Legislature Today Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Arts Day At The Legislature Celebrates Longevity, Focuses On The Future

Musicians, theater folks, painters and sculptors filled the Capitol rotunda on Arts Day at the 2023 West Virginia Legislature.

Musicians, theater folks, painters and sculptors filled the Capitol rotunda on Arts Day at the 2023 West Virginia Legislature. There were themes of longevity among the muses, along with an amiable artistic forecast for the future.

Visitors do much more than fiddle around at the Augusta Heritage Center in Randolph County. Celebrating 50 years of preserving and elevating traditional West Virginia art forms, Executive Director Seth Young said the center’s annual July Heritage Series workshops have become an international arts mecca.

“It’s three weeks of music, art, craft, folklore, foodways and folkways on the campus of Davis and Elkins College,” Young said. “People come from all over the world to study things such as Cajun and Creole culture, swing music, classic country music, bluegrass, vocal blues, old-time music, and of course crafts, folkways and folklore.”

West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Mountain Stage is celebrating 40 years of live music performances. Associate Director Mallory Richards said with a network of more than 290 stations airing the program around the globe, Mountain Stage is West Virginia’s calling card to the world.

“You can tune in wherever you are. You could be in the car driving down the road or you can join us here in Charleston, West Virginia for a live show,” Richards said. “It really goes back to hospitality. Everyone’s treated equally. Our artists backstage, it’s like welcoming a family home.”

Ten or so years ago, when West Virginia’s public schools faced serious budget challenges, many said the arts were not a priority. They asked, do we really need a band or theater department? In 2023, the opposite seems true.

Singing in the Senate chamber, the Appalachian Children’s Choir is living proof of what state Curator of Arts, Culture and History Randall Reid-Smith said is a statewide, flourishing font of artistic creativity.

“I was just at the Wood County Board of Education to present awards. They were recognized in all the arts, and they just put back in their school system, fifth grade band. I mean, that is huge,” Reid-Smith said. “We just had, in the last two days, the West Virginia State Arts Conference. We had 147 arts organizations and individual artists that have wonderful outreach programs into our schools. And the thing that they were all excited about is that the arts are back. Arts are great and today we’re here at Arts Day, we have all 55 booths filled, it is all about the arts.”

Reid-Smith said the only pure academic pursuit is the arts, that everything else in life is just an elective.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a state agency within the Department of Arts, Culture and History.

Time Runs Out On Foster Care Bill

House Bill 4344 was intended to better support and protect more than 7,000 of West Virginia’s most vulnerable children. Late on the final day of the legislative season, a greatly amended version of the bill passed by the Senate went to the House. But, time ran out before Delegates could concur or reject the bill. The bill died.

With a drastic shortage of social service workers across the state, a 15 percent pay rise that was key to the bill was eliminated. The Justice administration said it could fund the raises by “collapsing” 600 current open positions, but no explanation has been given yet on how that will work.

The final version dropped the public information data dashboard, meant to better inform and coordinate foster families and the myriad of agencies they work with. Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, worried the dashboard would jeopardize the privacy of children in small communities. Sen. Robert Plymale, D-Cabell, had concerns over some technical glitches on dashboards in other states.

The bill would have enhanced services to kinship families, updated computer systems and prompted a study of the centralized intake system. Sen. Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, got an amendment accepted that any call to the child abuse hotlne from a medical profesional would go directly to the local case worker and local law enforcement.

Baldwin expressed his frustration after the session ended. “We lost it all in foster care. We lost intake reform, we lost the data dashboard, we lost strengthening the office of the Ombudsman,” Baldwin said. “We have a huge issue with child welfare and child wellbeing in West Virginia. Over 6000 children in foster care. The number of kids in state care has gone up 70% over the last decade, and we did nothing this legislative session. We had just one bill that was a priority to pass. One bill for child wellbeing and in 60 days, it was not a priority for this legislature. And I’m ashamed of that. And I think West Virginians should be ashamed of that.”

