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Retirement, Trails, Schools And Hunger: Senate Keeps Pace, Passes 10 More Bills

The Senate did not slow down Tuesday, passing another 10 bills ranging on topics from energy to education and public employee retirement.

Senate Bill 160 would establish the West Virginia Rail Trails Program to acquire and develop abandoned railroad rights-of-way for interim use as public, non-motorized recreational trails.

Senate Bill 166 increases the amount retired public employees can earn in a year without suspending their retirement annuity. Sen. Eric Nelson, R-Kanawha, said the amount will need to be reviewed every five years, and does not impact the state’s other retirement funds.

“This bill will raise the minimum amount up to $25,000, which in essence reflects half or the average salary that employees in PERS system are currently earning,” Nelson said. “The bill only affects retirements in the Public Employees Retirement System. It does not have any effect on employees working part-time there in the Teachers Retirement System.”

Lawmakers have discussed encouraging retirees to return to work to help shore up some of the state’s labor shortfalls. The bill passed unanimously without debate.

Three bills originating from the Senate Education Committee also passed, including:

Senate Bill 222 to create an adult education taskforce.

Senate Bill 428 which would create new requirements for local school improvement councils, including the publication of meeting minutes.

Senate Bill 306, establishes the Summer Feeding for All Program to study statewide efforts to feed students when they are out of school. Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, stood in support of the bill.

“Childhood hunger is very real in America and it’s certainly very real in West Virginia,” he said. “There will be an opportunity for each county to learn from different counties and ensure that there are no pockets of hunger for children during the summer. It’s just a comprehensive plan instead of our hodgepodge that we’ve had in the past and I appreciate it.”

Senate Bill 306 was the only bill that did not pass unanimously Tuesday. Sen. Robert Karnes, R-Randolph, was the sole dissenting vote.

Three other bills all originated on request of the state’s Tax Commissioner, including:

Senate Bill 443, which shifts estate administration fees from the Tax Commissioner to the State Auditor.

Senate Bill 446, to remove methanol and methanol fuel from definition of special fuel to reduce costs in industrial use.

Most notably among the three, Senate Bill 444 closes the West Virginia Future Fund. Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said legislation passed last year made it impossible to deposit money in the fund.

“Some years ago the legislature created the Future Fund, which had the purpose of saving the anticipated revenue stream for the marcellus shale,” Tarr said. “This bill eliminates the fund and transfers over existing funds to general revenue. And just as an aside, in committee we also found that we couldn’t find any funds within this fund. So, it’s defunct.”

The Senate also passed Senate Bill 249 to change requirements for the state Real Estate License and Senate Bill 335 to authorize 11 legislative rules from the Department of Homeland Security.

All 10 bills now go to the House of Delegates for their consideration.

On Second Reading

Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan, presented an amendment to Senate Bill 426, colloquially known as the “TikTok Ban” bill.

The amendment mandates the state’s Chief Information Security Officer develop standards for, “high risk technology platforms, services, applications, programs or products” that would include exceptions for, “legitimate law enforcement or national security purposes.”

The bill is expected to be on third reading Wednesday, Feb. 1.

Senate Studies House Bill to Repeal Common Core Education Standards

At the legislature today, there’s a deadline looming. By Wednesday at midnight, all the senate bills must be reported to the house and all the house bills reported to the senate. It makes for long lists of legislation to be considered on both floors. The house today passed a bill that keeps the Future Fund, an account created by Democrats last year, unfunded. And we’ll talk about the state budget with the Executive Director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy coming up on The Legislature Today.

House Passes a Bill Hoping to Tackle Truancy Problems in Schools

As we enter the last two weeks of this legislative session, both chambers are pushing though large quantities of bills before time runs out. And Monday in the House, fourteen bills were passed. Of those, lawmakers approved a piece of legislation that attempts to tackle the issue of truancy in West Virginia schools. It would extend the number of unexcused absences a student can have before the court system intervenes. But first, here are two other bills Delegates approved Monday.

