A state task force says West Virginia should require prescriptions for cold medications that contain an ingredient used illegally to make methamphetamine.…
A state task force says West Virginia should require prescriptions for cold medications that contain an ingredient used illegally to make methamphetamine.
The recommendation is one of several approved Wednesday by the Governor’s Advisory Council on Substance Abuse.
The Charleston Gazette says the council also recommended that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin oppose any legislation that would legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use.
Council member the Rev. James Patterson says there’s evidence that requiring prescriptions for cold medications containing pseudoephedrine reduces the number of meth labs.
House health committee Chairman Don Perdue says the council’s pseudoephedrine recommendation is good news. Perdude plans to introduce such legislation in January.
There’s always been the debate, to which region does West Virginia belong? Former Senator Robert C. Byrd was famously quoted as saying West Virginia is the most northern southern state, the most southern northern state, the most eastern western state and the most western eastern state. Many West Virginians will tell you, we belong with everyone and yet, we belong with no one.
So, when an article in The Washington Post depicted West Virginia as a strong blue state slowly becoming red, a phenomenon not unfamiliar to southern states, state leaders on the Democratic side were up in arms against the claim.
“In this past election, of all elections in the state of West Virginia, the fact is that Democrats won 67 percent of all the races which left the Republican Party to win 33 percent,” said Democratic Party Chairman Larry Puccio. “So, there is not a question that it is a Democratic state.”
However, Dr. Robert Rupp, history professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College, said, historically, we’re following that trend the other southern states took decades ago.
“The situation in West Virginia since, basically starting in 2000, is a slow and sustained transition from an extremely loyal Democrat state to a Republican state. From a blue state to a red state,” Rupp said.
“However, what’s interesting about the transition is that unlike other states in the south; let’s use Georgia for example in which the transition happened in less than a decade, in West Virginia the transition is slower and at different levels.”
In the southern United States, once known as the “Solid South” because of the Democratic Party’s political stronghold, things began to change in the early 1960s. The region became more urbanized and could no longer hold their ground on racial segregation. And they started voting Republican at the so called “top of the ticket” for President.
This graph details the voting history of West Virginians in presidential elections from 1968 to 2012.
“I think that is the trend that we have seen through much of the south which was very traditionally Democratic, which began to vote Republican at the top of the ticket starting with Richard Nixon,” said National Political Correspondent for The Washington Post Karen Tumulty. “Ultimately, for a lot of those states, for my home state of Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, they have gone very deeply red.”
Tumulty grew up in Texas and said the people she knew more than 30 years ago as Democrats now identify themselves as Republicans. The journalist traveled to southern West Virginia four times over the summer researching her article, “A Blue State’s Road to Red.”
“The one thing that was beginning to show up nationally in every poll was that American voters have never had a lower regard for the federal government,” Tumulty said.
And that low regard, she said, was nowhere more evident than in southern West Virginia.
“Most of that transformation, the most dramatic change has come about in coal country which was so reliably Democratic just up and down the ticket and really has undergone a great change and continues to,” she added.
In 2000, West Virginia began joining in on the trend, voting for George W. Bush in two elections followed by John McCain and Mitt Romney on the Presidential ticket.
State Republican Party Chairman Conrad Lucas said that’s how it starts. The party switch starts with voters at the office of President and slowly trickles down to the state and local levels.
“It’s definitely a top down voting trend as opposed to bottom up. Much like what was written in The Washington Post, there are still county courthouses where there aren’t Republicans elected,” Lucas said. “There are still counties where it is very difficult to find a Republican to run for the House of Delegates or for any of the county offices despite the fact that federally we are so solidly red now.”
“So, seeing that this trend is happening in the exact same sociological and political manner in which it did in other states indicates that we are no different than those other states in many ways,” he added. “Politically, the trends are what they are and we’re certainly following a historical pattern.”
Puccio agreed, we are following a historical pattern, just not the same one Lucas sees.
“When folks are really down on the individual that’s running for President that does harm the rest of the party and I think some of that showed up here,” he said. “There’s not a question that the favorability for our President is not high here in West Virginia.”
Rupp, however, is not sure. He believes that trickle down pattern will follow in time.
“West Virginia still has a two to one Democratic edge in registration, but the story in West Virginia is a state that’s two to one Democratic is switching over to Republican,” Rupp said. “Now, what’s even more interesting is that when you go down to Wyoming County, it’s seven to one, nine to one Democrats.”
“Virtually everyone in that county is registered as a Democrat, but they’re not voting as a Democrat.”
Rupp said on the federal level, West Virginians are voting more and more to send Republicans to Washington, with the exception of Senator Joe Manchin. Rupp admitted though, Manchin isn’t much of an exception.
“In America, there are three political parties,” Rupp said. “There’s the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the West Virginia Democrats, and I say that because West Virginia Democrats have been able to keep control on the state level because, one, it’s a huge, big tent in which you can have very conservative members feel comfortable in the Democratic Party as well as liberals.”