New State Commission To Connect Federal Dollars With Coalfield Communities

We’ve heard for years about help to revitalize struggling coalfield communities. One bill’s passage may be a grant writer’s godsend.

House BIll 4479 could be a big help for small towns and is heading to the governor’s desk.

Del. Mark Dean, R-Mingo, explained how the Coalfield Communities Grant Facilitation Commission will work. Dean said using a portion of the state’s allotment of the federal infrastructure funding, the bill addresses one of small town governments’ biggest needs: grant writing, then finding matching grant funds.

“This commission is going to facilitate those matching funds,” Dean said. “Also, they’re going to provide a lot of technical assistance for people who are applying for grants.”

Del. Ed Evans, D-McDowell, said trained grant writers are hard to come by.

“It’s generally the mayor and maybe one or two people that work in the city hall that wind up writing these grants,” Evans said. “So now we’ve got professionals that will be able to add that technical assistance.”

Forty one of West Virginia’s 55 counties have towns that qualify for the grant funding. Under HB4479, coalfield grant funds are earmarked for promoting recreation and history, retraining coal miners, improving telecommunications, and most importantly, infrastructure.

“We’ve got people coming in all over West Virginia, especially southern West Virginia for trail riding. It’s become one of the great industries for West Virginia,” Evans said. “Well, the first thing they see is these torn down or falling down or burned down buildings that just need to be abated.”

Dean explained the funding mechanism to be allocated at the governor’s discretion.

“The funding is going to be starting in July from infrastructure money that comes down from the federal government,” Dean said. “A lot of it is going to be put in this fund.”

How much money? Evans is hoping for $250 million to start.

W.Va. House And Senate Chambers Abound With Quirky History

The old saying ‘If these walls could talk’ rings true in West Virginia’s House and Senate chambers. And, if asked, those historic marble walls – might also cough a bit.

Looking up in the House of Delegates chamber, the ceiling windows form a distinct, artistic pattern. House assistant doorkeeper Carlo Zorio explained that decades ago, some of those now closed windows did open, and not to let a breeze cool any ‘hot air’ coming from the house floor.

“The windows in the ceiling do open but not all of them,” Zorio said. “It was a way to get the smoke out of this room when they smoked in here.”

Zorio said the delegates’ smoke got so thick it stained the marble walls. He pointed out the old discoloration still on two adjacent wooden platforms.

“They had to open those windows for all that smoke to go out,” Zorio said. “It probably looked like a train burning coal going out in the street.”

When this Capitol building opened in 1932, there were many more cigars than cigarettes smoked in the house chamber. The cigar brands could have been White Owls, an El Producto, an imported Cuban – or some old cheroot.

In the Senate chamber, Assistant Sergeant-At-Arms Grover Miller said the early Senate body was considered the ‘gentlemen lawmakers’ of the state. Miller said on the Senate side, they nearly all smoked cigars. He pointed out the huge upper chamber windows behind the gold lattice – smoke vents that haven’t been opened in years.

“And that would allow the air to flush out the smoke,” Miller said. “And there are windows on the other side that would allow fresh air to come in to help cool off the place.”

What else defines quirky chamber history? The illustrious Robert C. Byrd was elected to the House of Delegates in 1946, and Zorio said he literally left his mark in the chamber.

“We have Mr. Byrd’s initials, yes, his name, marked into his desk,” Zorio said. “I don’t know what he scratched it with, maybe nail clippers. And, he scratched in the years that he served here.”

At first glance, the nearly century-old wire loops left under the Senate gallery seats look to be for stashing old papers or files. MIller said no, giving us the history of the hat holder.

“They would have a place to put their hat with these spring rods here,” Miller said. “So they would sit down and then just below they hung their hats and they would stay blocked and out of the way. And that would take care of their hat and it wouldn’t get messed up.”

