On May 18, 2012, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin named Marc Harshman of Wheeling the state poet laureate. He succeeded the late Irene McKinney, who’d served in the post since 1994. Harshman is the ninth person to serve as poet laureate since the position was established in 1927.
Harshman is a storyteller, children’s author, and poet. His first book of poetry, Turning Out the Stones, was published in 1983, and his 1995 work, The Storm, was named a Smithsonian National Book for Children. He co-wrote another book, Red Are the Apples, with his wife, Cheryl Ryan Harshman, and he wrote Rocks in My Pocket with the late Doddridge County storyteller Bonnie Collins.
Harshman taught for many years, first at the college level and then in grade schools. For a time, he taught fifth and sixth grade at Sand Hill School in Marshall County, one of the last three-room schools in the state. He continues to visit schools and present workshops about writing.
Marc Harshman performed A Song for West Virginia, his first major commission as poet laureate, for the state’s 150th birthday celebration in 2013.
One of the last goals of former West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s administration, was to try to help southern West Virginia economically. Tomblin hopes he’s found a unique way to do that.
Space, that’s one of the things companies look for when they consider locating in West Virginia. They want plenty of it before they’ll commit to moving factories and warehouses to the state, but former Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said the lack of flat land is often a challenge for those working to diversify West Virginia’s economy.
Credit Clark Davis / WV Public Broadcasting
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WV Public Broadcasting
“Because one of the things that we’ve found out from our commerce and development office is that we’ve lost a lot of potential investors coming in, simply because we could not find level ground, or enough ground suitable to build the kind of factory that they wanted,” Tomblin said.
Tomblin said many times companies need as much as 50-100 acres to locate in the state. And before he left the Governor’s Office, Tomblin made sure to find that much space for multiple companies.
The Hobet Mine site along Route 119 in Boone County boasts 12,000 acres of flat land. Tomblin says the former mine site could be used for both industrial and commercial development, helping to revitalize the region’s economy. A project to create a suitable site for business development began under the Tomblin administration and now Hobet is known as the Rock Creek Development Park, which Tomblin told West Virginia Public Broadcasting in December is already attracting attention.
“We have part of the utilities there now, but I think that’s going to, I’m just sorry we can’t get that complete before I leave, but we got it set in motion, so it’s moving around very well,” Tomblin said.
The Hobet site is still being mined, although at a much smaller scale than it once was, and the reclamation process is still underway. It’s that process, though that prepares the site for new tenants.
Among those tenants will be the West Virginia National Guard. In a unique relationship that’s worked in other areas of the state, the guard will use some of the land for training, as well a new maintenance facility and even agriculture projects aimed at helping veterans. Adjutant General James Hoyer leads the state’s guard.
“So I think it’s really up to our imagination what it could and how we leverage that available land and space to create opportunities for southern West Virginia that help us both diversify our economy as well as continue to enhance the opportunities that will still exist in a revitalized energy industry,” Hoyer said.
The guard’s use of the site will create a need to expand the infrastructure available there, including a more accessible route to the top of the mountain, and additional water and sewer lines to support an increased amount of people working on the property. Once that infrastructure has been created, the Boone County site will be more attractive to new investors, near a four-lane highway with direct access to Charleston and Yeager Airport.
The West Virginia National Guard currently has training sites in the state at Camp Dawson near Kingwood, the St. Albans readiness Center and the Memorial Tunnel Training Complex near Gallagher, West Virginia. And a site at Camp Branch in Logan County where they have a combat assault strip.
Credit Clark Davis / WV Public Broadcasting
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WV Public Broadcasting
The guard hopes by adding Rock Creek to the list, the West Virginia network of training facilities will be more attractive to other military operations from outside the state that need a one-stop shop for training.
The Guard is currently in the process of creating a maintenance shop at Rock Creek that will be able to service some of the guard’s vehicles and also those for other military branches.
“We’re going to be able to do some maintenance work that’s going to be tied to some mobility training using what we call non-standard vehicles, not necessarily tanks and bradley’s, but the non-standard vehicles that are used in a variety of the counter-terrorism missions that go on around the globe,” Hoyer said.
But Hoyer believes the activity on the site won’t start and end with the West Virginia National Guard.
“The access and capability that we have to bring more of that national security and homeland security to the state and generate an industrial base around that activity and we think we can do it more cost effectively and more timely and at the highest levels of quality,” Hoyer said. “So that makes our nation safer and creates jobs in West Virginia sounds like a winner to me.”
Initially the Guard will create 8 new positions at Rock Creek, but said that number will likely increase in the future as more of their projects get underway.
Gov. Jim Justice says state government is looking at a projected budget deficit of $500 million in the next fiscal year.
The governor tells the Beckley Register-Herald the funding gap would increase again the following year.
The Tomblin administration, which estimated a $400 million shortfall for the year starting July 1, proposed raising the state’s consumer sales tax 1 percent and imposed a 2 percent half-year spending cut under this year’s $4.1 billion budget.
Justice will issue his plan when the Legislature convenes Feb. 8.
Addressing the Beckley-Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, Justice says the state is in poor economic shape despite a few bright spots.
He proposed tiers for taxing coal and natural gas production, instead of flat 5 percent, that rises as market prices rise.
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin delivered his farewell address following six years in office on Wednesday afternoon before a joint session of the state Senate and House of Delegates.
The 64-year-old Tomblin, a Democrat, has to leave after two terms.
The longtime West Virginia Senate President became acting governor after Gov. Joe Manchin, another Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010.
Tomblin won a special election as governor the following year and was elected to a full four-year term in 2012.
He has said that attracting business was the priority of his six-year administration, which has faced both a national recession and coal industry downturn.
He will be followed by Democratic Gov.-elect Jim Justice, whose inauguration is scheduled Monday.
Some West Virginia residents whose homes were destroyed by last summer’s floods are getting new places to live.
The Department of Education says 12 career and technical centers across the state have built small homes for families whose lives were torn apart.
A presentation ceremony is set in Charleston on Tuesday. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin will be joined at the ceremony by state schools Superintendent Michael Martirano and Kathy D’Antoni, the Department of Education’s chief officer of career and technical education.
The June 23 floods killed 23 people and destroyed or damaged thousands of homes, businesses, schools and infrastructure.
The West Virginia Department of Natural Resources along with Governor Earl Ray Tomblin presented 20 Elk to Logan County Monday.
More than 140 years ago, Elk were native to the state. In 2015, legislation authorized the Division of Natural Resources to begin an active elk restoration plan, starting with finding enough suitable land to sustain a population. Through a partnership with The Conservation Fund, more than 32,000 acres of publicly accessible land was acquired and another 10,000 through lease agreements in Logan County. The DNR transferred the 20 donated elk from the western part of Kentucky last week and have them set up in a space fenced off in Logan County at the Tomblin Wildlife Management Area.
Governor Earl Ray Tomblin.
“Just after a few more days of acclimation these gates will be open and these elk will be allowed to roam freely all across these hills and valleys and southern West Virginia,” Tomlin said. “This is just the first of several carefully planned releases designed to establish self-sustaining and viable populations in the mountain state.”
West Virginia will use the elk as a tourism opportunity and could be hunted in 7-10 years.