House Bill 2395, or the Storm Scammer Consumer Protection Act, provides consumers with the right to cancel residential roofing contracts where the contract is expected to be paid from a property and casualty insurance policy. Delegate John Shott of Mercer County and the Judiciary Chair, further explained the bill.

“The problem this bill seeks to address is that following a significant storm, some disreputable roofing contractors, mostly from out of state will approach a homeowner and tell them that if they sign their contract, the contractor will work with the home insurance carrier to pay for the homeowner’s roof repairs or replacement, however,” Shott noted, “if the insurance company does not approve the claim or will not cover the entire cost, the homeowner is contractually responsible to pay for the repairs. This bill prohibits a contractor from requiring advance payments on a contract made prior to the determination of insurance company, until after the five day right to cancel has expired.”

House Bill 2395 passed 93 to 4.

Another bill that passed was House Bill 2485, which relates to the West Virginia Future Fund. This fund started in the 2014 Legislative Session by then Senate President, Jeff Kessler along with other Democrats. The Future Fund was meant to set aside revenue from the natural gas boom so that the state would have a savings account with plenty of money in it after the boom was over. But Republicans had some major problems with it. House Bill 2485 seeks to amend the West Virginia Future Fund by prohibiting deposits into it during years when certain state retirement systems are not funded to 90% or more of their actuarial accrued liabilities.

Delegate Michael Folk of Berkeley County was the lead sponsor of the bill.

“You know, last year, I proposed a similar amendment to the Future Fund bill when it came before us,” Folk explained, “and I believe all you have to do is simply look at the unfunded liabilities. For teachers’ retirement, currently 3.4 billion dollars underfunded. For public employees; over a billion dollars. You just take the two biggest ones right there, and you’re almost 4 in a half billion dollars. I think we should fund our current commitments before we make contributions to what they call the future fund.”

House Bill 2485 passed 76 to 21.

Currently at public schools in West Virginia, a student has up to five days of unexcused absences before a parent or guardian is called and action is taken up before a magistrate. House Bill 2550 seeks to increase that amount from five to ten before this type of complaint would need to be made.

Delegate Linda Phillips of Wyoming County is a retired elementary school teacher, and she opposed the bill because she felt like the extension was only going to encourage more absences from students.

“Good parents might be called in for a conference, because your child has missed five days, and you wrote a parent note, but I think that, in education, that’s not who we’re trying to get, those are not the children we’re trying to get in school,” Phillips noted, “we’re trying to get in school those students whose parents don’t care whether they come to school or not, or they don’t send them, and they don’t care what the excuse is. I think that, I’m going to vote against this, because I think that we’re trying to get our students in school, and I think that this might not be the way we need to go about it.”

Delegate Stephen Skinner of Jefferson County supported the bill, because he says the extension will give students in unfortunate situations a chance to get back in school before their record would be blemished by the juvenile justice system.

“This is very important piece to being thoughtful about how we deal with kids who sometimes the reason why they aren’t making it to school is because they live at the end of a dirt road, and they can’t make it to the school bus in bad weather, or the parents’ transportation isn’t working, or the parents have a drug problem, or there’s domestic violence, and the focus of that household isn’t about getting the kid to school,” Skinner said, “So we set them up for being referred into the juvenile justice system, not because they’re bad kids, but because of circumstances in their life. We still have the law, we still are gonna have truant kids, this just gives an extra five days, and I think that one of things that we’re gonna see, when those numbers exploded after we changed the law to five days, we’re going to see those numbers go down.”

Delegate Daryl Cowles of Morgan County and the Majority Leader agreed with Skinner.

“I agree with everything my friend from the 67^th just said. He even said, used the term exploded. Exploded is what did happen to status offenses that the state of West Virginia would use to move kids out of the home or punish kids when they missed too many days of school,” Cowles said, “The bill before you, and that was a result of us overreaching by lowering the days, unexcused days from ten down to five. Whenever you have a young person that’s struggling, real world, real life young person struggling, we can go one of two ways; we can punish or we can help. I think this is an effort to help before we punish.”

House Bill 2550 passed 95 to 2.