Two members of the Jefferson County Commission removed from office earlier this year accepted plea deals Friday.
Two members of the Jefferson County Commission removed from office earlier this year accepted plea deals Friday.
In March, Tricia Jackson and Jennifer Krouse were charged with 42 misdemeanors, including failure to perform official duties, after refusing to attend seven weeks of commission meetings in fall 2023.
Jackson and Krouse refused to attend the meetings because of a dispute over how to fill a vacant seat on the commission. This halted the commission’s operations because it was unable to meet quorum. Meanwhile, both commissioners still collected salaries and benefits.
The commissioners were removed from office for the incident in a May district court decision that was upheld by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in August.
On Friday, the commissioners both pleaded “no contest” to one count of failure to perform official duties, with the remaining 41 charges dismissed through a deal from Special Prosecutor John Ours. “No contest” means the commissioners did not admit guilt, but accepted consequences from the charge as if they were found guilty.
The commissioners were ordered to pay a $50 fine each, in addition to court costs.
West Virginia was once a Democratic stronghold. But in the past decade, the state has grown increasingly red.
Between December 2016 and October 2024, Democratic Party enrollment in West Virginia fell by more than 37 percent, according to voter registration data from the secretary of state’s office.
Today, Republicans in the Mountain State outnumber Democrats by more than 100,000. Residents have different ideas of what caused that decline.
Brady Boccucci, an early voter from Martinsburg, thinks it has something to do with the years-long decrease in union membership, since unions long received support from the Democratic Party.
“I think the decline of unionization in West Virginia has led towards more people registering Republican,” Boccucci said.
In the early 1980s, about one in five American workers was backed by a union, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, that figure sits closer to one in ten.
Janel Clement of Hedgesville, Berkeley County, was registered as a Republican earlier in life. But today she is a registered Democrat, and said that political messaging from the party of her youth has pushed her away from voting for candidates on the right.
“This party today bears no resemblance to the Republican Party of my youth,” she said.
The West Virginia Democratic Party and its chair, Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, did not respond to multiple phone call and email requests for comment on this story.
Between 2016 and 2024, Republican party registration has also increased by roughly 25 percent. And since 2023, ten additional West Virginia counties flipped from blue to red, with Republican registration now leading in 47 counties total.
Frank DeStefano of Charles Town said this could be because Republicans like him feel alienated by the Democratic Party’s messaging.
“The situation is so bad now,” he said. “When you start bullying one team and calling them Hitler and calling them all kinds of – that's not helping me.”
Other political groups, like the Libertarian and Mountain parties, have also seen modest gains. Jessica Geiermann of Shepherdstown said that partisan politics can push moderate voters away from major-party affiliation.
“I'm a registered libertarian. I think it's because sometimes, with our bipartisan [system] not everybody fits into one mold,” she said. “So I think some of the third parties might be becoming more appealing to people.”
Political leaders in the state’s Republican Party are excited by these trends. Chairman Matt Herridge said they suggest that his party reflects the values of the state better than the Democratic party.
“I think that a lot of West Virginians have always, whether Democrat or Republican, hold those values of faith, family and freedom, and they just feel that their party has left them,” Herridge said.
Beyond just messaging, Herridge said efforts to transition away from coal, an industry with a historically major presence in the state, lost long-time loyalty to the Democratic Party in West Virginia.
Herridge noted that changes in affiliation haven’t been uniform across the state’s landscape. He said upticks in Republican registration have been more pronounced in rural areas, and that several urban areas in the state still lean blue.
But he thinks current trends suggest more West Virginia voters might begin to identify with his party’s mission.
“It is on us, I think, to try to be as big tent as we can,” Herridge said. “Certainly we’re getting more and more optimistic as we get closer to Nov. 5.”
The Nov. 5 general election is just a few days away. As the state prepares for Election Day, a growing number of West Virginians have already cast their ballots at local early voting sites.
As of Thursday, that included more than 33,000 residents of Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties, according to the most recent preliminary data available through the secretary of state’s office.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting traveled to early voting locations in each of the three counties and spoke with roughly one dozen residents. Across the board, the Eastern Panhandle early voters agreed this year’s election is important, but differed in their reasoning why.