Both gentlemen said the stories abound from these historic meeting rooms of old. So, what if these House and Senate chamber walls could really talk?

“If they could talk, we’d all probably have to leave the state,” Zorio quipped.

Public Hearing Comments Call For Rejection Of ‘Anti-Racism’ Act

How do we teach – or not teach – our children about race, ethnicity or sex? At a public hearing in the House Chamber, West Virginia lawmakers heard the public’s views on the so-called ‘anti- racism’ act.

At the meeting 24 people spoke out against Senate Bill 498, while four people supported the hot button bill. The proposal forbids school instruction that one race, ethnic group or sex is superior to another.

Howard Swint, a parent and former American history teacher, argued the bill reverses any progress in promoting diversity.

“I think this is just another wave of southern, white-privileged bigotry going through the government,” Swint said. “The kind of thing that put the Stonewall Jackson statue on our grounds 100 years ago.”

West Virginia attorney Kitty Dooley said there are numerous ways to support anti-racism, but she also said this bill would chill educators from teaching history and give lawyers a field day.

‘You’re giving me a cause of action for every discussion of the enslaved African-American,” Dooley said. “A cause of action for confderates glorification, of lynching, of domestic terrorism following reconstruction, of Dred Scott, of Plessy vs. Ferguson.”

Among the few supporting the bill, Barry Holstein said passage would offer teachers personal protection along with lesson plan freedom.

“Contrary to what you’ve heard, this bill does not prohibit the education and debate of the way race or sex has impacted history or current events, including the causes,” Holstein said.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, said the bill does not prohibit controversial discussion, does not call for lawsuits, only a reporting mechanism and will not have a chilling effect on teachers.

“Let’s just say this, if you’re teaching history and you are teaching facts, you have nothing to worry about,” Rucker said.

The anti-racism bill passed the Senate 21-12 and is now in the House Education Committee.

Bill May Help Bring Driverless Delivery To W.Va.

The pandemic has sparked many of us to get groceries and more delivered to our door. Now, there’s proposed legislation preparing to go high-tech with delivery service, minus the driver.

Not R2D2, but the Roxo, got plenty of attention as it scooted around the Capitol Rotunda. FedEx is testing the autonomous delivery device prototype in cities around the country.

Del. Clay Riley, R-Harrison, is the lead sponsor on House Bill 4675. Riley said to continue bringing cutting edge technology like the Roxo to West Virginia, a framework for regulation and public safety measures sets us up for the future.

“Right now, the technology has an about five mile delivery range. It can climb stairs, it can go over sidewalks, it can go over crosswalks,” Riley said. “But eventually, that will continue to expand out. And so they want to be able to test it here and bring it to West Virginia.”

Roxo travels on sidewalks and the sides of roads. It’s remotely operated, carries $100,000 in road insurance, and as Scott Pauchnik with FedEx explains, it knows how to safely maneuver anywhere.”

“It knows everything uses all the greatest technologies out there from LIDAR to radar, and other technologies to make sure that it maps and can see everything that’s in front of it and going on,” Pauchnik said.

The speed restrictions are 12.5 mph on sidewalks and 20 mph on the side of the road. These personal delivery devices basically have the same rights and right-of-way as a pedestrian or a bicycle.

The Roxo is designed for delivery, anything from that pizza for the big ball game to grandma’s medications from the pharmacy.

“As you begin to see, unfortunately, less and less brick-and-mortar stores,” Riley said, “this might be an opportunity to see a little bit of revitalization of those, because they have an option for delivery.”

“This is primarily for suburban and urban areas,” Pauchnik said. “But who knows, I mean, the sky’s the limit here. It may not be able to right now go down the holler. But it will be delivering goods to those metro spots in the state.”

Riley’s bill passed 87-8 in the House and is now out of the Senate Economic Development Committee and heading to the Senate floor. Riley says with such a great West Virginia reception, the Mountain State may be on the shortlist for driverless delivery – right to your door.