Government Story Archives - Page 191 of 1259 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

House Leadership Discusses 2023 Priorities

Economic development and education are two issues that loom large as legislators prepare for the 2023 general session. Leaders in the House of Delegates from both parties have different views on the varied priority issues that need to be addressed.

Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, said after landing Nucor’s Mason County steel plant and Berkshire Hathaway’s Ravenswood renewable energy industrial park, West Virginia must prioritize site development beyond simply having a big flat piece of land.

“It also means having adequate utilities, having adequate ingress and egress,” Hanshaw said. “We now know that the pressure to power your business on non-fossil, non-carbon energy sources is growing. It’s not just growing in West Virginia, it’s growing, certainly nationally, if not globally.”

House Minority Leader Doug Skaff, D-Kanawha, said his caucus is focused in 2023 on West Virginia’s existing businesses, especially small businesses. He said the majority of the state’s employed people right now work in small businesses with 50 employees or less.

“What can we do to help them? Are there payroll taxes we can forgive? Are there incentives for them to grow? Maybe we can’t afford to do a business inventory tax across the board for everybody,” Skaff said. “If you’ve been a business here for X amount of years, and you’re looking to expand, and you’re going to hire new people, maybe look at individual sectors of the market that we can help really grow.”

For public education, Hanshaw said the state needs to continue a course of action that provides adequate funding. The overall picture includes the refreshed educational structure demonstrated by Senate President Craig Blair’s education leadership changes, a legislative focus on non-traditional educational opportunities and acceptance of the Hope Scholarship program.

As demonstrated in the recently completed interim legislative session, Hanshaw said he will again push for his bill that funds first and second grade teacher aides. He said the program helps develop skill sets early on for the jobs and economy of the future.

“Training a workforce is an absolute imperative, we have to do it, it’s not an option,” Hanshaw said. “Making sure that the kids are able to read and do math at grade level is critical. I intend to put that bill back before the legislature again, come January.”

Skaff said the state can’t realize educational progress without a plan to recruit and retain teachers who are leaving in crisis numbers for better paying jobs elsewhere. He included teachers and nurses in a revamped tax incentive proposal.

“Why not instead of just doing across the board income tax reduction for everybody, how about no income tax, if you’re a nurse, or if you’re a teacher?” Skaff said. “Let’s look at ways that we can forgive their loans. If you become a nurse and you stay in West Virginia and practice for five years or X amount of years back. If you’re a teacher, you can go across the state line and make $10,000 more. What can we do to help offset that, maybe on the back end to incentivize them to stay in West Virginia or become a teacher here?”

Hanshaw said Republicans are looking at ways to re-regulate and rejuvenate the state’s forestry industry and manufacture more wood products in West Virginia. And, he said there is a dire need locally and globally to continue offering incentives for rare earth mineral extraction and production here in West Virginia.

“Today we rely on the Chinese for almost all of our sources of those materials,” Hanshaw said. “That’s a terrible situation for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is just straight up national security.”

Skaff said Democrats also want to focus on ensuring cost of living adjustments for state employees, retirees and workforce individuals in need.

“We need to just do a sliding scale, maybe every five years with an automatic trigger that gives the cost of living adjustment to retirees and public employees and teachers who are on a fixed income,” Skaff said. “People who have put their heart and soul into giving back to West Virginia, but yet they continue to earn the same and the price of everything as you know keeps going up.”

House and Senate leaders from both parties will caucus on Sunday, Dec. 4, and are expected to name leaders and committee chairs, vice-chairs and members.

National Park Service Plans Demolition For Dilapidated Structures

The National Park Service (NPS) wants to demolish 16 structures in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

The NPS says the structures are hazardous, non-historic and abandoned. Dilapidated, overgrown conditions create maintenance burdens and areas that are vulnerable to trespassing. They expect to save about $800,000 a year in maintenance and law enforcement costs. The project already has funding from the Great American Outdoors Act and the Legacy Restoration Fund.

The money is part of an effort to address the extensive maintenance backlog in National Parks.

The public is invited to attend an open house on Thursday Dec. 8 in Glen Jean from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Glen Jean Bank to learn more about the NPS plans.

NPS expects the demolition will also free up staff and financial resources for maintaining other facilities and resources that park visitors can use.

The structures/areas to be removed through this project are:

Ajax Mines Grounds (Items to be removed include large pipes, mechanical apparatus, and fences)
Ajax Pump Station Building
Billy Jo Adkins House
Burnwood Maintenance Storage Building
Burnwood Ranger Storage Building
Burnwood Ranger Storage Shed
Clarence Plumley House, Meadow Creek
Dun Glen Boat Storage/Emergency Cache (Constructed by NPS)
Glade Creek Restroom
Glenwood Corp River Road Cabins (Structures have been removed. Next phase work will include remediating old septic systems and revegetating area)
Grandview Resource Stewardship Office
Jonny and Brenda Adkins House
Julian Mark Richmond House
Julian Mark Richmond Shed
Samuel Ames Garage
Samuel Ames House

Courtesy

The National Park Service plans to demolish more structures like this on the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.

Demolition could start as early as summer 2023. Additional information will be made available on the NPS’ planning website.

State Treasurer Riley Moore Announces Run For U.S. Congress

Speaking from his home in Harpers Ferry on Monday, the former state delegate said he will run as a Republican in 2024 for the 2nd Congressional District seat.

Speaking from his home in Harpers Ferry on Monday, the former state delegate said he will run as a Republican in 2024 for the 2nd Congressional District seat now held by Rep. Alex Mooney, who announced last week he’s running for U.S. Senate in 2024.