Partisan Divides
Democratic voters like Maria Beckman, a resident of the Jefferson County town of Bolivar, worry about growing political polarization in the United States today.
She said there can be “societal pressure” to vote red in West Virginia, but that the success of the Democratic Party during this year’s election is key to the “future of democracy.”
We asked Eastern Panhandle voters:
What’s the biggest issue on your mind this election?
“The character of the Republican presidential candidate is at issue here. I think to support him means we’ve lost our soul,” Beckman said. “I want to cast a vote against tyranny and dictatorship, and for somebody who is hopeful and intelligent. By that, I mean I want to support Kamala Harris.”
Janel Clement, a contractor from Hedgesville, was registered as a Republican earlier in life. But today she votes as a Democrat, and said she hardly recognizes the party she left behind.
For her, protecting democracy means “free and fair elections,” “people who accept the results of the election” and “no riots at the Capitol or otherwise.” She wants to see those values reflected in the candidate she votes for, too.
“It is basic and fundamental to the office of the presidency: Respect the Constitution,” Clement said.
Regardless of party, most early voters who spoke to West Virginia Public Broadcasting agreed that recent partisan divides have made politics more contentious.
But Republican voters like Frank DeStefano of Charles Town say they feel alienated by messaging from the Democratic Party.
“Whether it’s a presidential election or even just a local election, always vote,” said Martinsburg resident Brady Boccucci. “You can’t really complain unless you actually get out there and vote.”
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
DeStefano waited outside the Jefferson County Courthouse annex this week alongside his son Arthur, also a Republican voter. DeStefano said Democratic politicians portray Republicans and moderates in an unfair light.
“It’s just, the situation is so bad now,” he said. “When you start bullying one team and calling them Hitler and calling them all kinds of – that’s not helping me.”
Many early voters agreed that their votes this year would be influenced by national political conversations. Clement said she was “not really interested in local elections this year,” but that divisions between the two major parties led her to “just vote straight D.”
“I don’t trust Republicans anymore,” she said.
Local Issues
Most early voters who spoke to West Virginia Public Broadcasting agreed that they felt more informed about national issues than local candidates or statewide ballot measures. But some said particular issues affecting the local community were top of mind this election season.
Arthur DeStefano said high property taxes and cost of living in the Eastern Panhandle have pushed him toward fiscal conservatism and candidates on the right.
Urban: “What’s bringing me out here is about our school excess levy. … There’s very little accountability for where the money goes, and it keeps rising because there’s no cap.”
Beckman: “I want to support Kamala Harris for president, and I also want to vote in favor of the school levy.”
Boccucci: “I just think it’s important no matter what the election, whether it’s a presidential election or even just a local election, to always vote.”
DeStefano:“I want to get our America back to the way it was. … I work three jobs just to be able to pay our bills, and our bills are still skyrocketing.”
“I work three jobs just to be able to pay our bills, and our bills are still skyrocketing,” he said.
Other residents expressed concerns over government spending, too. Richard Urban of Shannondale, picketed near the Jefferson County Courthouse to discourage early voters from supporting a local amendment that would increase school funding by increasing a levy on real estate and personal property taxes in the county.
“There’s very little accountability for where the money goes, and it keeps rising because there’s no cap,” he said.
Urban self-identified as an independent voter. But he wore a Make America Great Again hat while picketing, and said his views often align with candidates on the right.
Between local and national elections, Urban said he would vote for candidates who represent fiscal conservatism, freedom of speech, gun rights and vaccine choice.
For him, this included Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, who is currently facing a Democratic challenge from former state lawmaker John Doyle in the state’s easternmost West Virginia Senate district.
“In other words, less government and more personal responsibility and freedom,” he said.
Richard Urban, an independent voter from the community of Shannondale, said his biggest concern this election is a school levy that would raise taxes in Jefferson County.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
But Jefferson County Democratic voters like Beckman view the local election from a different angle. Beckman said Rucker is a “fine person,” but that Doyle “has the right policy positions” to earn her vote this year.
Doyle “will support most everyday West Virginians, like me,” she said.
Beckman also said she is in favor of increasing the local school levy to add more funding to the county’s public school system. Ultimately, she said the success of ballot measures and policies like these lie in the hands of local Democratic leadership.
