The House of Delegates held a public hearing Monday on a bill that would remove abortion from a list of Medicaid services.
The House Judiciary Committee heard comments on House Bill 4012, which would eliminate taxpayer funding for medically necessary abortions unless the mother’s life is in danger.
Opponents argued the bill is unconstitutional. The West Virginia Supreme Court struck down a similar law in 1993, saying that it was discriminatory against low-income women.
Supporters of the bill cited various religious reasons and argued the cost should not be on the burden of taxpayers.
Roughly four times as many people spoke in opposition to the bill as those who spoke in support.
According to the state Department of Health and Human Resources, 1,560 Medicaid-funded abortions were performed in West Virginia during fiscal year 2017 — coming in at a cost of nearly $330,000. Data from 2013 show 502 cases at a cost of nearly $280,000.
House Judiciary Chairman John Shott noted at the end of the hearing that the bill is likely to appear on his committee’s agenda by the end of this week.
Senate Joint Resolution 12, declaring that nothing in the state Constitution protects the right to an abortion or requires the funding of the procedure, unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a voice vote Monday afternoon. The measure now heads to the Senate floor.
If adopted by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the Legislature, SJR 12 would go to a vote of the general public to ratify it as a constitutional amendment on the November ballot.
Thirty percent of West Virginians do not have access to basic broadband services as defined by federal law, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
When you look at just the rural parts of West Virginia, that percent increases to 48.
House Bill 3093 aims to change that.
One of the biggest parts of the bill is it allows communities to form ‘internet co-opts.” These ‘co-opts,’ or cooperatives, would work together with a service provider to become their community’s own provider – thus reaching areas that may not have access to broadband.
Republican Delegate Roger Hanshaw of Clay County is the bill’s lead sponsor. While the bill has seen wide bi-partisan support, those who have voiced some concerns over the bill have mainly been internet service providers, which Hanshaw addressed in his floor speech.
“This is a bill that’s intended to promote competition, there’s no doubt about that,” Hanshaw noted, “but it’s a bill intended to do so in places where competition doesn’t exist. The formation of cooperatives; the formation of cooperatives is intended to happen and will happen in places where there is not service. People who are receiving service now have no motivation to avail themselves of this process and are unlikely to do so.”
Only one other delegate spoke to the bill on the floor today. It passed 97 to 2 and now heads to the Senate for further consideration.
Members of the House’s Judiciary Committee are considering a bill that its sponsors hope will curb West Virginia’s nursing shortage.
House Bill 2522 would enter West Virginia into an agreement with other states to allow nurses to practice across state lines without having to get multiple licenses. The compact would include both registered nurses, or RNs, and licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, who packed the committee room Friday as members debated the bill.
There are currently 25 states in the nation that are part of a nursing licensure compact, including a number of states bordering West Virginia – Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky for instance.
The first version of the compact was drafted in the late 1990s, and the first states signed on in 2000. In 2015, the compact was revised, adding requirements for background checks for nurses and creating a commission to oversee the agreements. So far, no states have adopted the new compact model from 2015 and West Virginia is the first to consider it.
Supporters of the bill say entering the agreement could help attract nurses to the state who don’t want to go through another licensing process. Del. Amy Summers is a sponsor of the bill. A nurse herself, she says West Virginia has had trouble keeping up with the demand for nurses, but the state has a low cost of living and the pay is good.
“We also have a very low cost of living here,” Summers noted, “I have lived in northern Virginia where the cost of living was more than double than what it is in West Virginia. The nurses are making a good wage in our state. There are sign-on bonuses; $10,000 that can attract you in if you want to come to a certain hospital. There are ways to make good money in nursing.”
Groups representing LPNs disagree with Summers though. Greg Chiartas is the President of the West Virginia State Board of Examiners for Licensed Practical Nurses.
“The bottom line is, is that there’s no evidence, at least based upon the surveys from the West Virginia Center for Nursing, that joining this compact is going to resolve any nursing shortage in West Virginia.”