“My track record speaks for itself,“ Moore said. “I’ve been a conservative fighter as your state treasurer, and that is exactly what I’m going to do when I go to Washington.”

Moore said he will continue his conservative fight in support of fossil fuels and national energy independence.

“I’ve been fighting the woke corporations, woke capitalism and the ESG movement in this country. I was the first state treasurer in this country to divest BlackRock out of our state treasury funds,” Moore said. “I was the first state treasurer to come up with a restricted financial institution list that put woke banks on it for boycotting the fossil fuel industry in the state of West Virginia.”

As state shepherd of the Hope Scholarship Program, Moore said he will push to create national educational savings accounts across America.

“This should be a federal program, we must have school choice for all of our children. You see the national test scores, they are abysmal,” Moore said. “Fourth grade and eighth grade reading and math has never been lower. We have to put our children first. There’s a war going on with the family in this country, and we have to be able to give them choice over indoctrination.”

Moore said he’d fight to better train a United States workforce to bring jobs back home from China. He proposed putting more tariffs on Chinese products to help correct a trade imbalance.

Moore continues a West Virginia Republican family political legacy as the nephew of U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and the grandson of three-time Gov. Arch Moore.

West Virginia Turnpike Travel Plazas To Be Updated

The West Virginia Parkways Authority will spend $152 million over the next three years to revamp the West Virginia Turnpike’s travel plazas.

In announcing the project on Friday, Parkways Authority Executive Director Jeff Miller said it was past time for the plazas to reflect the changes happening in the state.

“The West Virginia Turnpike in many ways serves as a goodwill ambassador for the state of West Virginia,” he said. “With the boom that West Virginia has experienced as a tourism destination as well as the volume of travel that we experience on an annual basis, the time is now to redevelop these sites.”

Gov. Jim Justice echoed Miller’s comments, emphasizing the number of travelers that interact with the travel plazas.

“3.3 million people, double the population of West Virginia, come through here every year,” he said. “They pull into places that Jeff said are antiquated, they should have been bulldozed years and years ago. We didn’t have the money to do it. If we want to show off and be the frogs that are proud of their own pond, we got to show us off.”

Justice also reminisced about travel plazas being a destination when he was a child, recalling the “Glass House” design of the 1950s.

The Beckley and Bluestone travel plazas will be rebuilt from the ground up starting in February 2023, and are expected to be completed by the end of 2024. The planned renovation of the Morton travel plaza is set for 2025.

Federal Court Rules In Favor Of States In Horse Racing Rules Case

A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of West Virginia, Louisiana and Texas in a case regarding the implementation of federal racetrack safety rules for horse racing.

Both the nonprofit Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), and the federal act that created it, were declared unconstitutional by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Congress originally passed HISA in 2020.

The authority would have overseen safety programs and made decisions regulating doping and medication in horse racing. In the past, these decisions were made at the state level.

The court ruled that the act gave too much power to the agency and not enough to the Federal Trade Commission, which had the power to approve or reject HISA regulations but not to modify them.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has previously made statements against the legality of HISA, while animal rights organizations like Animal Wellness Action disagree, calling the act the “sport’s last chance at survival.”

An injunction was previously placed on the agency by the U.S. District Court’s Western District of Louisiana last July, but was blocked by the appellate court. A racehorse collapsed and was euthanized during a race at Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack, and Resort in New Cumberland shortly after the initial injunction.

West Virginia has two racetracks in the state, also including Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races.

W.Va. Supreme Court Issues Opinion In Scholarship Ruling

West Virginia’s Supreme Court released a full opinion Thursday in an order it issued last month that allowed a non-public school scholarship program to continue.

The five-member court on Oct. 6 reversed a lower court’s ruling that had blocked the Hope Scholarship Program. The program was supposed to start this school year and is one of the most far-reaching school choice programs in the country. It incentivizes West Virginia families to pull their children out of K-12 public schools by offering them state-funded scholarships.

A Charleston-area judge in July ruled the program violated the state’s constitutional mandate to provide “a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Tim Armstead said in a 49-page opinion that the state Constitution “does not prohibit the Legislature from enacting the Hope Scholarship Act in addition to providing for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

“The Constitution allows the Legislature to do both of these things,” Armstead said. “Therefore, we find that the circuit court abused its discretion by permanently enjoining the State from implementing the Hope Scholarship Act.”

The higher court’s decision was not unanimous. In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice John Hutchison argued that the state Constitution provides “that the Legislature’s obligation to provide a through and efficient education is limited to doing so only by a system of free schools, not through subsidizing private educational systems.

“As such, the Hope Scholarship Act and its subsidization of private education is prohibited by the West Virginia Constitution. I would, therefore, have affirmed the circuit court,” he wrote.

Passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year, the law that created the Hope Scholarship Program allows families to apply for state funding to support private school tuition, homeschooling fees and a wide range of other expenses.

More than 3,000 students were approved to receive around $4,300 each during the program’s inaugural cycle, according to the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office. The first payments were supposed to go out in August but were put on hold while the lower court’s block on the program was in place.

Families can’t receive the money if their children were already homeschooled or attending private school. To qualify, students have to have been enrolled in a West Virginia public school last year or had to be set to begin kindergarten this school year.

In January, three parents of special education students sued the state, saying the scholarship program takes money away from already underfunded public schools. The lawsuit was supported by the West Virginia Board of Education. One family later withdrew from the case.