“It’s up to the Democratic Party to show those voters that Democratic party platforms actually do support West Virginians,” she said. “I hope I do see that in my lifetime.”
As of Oct. 31, nearly 245,000 West Virginians had cast their votes through early voting, and nearly 20,000 had returned absentee ballots, according to preliminary data from the secretary of state’s office.
With the Nov. 5 general election fast approaching, that means nearly 950,000 registered voters in the state are left to vote, across the Eastern Panhandle and beyond.
For more information on voting in West Virginia, visit the secretary of state’s voter dashboard at GoVoteWV.com.
A new educational partnership at Shepherd University aims to help employees of a well-known corporation access academic opportunities in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.
A new educational partnership at Shepherd University aims to help employees of a well-known corporation access academic opportunities in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.
In 2012, multinational tech and ecommerce company Amazon launched its Career Choice program. The program helps cover higher education or professional development costs for some employees.
Shepherd University announced Thursday afternoon that it was selected by Amazon as a Career Choice education partner, adding it to the list of institutions that eligible employees can access with the company’s financial support.
The Career Choice program is “open to the vast majority of Amazon hourly full-time and part-time employees after 90 days of employment,” with “no limit to the number of years they can participate,” according to the company’s website.
The company can “pre-pay tuition and reimburse books and fees up to an annual amount” for several different courses of study, the website continues. This includes some bachelor and associate degree programs, GED programs, second-language English instruction and professional development courses.
More than 200,000 Amazon employees have participated in the program since its launch, Sam Fisher, a public relations representative for Amazon, wrote in an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
“Our goal is to meet individual learners where they are on their educational journey through a variety of education and skills training opportunities,” he wrote.
In his email, Fisher did not directly address why Shepherd was selected for the program. But he wrote that more than 600 schools have been approved to participate across 14 countries through a “rigorous selection process.”
The company is “regularly looking to expand that list to provide more opportunities for our employees with trusted partners,” he added.
Scarborough Library houses academic support services and the Center for Appalachian Studies and Communications at Shepherd University.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Amazon is not a major employer in the Mountain State. As of January 2024, the company directly employed 300 full and part-time employees in West Virginia, according to its Investing in the U.S. report. That is one of its lowest statewide employment rates in the country.
But in Virginia and Maryland, which both border Jefferson County, Amazon is a bigger player in the job market. The company currently employs 39,000 full and part-time staff members in Virginia, and 23,000 in Maryland.
In Virginia, Amazon operates a distribution and fulfillment center just south of the Berkeley County line, roughly 20 miles from Shepherd’s campus. When it opened in 2018, Amazon said the facility aimed to hire employees for 1,000 full-time positions.
Tammy Thieman, director of career development programs at Amazon, said in a Thursday press release from Shepherd that the new partnership is part of a company effort to bolster third-party educational resources for current employees.
These programs can help provide employees “the education and training they need to grow their careers, whether that’s with us or elsewhere,” she said.
Administrators at Shepherd University are excited for what the new program can bring.
“Amazon shares our commitment to student success, and we look forward to providing quality instructional opportunities to their employees through this innovative program,” President Mary Hendrix said in Thursday’s press release.
“Shepherd University is excited for the opportunity to partner with the Amazon Career Choice program,” said Hans Fogle, executive director of university communications.
“We will be working with Amazon to support the success of their employees through this significant educational benefit,” he said.
For more information on Shepherd University’s education partnership with the Amazon Career Choice program, visit the university’s website.
Members of the Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church hosted an event called “Guns to Gardens” on Oct. 12. This was the second annual event in Shepherdstown, though Guns to Gardens programs are held nationwide.
The hum of power tools poured out from behind the Shepherdstown Fire Department earlier this month. Drivers approaching the fire hall met with a table of volunteers, and were guided out back to drop off something they no longer wanted: their firearms.
Members of the Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church hosted an event called “Guns to Gardens” on Oct. 12. This was the second annual event in Shepherdstown, though Guns to Gardens programs are held nationwide.
It began with one minister after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, then spread. The idea for the event is pulled from a biblical passage in the Book of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Participants at the event do just that. They bring unwanted and unloaded firearms, and give them to a team of volunteers on site. Using power tools, the volunteers then dismantle the guns.
