West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
You can listen to Rockefeller's full comments at his broadband summit on November 4, 2013 in Morgantown here.
You can listen to Rockefeller’s full comments at his broadband summit on November 4, 2013 in Morgantown here.
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.
A national poll conducted by a nonpartisan think tank and a justice advocacy group shows more and more Americans believe campaign spending on judicial elections is swaying decisions in the courtroom.
The groups are now calling for the spread of more public campaign financing and other reforms for state Supreme Court elections, much like a pilot program already in place in West Virginia.
In 2012, an advertising campaign featuring a brown haired boy in a suit, missing his two front teeth, hit the air in West Virginia. Justus Loughry was campaigning for his dad, Allen Loughry, running for an open seat on the state Supreme Court; running on West Virginia taxpayers’ dollars.
Loughry was the first candidate in the state’s history to utilize a public campaign financing program, and he did so successfully, winning his seat.
“The really good thing about public financing is it let’s the judges spend time with voters instead of donors,” said Bert Brandenburg, executive director of Justice at Stake, “and it can reduce the fear of the public that justice might be for sale.”
Justice at Stake is a nonpartisan group working to keep courts across the country fair and impartial. One major way they’re doing that is by running a campaign of their own, so to speak, one that supports judicial election contribution reform nationwide.
They’ve teamed up with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nationally recognized think tank at New York University.
“We think public financing is an important policy measure that more states should adopt,” said Alicia Bannon an attorney for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.
“What it does is gives candidates the opportunity to run competitive campaigns without needing to rely on special interest dollars. I think we saw that in West Virginia where a publicly financed candidate was able to win his election.”
West Virginia is one of only two states where candidates for the Supreme Court can opt in to a public financing program. The other is New Mexico.
The study funded and released by Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center polled 1,200 people from across the country, focusing on the influence they believe campaign spending can have in the courtroom.
Results show the general public believes that influence not only exists, but can have a major impact.
“Up until this moment, we usually got a pretty reliable answer back through polls that we did, through polls that other organizations did, through a variety of different pollsters. No matter who asked the question, the answer would be the same,” Brandenburg said.
“About three in four Americans were worried campaign money was effecting courtroom decisions. What’s so striking is that for the first time that number has really spiked up.”
The poll shows 87 percent of participants believe both campaign donations and independent spending by special interest groups have “some” or “a great deal” of influence on a judge’s decision.
The Federal Election Commission limits how much money can be donated to a specific candidate’s campaign, but special interest groups have no limits and can create their own advertising campaigns.
An ad paid for by special interest group “For the Sake of the Kids” in 2004 claimed then Justice Warren McGraw was ruling in favor of trial lawyers who appeared before him in court after accepting campaign donations.
The special interest group was formed by former Massey CEO Don Blankenship in 2004 to campaign against McGraw, and it seems to have worked as McGraw was defeated by now Chief Justice Brent Benjamin.
It’s instances like that Bannon said, where a millionaire takes an interest in court decisions and tries to assert their influence through contributions, the public is starting to pay more attention to.
“It really shows that the American public is sounding the alarm,” Bannon said. “They’re concerned about the money that’s pouring into these state judicial races and it’s impacting our public’s confidence in the courts.”
But House Minority Leader Tim Armstead doesn’t believe reforming judicial election spending is the best way to renew the trust the public has in their court system.
“The best way to address the judicial system is through legislative reforms,” Armstead said Monday night. “We should be focused on reforming how our courts are set up, the right to appeal and how damages are calculated. There is a lot we can do to address it from the legislative standpoint.”
Bannon agreed there are other areas of reform she would like to see taken on by the states, but over the past decade, states that hold competitive elections, elections where candidates face off against one another like in West Virginia, have seen an influx in spending.
A majority of that money, however, is not going to the candidates themselves. Instead, it’s going toward creating those advertising campaigns and other materials.
Bannon said public campaign financing is one way to level the playing field and make sure those candidates are focused on the law when they take office, not the interests of those appearing before them. She added, however, that is only one piece to the puzzle of reforming judicial elections nationwide and insuring the public can have confidence in their court officials.
“We also need to see recusal reforms. We need to see reforms to when judges are required to step aside from cases so they can’t hear cases where major campaign contributors or organizations that spent significant amount of dollars directly on advertisements in support of a judge are then appearing before that very judge,” Bannon said. “We also need stronger disclosure rules so that the public can know who’s actually spending money trying to influence these races.”
During the 2013 legislative session, a bill making the Supreme Court public campaign financing option permanent passed both the state House and Senate with only a small number of opposing votes.
Armstead stood in opposition of the bill, saying he believes the majority of West Virginians are not in favor of using tax money to provide candidates funding for campaigns.
Brandenburg, however, said West Virginia is on the right track passing the legislation and should continue to look for ways to improve that system.
“The reform is not about who wins or loses, that’s immaterial. The reform is about whether you can break the link between money and the courtroom,” Brandenburg said, “and what we saw in North Carolina when they had the program was that there were people who won and lost using it, there were people from both parties who used it, there were people from both genders who used it. That’s the whole point.”