Chiartas says entering the agreement could actually pose a problem for the group he represents.
“We are at a saturation point in West Virginia with LPNs; we have 26 schools, we have 8,000 licensed practical nurses in the state, and we don’t have really room or jobs available for additional nurses to be coming in from out-of-state and taking the LPN jobs that we have available,” Chiartas explained.
Bill supporters also say entering the compact could potentially increase the wages for nurses in West Virginia as the state attempts to compete with other members of the compact to keep them. But Chiartas doesn’t think that will be the result.
“Simple economics would dictate that if you have an oversupply, that you would drive down prices,” Chiartas said, “You would have increase competition which would drive down the amount of money that these nurses would make.”
Republican Del. Geoff Foster questioned Chiartas if he had evidence regarding other states that have adopted the compact and seen LPN wages drop. Chiartas said he did not.
Aside from just the potential impact to wages, some delegates were concerned that entering the compact would also make it easier for nurses to leave West Virginia.
Republican Del. Ray Hollen asked Chiartas about whether LPNs would have the opportunity to go to other states for higher wages if the state Legislature passed House Bill 2522.
“Certainly they could,” Chiartas said, “As of right now, we don’t have a lot of LPNs that leave our state. They take jobs in our state, and they stay in our state.”
Delegates on the House Judiciary Committee adjourned from their morning meeting before voting on the bill, but the committee returned to discuss the bill after the House floor session Friday afternoon. House Bill 2522 was approved on a voice vote and now goes to the full chamber for a vote likely next week.
A House committee has passed a bill that would require drug testing for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Senate Bill 6 requires the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources to apply for permission from the federal government to begin a drug screening and testing program.
In that program, applicants of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF benefits could be tested if there’s “reasonable suspicion” those applicants are using drugs or if they’ve been convicted of a drug crime in the past five years. But House Judiciary Chairman John Shott said that provision was amended in his committee.
“And that was with regard to the screening instrument that the Department of Health and Human Resources will be using when new applicants come in, and it just changed the timeframe within which to look for previous drug use from five years to, shortened that to three years,” Shott said.
A recent poll of likely West Virginia voters found 77 percent of voters supported drug testing welfare recipients.
Senate Bill 6 was reported to the full House on Saturday and will likely see a vote Wednesday.
In the House Wednesday, Delegates made changes to the Right-to-Work bill, which will be up for a vote in the chamber Thursday.
Senate Bill 1 was on second reading in the House. This is the West Virginia Workplace Freedom Act, or more commonly known as Right-to-Work.
This bill would make it illegal for a company to fire someone who refuses to join a union or refuses to pay union fees or dues. Supporters say it protects the rights of workers who disagree with unions politically, but those who oppose it say if non-union employees in union workplaces no longer pay those fees, they’ll struggle to provide services like contract negotiations.
House Judiciary Chairman, Delegate John Shott of Mercer County proposed an amendment that changes some of the language in the senate’s version of the bill.
“The strike and insert basically replaces the Senate bill with a much simpler version of the Right-to-Work bill,” Shott explained, “It eliminates some administrative features, it eliminates some confusing language regarding a daily penalty; the continuation of the daily penalty, it clarifies the rights that an employee who is wrongfully terminated as a result of an employer’s action and forcing a person to join a union or not allowing a person to leave the union without being terminated. So it’s basically an overall clarification and simplification of the original version.”
The amendment passed, but not without obvious division along party lines. The Right-to-Work bill will be up for a final vote Thursday in the House.
The public has an opportunity to weigh in on a bill that would allow landfills in West Virginia to increase capacity to accept waste and cuttings from natural gas horizontal drilling.
The House of Delegates Judiciary Committee has scheduled a public hearing on the bill for 5 p.m. Monday in the House Chamber at the Capitol.
House Energy Committee chairman Kevin Craig and Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman say landfills are the best option for disposal of drilling cuttings.