Once broken down, they are no longer guns, so no transfer of ownership is required. Congregation members repurpose the leftover wood and scrap metal into gardening tools.
Dave Smith, a volunteer who helped run the power tools, said the team is specially trained to do so. “We follow both the national protocols, and then the kind of techniques that we learned from local metal workers,” he said.
Leslie Williams, a member of Shepherdstown Presbyterian, heard about the event and brought it to the Eastern Panhandle in 2023. Overwhelmed by the scale of gun deaths in the United States, she hoped to make a difference within her own community.
“I’m not anti-gun. This project is not anti-gun. But the senseless deaths — I just couldn’t settle. So when I saw this opportunity come along, I was like, ‘I can do this thing,’” she said. “The first thing that I did was go to my church leadership and say, ‘What do you think?’ And they were just wholeheartedly behind it.”
Firearm deaths in the United States hit a 40-year high in 2021, and members of Shepherdstown Presbyterian say a first step toward a solution is providing an opportunity for residents to safely get rid of unwanted guns.
Sam Jannotta cuts through a gun at the Shepherdstown Guns to Gardens event.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Part of a newly broken-down gun lays on the ground beside Jannotta’s work station.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Williams said the reasons why residents give up their guns vary.
“It’s everything from people who are old and say, ‘My hunting days are behind me. I’m done with them,’” she said. “We’ve had widows whose husbands were hunters or marksmen, and the husbands died, and they’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do with these guns, and I’d like them gone.’”
Last year, another participant said they wanted to get rid of their guns, but were wary of them ending up in a pawn shop.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen from there,” Williams said.
Participants are given grocery store gift cards in exchange for giving up their guns. Over the course of this year’s event, Williams said the church collected and dismantled a total of 40 guns — 15 more than the year prior.
But gun rights are a touchy subject in West Virginia, and not all residents view the solution to gun violence in the same way.
Williams said the community’s response to the event has been mostly positive. But some residents stopped by to express discontent or raise questions about the event.
Among them was Chris Anders, who is currently running to represent the 97th District in the West Virginia House of Delegates, which encompasses Berkeley County. Anders said he heard about the event and went to see it in person.
“I was actually reloading ammunition for deer season when I got the phone call,” he said. “So I ran down right away to try to judge and ascertain what was actually going on.”
Anders said he was “taken aback” by the event. He does not consider getting rid of guns as a solution to gun violence.
The event is “helping the anti-gun radicals start to vilify and reduce civilian access to firearms,” he said. “If you want to increase liberty, more civilians should have firearms, and also less government agents should.”
From left, Paul Woods and Sarah Wagner helped deconstruct guns at this year’s Guns to Gardens event in Shepherdstown.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Anders said gun access is protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. But members of the church say they respect the Second Amendment, and are not necessarily taking a partisan stance on gun ownership.
For Smith, Guns to Gardens is also about free choice, because it provides people a safe way to give up their firearms if they so choose. He does not think that will be enough to end gun violence, but that it could still make an impact.
“We’re not going to make a dent in the number of guns in our country, obviously. But for us, it helps,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to change the way we talk about guns and think about guns, and hopefully there are occasions when we may be taking a gun out of an unsafe situation.”
Smith added that beyond interpersonal gun violence, gun deaths can also be caused by suicide or firearm accidents. He said disposing of a gun can potentially reduce these risks.
Anders also expressed concern that historic or valuable guns could be destroyed.
Williams and Smith said they had a gun checker on site during the event, who could tell attendees whether their firearms held financial or historical significance. This allowed them to make more informed decisions, they said.
Anders said he asked to meet the gun checker himself, but was not allowed to do so. Williams said the event was private to protect the anonymity of participants.
Reverend Gusti Linnea Newquist leads the Shepherdstown Presbyterian congregation, and also helped coordinate the Guns to Gardens event. Beyond dismantling firearms, she said the event also offers relief to people who feel burdened by gun ownership.
“We’ve had people come with tears in their eyes, that they finally have a place to give a gun that maybe has been used in a suicide,” she said. “Or just a collection of guns that was from a family member, but they don’t really know what to do with it.”