“For that reason we can see the election of someone like Joe Manchin even though the state seems to be shifting in a Republican direction.”
Tumulty said as she traveled the southern West Virginia, she too could tell West Virginia Democrats were different, but that observation only reminded her of the transition she witnessed in Texas years ago.
“Excellence in Education: It’s Everyone’s Business.” Those words served as the slogan for an education summit in Charleston focused on bringing educators,…
“Excellence in Education: It’s Everyone’s Business.” Those words served as the slogan for an education summit in Charleston focused on bringing educators, administrators, business leaders and even state lawmakers together to talk about the future in education for our state. To improve that future, those groups looked to Florida to learn how the state was able to take their education system from 49 to 6 in a just over a decade.
Accountability and early literacy. Those were the two major ways former educators and policy analysts from Florida say they were able to turn the public education system in their state around.
They joined Charleston-based non-profit The Education Alliance at their first annual education summit to share strategies that may help West Virginia do the same.
“Primarily, we choose to look at them because of their success,” said Dr. Amelia Courts, President and CEO of The Education Alliance.
Courts said Florida was chosen as a focus this year not because West Virginia should mirror their efforts, but because they started in a similar place in terms of student achievement and were able to make a change.
“They have specific data that shows how they’ve moved student achievement over the last ten years from below the national average to above the national average,” she said, “and that’s absolutely where West Virginia wants to go.”
The morning started with a strategy session focused on accountability. Florida implemented a new grading system for schools, giving them a simple A through F rating based on student achievement and other variables.
Former Assistant Deputy Commissioner at the Florida Department of Education Dr. Christy Hovanetz said by putting the new system in place and making school’s scores available to everyone, they saw a change in instruction that lead to drastic results.
“That following year, instructional practices changed so much that we had more A and B schools than we had D or F schools,” she said, “and then the following year we had twice as many A and B schools as we did in that first year.”
The West Virginia Department of Education implemented a new accountability system earlier this year with the intent to be more transparent, but it’s too soon to tell if the new system will have similar results to Florida’s.
The second major focus of the day was early literacy.
Governor Tomblin’s education reform bill, passed during the 2013 legislative session, calls for West Virginia students to meet reading proficiency levels by the third grade, a benchmark state Board of Education President Gayle Manchin said 73 percent of students in the state aren’t meeting.
“We know that if you’re not reading well by the end of third grade, where you’re supposed to be learning to read, as you progress through school where you’re supposed to be reading to learn, you’re not going to be able to do that,” Manchin said, “and so we know that children start dropping out of school way before they turn 16.”
“It starts happening when they can’t keep up. They’re not able to engage and be involved in what’s going on in the classroom.”
Cari Miller served as the Deputy Director for Just Read, Florida!, Governor Jeb Bush’s statewide literacy initiative. She showed summit participants decade old statistics from the state.
“Twenty-nine percent of Florida’s third grade students scored at the lowest achievement level on Florida’s statewide assessment,” Miller said.
That means ten years ago, about a third of Florida’s third graders couldn’t read. Miller said that statistic combined with leadership that understood the value of reading led the state to implement a new measure.
“And that measure was requiring students in third grade that scored at the lowest achievement level on our statewide reading assessment to be retained.”
Retained, meaning held back to repeat the third grade.
There were, however, six exemptions to being retained, including a second test, additional coaching, and many that dealt with special education or English as second language students, but Miller admits that notion was still a hard sell for parents.
“I just want to share from a teacher perspective is that although the retention seems scary for adults, it’s not as scary for kids and actually many kids have benefited from a second year because some kids just need more time,” she said.
As someone who taught under the standards, Miller said she saw her retained students’ self-esteem improve, which, in turn, improved their level of achievement. Statewide, reading scores went up and in recent years they’ve been able to continue the increase while the number of students being held back has dropped off.
Courts said these policies are just examples of things West Virginia should begin to look at as we move forward trying to increase student achievement.
A Kanawha County Family Court judge is facing a battery charge following an incident at a Charleston hospital.
Charleston police arrested 61-year-old Mark Snyder on Monday night. He’s accused of grabbing a nurse’s arm and trying to drag her down a hallway at Charleston Area Medical General Hospital.
A criminal complaint says the nurse told police that Snyder was upset about the care of a patient he was visiting. The complaint says Snyder refused several requests to leave and was escorted out of the hospital by a security guard.
Snyder was charged with battery on health care providers and emergency medical service personnel.
Snyder did not immediately return a telephone message Tuesday afternoon
West Virginia’s tax revenue slide is continuing as October’s collections fell about $8 million below estimates.
Deputy revenue secretary Mark Muchow tells media outlets that collections of personal income, consumer sales and business and occupation taxes were all below estimates.
Personal income and consumer sales taxes are the state’s biggest sources of tax revenue.
Natural gas production boosted severance tax collections above estimates. But Muchow says it wasn’t enough to offset the declines.
October’s tax collections totaled about $313.5 million.
Tax collections in September were about $2 million below estimates.