“It needs to be broadly applicable and the early signs in West Virginia are that when you show a candidate can step forward and use that people will begin to understand it.”
Bradenburg said Loughry’s ability to run a successful campaign on public dollars shows the state is leading the way in judicial campaign reform.
Armstead added there is one type of judicial campaign reform he would support in the state. That change is a non-partisan election of judges.
“We don’t elect our county school board’s on a partisan basis, why should we elect our judges that way?” Armstead said. “Justice is supposed to be blind. If it were truly blind we don’t need to elect our judges based on party.”
The Mingo County Commission is expected to name a new county prosecutor and county commissioner this week.
Former prosecutor Michael Sparks and former Commissioner David Baisden resigned in October after they were charged in separate cases stemming from a corruption probe.
WSAZ-TV reports that the commission interviewed candidates to replace Sparks and Baisden on Monday. Commissioners plan to name a new prosecutor and magistrate at their meeting on Wednesday.
Sparks is accused in a scheme to protect Sheriff Eugene Crum from revelations he’d bought drugs. Drum died in April in an unrelated shooting.
Baisden pleaded guilty in October to a federal extortion charge.
A Nov. 18 plea hearing is set for Sparks.
The author of a study published last year on state veterans is trying to do more to help them.Joseph Scotti has started a new organization called WHOLE…
The author of a study published last year on state veterans is trying to do more to help them.
Joseph Scotti has started a new organization called WHOLE Veterans. It stands for Welcome Home: Overcoming, Living, Engaging.
Scotti says it takes a lot of different people within a community to encourage veterans to reach out for help when they need assistance. He says there simply aren’t enough people at the moment to deal with absolutely every veteran who needs care.
The American Psychiatric Association’s guide on how to treat post-traumatic stress disorder has been updated. Scotti says veterans shouldn’t be worried about stricter qualification standards for treatment.
Scotti’s next study is geared specifically to hear from Gulf War veterans.
West Virginia University’s College of Law hosted three visiting professors from the University of Guanajuato last week. “Mexico Week” at the law school featured lectures and panel discussions giving students an opportunity to better understand life south of the border.
Perhaps the longest standing relationship WVU has with a sister school abroad is with the University of Guanajuato. In continuing with that tradition, professors from the school in the small university town of Guanajuato came to share their world with students.
La Ley
Patricia Bengné is a professor of law at the University of Guanajuato who has made several trips to Morgantown over the years. She came to Morgantown to dispel cultural misconceptions, to impart a sense of the history of Mexico, and also to give students a sense of that country’s legal system.
“Mexico and the US, we do not follow the same legal system,” Bengné explained. “Mexico is under the civilian tradition, and the US has a common law system. The main difference in my opinion is that the legal system here in the US is based on the judge-made law. I mean the judges can make the law. And in Mexico it is very different; we have to follow very rigid statutes—the legal rules, I mean, we call codigo. It’s a very rigid system where we have to find the solution to the problem in these books.”
Bengné explains that the origins of Mexico’s legal system are both ancient and classical, based on the Roman and French legal systems. She says the Mexican system shares more in common with other legal systems throughout the world than with the Common Law system in the U.S.—especially those law systems practiced in Latin America and most of continental Europe.
Bengné says efforts are underway in Mexico to change the legal system into one more flexible and efficient.
“I have been in Chile recently and in Chile it took ten years to transition from one system to another. So in Mexico I think it will take much more time than that. It’s not easy to do that—to change the mind and way of thinking of lawyers, police officers, magistrates, every person involved in the judicial branch? It’s not easy, believe me.”
But Bengné has seen some relatively rapid changes in Mexico. She was among four women in a class of fifty who graduated from the law school in Guanajuato in 1978.
“Being a female lawyer in those years? Oh it was impossible in Mexico. When I went to practice law—because you need to practice in order to know what you’re doing—I was like an invisible woman. It was very, very difficult.”
But today, Bengné says 56 percent of the students graduating from the law school in Guanajuato are women, and today more than ever, women are taking up judicial roles.
“Let me tell you, in my home town in the state of Guanajuato we have a woman as the president of the court—tribunal local estatal, we say. She was the president of the state court in Guanajuato and she was my student. We are very proud of having that,” Bengné said.
El Gobierno
“We have been a democracy roughly for more than 20 years or so, so we’re still a baby democracy,” says Fernando Patrón, the Director of the Public Management Department of the Law, Politics, and Government Division at the university.
Patrón also spoke with students about changes and challenges Mexico faces. He talked about the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which was the dominant political party in Mexico for most of the 20th century, during which time Mexico was run under an authoritative rule.
“My perspective is that there is no peril of regression to authoritarianism in Mexico whatsoever, considering, of course, what this party’s return to power means,” Patrón said. “I think that the political system is mature enough to hold democracy. Our main concern in Mexico is not with the political system, but with the rule of law, for instance, corruption, transparency, accountability, poverty, which are not minor problems. No they’re very serious, big problems. So in order to consolidate democracy, we really need to improve those aspects of our country, otherwise our democracy could be in peril.”
The culminating event of Mexico Week at the law school was a panel discussion which included topics such as engineering in Mexico, the role of indigenous people politically, as well as organized crime.