Newquist said that fits into the mission of her church.
“I would say that we are a congregation that is committed in our identity to working for justice and wholeness in ourselves and in the world,” she said. “So, yeah, [this is] part of who we are as a congregation.”
Berkeley County officials are excited by recent population growth. But they say preparing for newcomers means expanding existing infrastructure, like water and wastewater systems.
West Virginia has long struggled with population decline, but its easternmost region has proved an exception. Last year, five counties in the area saw population growth — among just eight counties in the state.
Berkeley County experienced the biggest jump. Between July 2022 and July 2023, the county population grew by 2.37 percent, with more than 3,000 new residents moving in.
Local officials are excited by these numbers. But they say preparing for newcomers means expanding existing infrastructure, like water and wastewater systems.
Officials took a step toward that goal Thursday, with a groundbreaking ceremony in the unincorporated community of Bunker Hill. Located about 12 miles south of Martinsburg, the area will soon house a new $79 million water treatment plant servicing the southern portion of the county.
Engineers on the project expect to complete the new plant in three years. By then, the county will need to supply an additional 900,000 gallons of water to keep up with demand, according to Jeremey Hise, vice president of the engineering firm leading the project, Hazen and Sawyer.
“A lot of these projects are in need in a very timely manner,” Hise said in a speech during the ceremony.
Bunker Hill already has a water treatment plant. But it was built in 1958 and has reached its “life expectancy,” according to Jim Ouellet, executive director of the Berkeley County Water District.
“We’re going to replace it and, at the same time, we’re going to add additional capacity,” he said.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., reviews plans for the new water treatment plant in Bunker Hill.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
County administrators say Bunker Hill’s current water treatment plant, pictured in part here, needs replacement.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
With the site’s expansion, Berkeley County will treat an additional 6 million gallons of water per day. Its storage capacity will increase from 400,000 gallons to 2 million.
In 2023, Ouellet said the county added an average of 3.3 water meter connections per day. He said this shows the importance of increasing supply.
“We have great enthusiasm from developers who have desired to be here. We have businesses coming to the community,” Ouellet said. “Our objective is to simply create and maintain the necessary infrastructure so that, as these opportunities come along, we’ll be positioned to supply them with the water they need.”
Ouellet said the Bunker Hill site is not the only thing in the works. On the county’s northern end, officials aim to increase the capacity of a water plant fed by the Potomac River from 6 million gallons of water per day to 10 million.
The Bunker Hill project is located in the southernmost part of the county. By expanding water systems on both sides of the county, Ouellet said administrators can more easily serve residents across the region.
“Obviously, you don’t want to move water further than you have to. It’s very heavy,” he said. “The more we have down here, the less we have to move from up north further south. So, it always works in concert with each other.”
United States Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and West Virginia Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, delivered remarks during the event. They voiced their support for the project, and hopes for future development projects in the Eastern Panhandle.
The Berkeley County Public Service District provides water to the greater Berkeley County area.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Funding for the project came from a mix of sources.
According to Ouellet, the Berkeley County Water District borrowed roughly $50 million from the state’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which provides money to water and wastewater construction, upgrade and expansion efforts. The fund is administered by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Water and Waste Management.
Ouellet said the West Virginia Water Development Authority (WDA) provided the project an additional grant of roughly $25 million. The WDA coordinates loans and financing for local water and wastewater facilities across the state.
Plus, the United States Environmental Protection Agency allocated $3 million to the project following a congressional spending request from Capito.
“Clean water is absolutely essential for drinking and for the environmental health of our community,” Capito told West Virginia Public Broadcasting after the ceremony.
Capito said utilities like water factor into the decision to move to West Virginia for prospective residents and businesses. Plus, she said improving water resources also benefits people already here.
“I know this is an expanding area. There’s more jobs. There’s more housing,” Capito said. “If you don’t have the availability of clean water, drinking water and wastewater facilities, you’re not going to be able to grow.”
Ouellet said Berkeley County officials are grateful for the growth they have already experienced, and hope infrastructure improvements keep current trends going.
“We’re fortunate to have a community that continues to prosper,” he said. “And in any community, in any place, the most important public health component is a viable water system.”
