worlds.

Tune in to The Hidden World of Girls on West Virginia Public Radio on Thursday, March 27 at 9 p.m.

As part of this international collaboration, The Kitchen Sisters opened up The Hidden World of Girls NPR phone line and invited listeners to share their stories of groundbreaking girls and pioneering women. Calls poured in from around the world and these stories and messages thread throughout the hours. Stories in this hour include:

Horses, Unicorns and Dolphins—a story of girlhood fantasy and aspiration.
From Afghanistan we enter The Hidden World of Kandahar Girls—girls and young women going to school, working towards careers, standing up to the threats of the Taliban.
We explore the mysterious universe of women’s bodies in the story, Chicken Pills: The Hidden World of Jamaican Girls where homegrown cosmetic treatments and changing ideals of beauty are part of a national debate going on in the music, in the dancehalls and on the streets.
We visit Tiina Urm, a young Estonian environmental activist who spearheaded a one-day clean up of her entire country.
We meet Amira Al-Sharif from Yemen who came to New York City to document the lives of young American women.
We go back stage with singer Janelle Monae and hear about her songwriting process

Tina Fey Uncovers 'The Hidden World of Girls'

Groundbreaking writer, actress and comedian, Tina Fey comes to West Virginia Public Radio’s airwaves to host The Hidden World of Girls, two new hour-long Specials inspired by the NPR series heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Tune in Thursday March 20, at 9 pm.

From the dunes of the Sahara to a slumber party in Manhattan, from the dance halls of Jamaica to a racetrack in Ramallah, Tina Fey takes us around the world into the secret life of girls and the women they become. Sound-rich, evocative, funny, and powerful–stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities. Of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide.

These specials are produced by Peabody Award-winning producers, The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), in collaboration with NPR reporters and foreign correspondents, independent producers and listeners around the world.