An advisory panel is recommending two Mingo County public defenders as potential candidates to replace former Circuit Court Judge Michael Thornsbury.
The Judicial Vacancy Advisory Commission submitted the names of Teresa McCune and Jonathan Jewel to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin on Tuesday.
The commission also recommended Deloris Nibert to replace former Putnam County Family Court Judge William Watkins. Nibert was the only applicant for the position.
Thornsbury pleaded guilty in October to a federal conspiracy charge and resigned from the bench.
Watkins resigned in November. The state Supreme Court had suspended him in March until the end of his term in 2016. He was accused of delaying rulings, screaming and cursing at litigants, and failing to enter domestic violence orders into the state’s tracking system.
Governor Earl Ray Tomblin and First Lady Joanne Jaeger Tomblin were joined by hundreds of West Virginians at the Capitol complex to celebrate their annual holiday gathering, ‘Joyful Night.’
The evening was full of musical performances, a reading of “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and the lightning of not one, but two Christmas trees.
Performances included:
Governor’s School for the Arts students Raven McCormick (piano), Molly Blackwood (cello) and Olivia Boughton (viola)
Governor Tomblin and his wife Joanne honored the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a day early by rededicating a plaque that hangs in the lower rotunda of the Capitol.
The symbol commemorates Kennedy’s speech delivered on the Capitol steps June 20, 1963, celebrating West Virginia’s 100th birthday.
On that rainy summer day, the President began his remarks by saying, “The sun doesn’t always shine in West Virginia, but the people do.”
After revealing the plaque, Tomblin remembered where he was when he first heard of the President’s death.
“I remember I was in the sixth grade at Chapmanville Grade School at lunch time and one of my classmates had a little transistor radio like some of us may remember,” he said, “and the news came over that.”
“He was shouting around, ‘They’ve shot the President! They’ve shot the President!’ So, it’s one of those days that we who are old enough to remember it will always remember where we were when we heard that news, just as we did on 9/11.”
Governor Tomblin made his third major jobs announcement in two weeks Tuesday in Charleston. A supplier for the steel industry, the newest company locating…
Governor Tomblin made his third major jobs announcement in two weeks Tuesday in Charleston. A supplier for the steel industry, the newest company locating in West Virginia will not just create jobs, but also heavily rely on coal to do it.
“Today, 60 more West Virginians will have good paying jobs and the coal industry will have a new customer,” Tomblin said.
He made the announcement surrounded by executives from Carbonyx International USA and representatives of the state Department of Commerce.
A Texas-based company, Carbonyx uses coal to produce a coke substitute for the steel industry. The company plans to locate their newest facility in Millwood in Jackson County.
“It’s fitting that a company finding bold new uses for coal,” Tomblin said. “It’s appropriate that a company has created a more environmentally friendly use for coal and would do it in our state.”
With the initial investment, Carbonyx will create 60 jobs and plans to add more than 150 over the next seven years.
Secretary of the state Department of Commerce Keith Burdette said the West Virginia Economic Development Authority awarded a $15 million loan equipment loan to Carbonyx Thursday, calling it the most significant incentive for the company to locate in the state.
West Virginia’s annual Joyful Night celebration is set for Dec. 3.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced that the holiday event at the State Capitol Complex is free and open to the public.
Activities begin at the North Plaza with music by two high school bands. Tomblin and First Lady Joanne Jaeger Tomblin will then light a tree donated by Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Fisher of Charleston, followed by a performance by a children’s chorus.
Then it’s on to the South Plaza for music by another high school band, a tribute to first responders and military members, and another tree lighting.
Other performances and events are set in the first floor Rotunda of the Capitol, the Governor’s Reception Room, the Governor’s Mansion and the Culture Center.
A law signed by Governor Tomblin in April is already having its intended effect of decreasing the state’s prison population. Legislators meeting this week in Charleston got an update on how Senate Bill 371, the governor’s prison reform bill, is doing.
State lawmakers are presented with projections all the time. The projected annual revenue, for example, is constantly talked about within the corridors of the Capitol because in recent years, those projections have shown major declines in funds.
But when legislators were presented another projection not meeting its mark, Deputy General Counsel for the governor Joseph Garcia said this was one to celebrate.
“So, at the end of this year, it was projected that we were going to have 7,531 inmates,” Garcia said.
But instead of following that trend, Garcia said the actual number of inmates is down by more than 250 since April.
And what about the inmate population being held in regional jails because of prison overcrowding? Garcia said that number is shrinking too.
“There has been a reduction of 554 people in the Regional Jail system,” he said.
Garcia attributes that reduction to the opening of a new Division of Corrections adult facility on the campus of the former Salem Industrial Home for Youth and to the governor’s prison reform bill.
It focused on two areas: dealing quickly with the state prison overpopulation and reducing the rate former inmates reoffend and go back to prison, known as recidivism.
Garcia said we’re now seeing the short term fixes of the bill—changes at the state Parole Board among others—kicking in. In a few years, he believes the numbers will be even stronger when programs like mandatory supervision take effect.
Credit Ashton Marra
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Deputy General Counsel for the governor Joseph Garcia shared state prison population statistics with the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority.
“We’ve made some substantial progress with respect to these numbers,” Garcia said. “We weren’t expecting to get these kinds of results this early and so it shows we’re going in the right direction.”
But state lawmakers want to make sure the trend continues and many believe it can be done with more access to programming.
At state prisons, inmates have access to rehabilitation classes to prepare them to reenter society, things like anger management or parenting courses, but state prisons are so crowded that the overflow of inmates—more than 1,100 of them—are being held in regional jails where they don’t have access to these programs.
“Why can’t we look at providing those services in the Regional Jails?” Senator Donald Cookman, a former circuit judge, asked during a Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jails and Correctional Facility Authority. “It seems to me that it can be done and be a great savings to the taxpayers and, in addition to that, a great help for society.”
Garcia said the option is something the governor’s office would consider in the future.
Dennis Foreman, Chairman of the state Parole Board, said it’s an idea he supports.
While completing these programs aren’t required to be seen by the parole board—Foreman said they help.
Having a psychological assessment, a post release housing plan and reviewing an inmate’s crime and behavior while incarcerated are the major considerations–he added those who have taken classes are more likely to actually receive parole, getting them out of the overcrowded system more quickly.
“Anybody that goes through the treatment and does everything that they’re supposed to do basically to rehabilitate, once they’re rehabilitated then we’re ready to blow them out the door if they’re not a danger to society,” Foreman said. “When you don’t have the treatment, if you have to sit and wait an extra 6 months and we’re not able to see them, they’re just sitting there not getting anything accomplished.”
“They’ve got them in the regional jails, if they can get the treatment in the regional jails, the classes, it would be so much better for everybody concerned and the rates would definitely improve.”
However, the governor’s office and the state Division of Corrections are currently looking at the option of providing these services by transferring inmates to out of state private prisons.
Constitutionally, inmates would have to volunteer for a transfer and those private facilities would have to offer the same courses as West Virginia until room becomes available for the inmate at an in state facility.
But Joe DeLong, Acting Director of the Regional Jail Authority, told the committee providing the classes now at his facilities can be done. In fact, he proposed the idea to the legislature two years ago.
“We felt at that time by making the investment to offer those programs, if we could get those people the programs they needed and if the parole board kept paroling at the same rate they were, we could reduce the future incarceration cost of about $8 million a year,” he said.
Credit Ashton Marra
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Senator Bill Laird questions Joseph Garcia, deputy general counsel for the governor, during a legislative interim meeting.
DeLong said in order to offer classes his agency would need one additional counselor at all ten facilities and more equipment like desks or computers. He estimated it would cost about $750,000 a year to provide the same level of programming in the regional jails as in the state prisons.
The catch- regional jails are mainly funded by a daily rate charged to the counties to house their prisoners and DeLong said he doesn’t feel comfortable charging the counties for a service given to inmates that should be in state funded prisons.
“I could do it now. I probably have that authority to pull it off and reshuffle the deck that I have to do it now,” he said. “I’ve just always taken the position that I wasn’t willing to share that cost across the board with the counties because I didn’t think it was fair for that operational expense to be spread into all of per diem and for the counties to be footing the bill for a state sentenced inmates programs.”
DeLong added if the legislature choose to appropriate him that money, he would make the programming available.
Garcia said the governor’s office is still in the exploratory phases of sending inmates to out of state prisons for access to programming. He said they are unsure of the cost as of yet and how doing so would compare to offering the programming instead at the regional jail level.
