Groups lobbying for strong regulations to protect that state’s water resources gathered at the Capitol Monday to tell lawmakers not to pass a bill they say will gut the above ground storage tank legislation passed last year.
The West Virginia Safe Water Roundtable, comprised of multiple citizen action groups and affiliated with the Our Children, Our Future Campaign, spoke out against House Bill 2574.
Activists called the legislation insulting after the time they, industry representatives and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection spent over the past year negotiating the terms of an above ground storage tank regulation program that resulted from last year’s approved legislation.
That legislation, Senate Bill 373, was passed just weeks after a chemical spill tainted the water supply for 300 thousand residents in the Kanawha Valley.
“I could remind you that despite its strength, Senate Bill 373 is nevertheless a compromise and concessions to industry were made along the way and I could point out that 1,100 tanks have already been designated not fit for service and that Senate Bill 373 is already working,” activist Karan Ireland said at a press conference Monday.
“Instead, I’d like to speak directly to the sponsors of these bills. What you are doing is wrong.”
Sponsors of House Bill 2574 say the legislation aims at reducing instances of double regulation for many tank owners and focuses on those holding 10 thousand gallons of fluid or more near a public drinking water supply.
Interest groups maintain the change would leave thousands of tanks in the state unregulated.
A state lawmaker who remarked that it is “beautiful” when a child can be born as the result of a rape says his remarks were misrepresented. Republican Del. Brian Kurcaba said Friday that he’s sorry if people interpreted his statement as meaning anything other than “all children are precious regardless of circumstance.”
Kurcaba’s comments Thursday during committee discussion on an abortion-ban proposal sparked outcry.
He said, “Obviously, rape is one of the most egregious acts that anybody can ever do to somebody. It’s awful.
“For somebody to take advantage of somebody else in such a horrible and terrifying and brutal way is absolutely disgusting. But what is beautiful is the child that could come as a production of this.”
In a close party-line vote, Republican state senators stymied a Democratic effort to stop a bill that would repeal the state’s prevailing wage.
Democrats failed in a 16-18 Senate vote Thursday to reject the repeal bill, which passed a committee Tuesday.
Democrats said the bill was being wrongly fast-tracked and a compromise between labor and business should have been considered.
“This has been coming. There was plenty of time for compromise, but that compromise was not seen nor embraced,” Sen. Herb Snyder, a Democrat from Jefferson County, said on the floor Thursday.
“What we have done is put fear in the hearts of tens of thousands of West Virginia citizens. Our citizens, Mr. President. Their fear is that they do not know, if this repeal bill passes, what their wages will be.”
Republicans say the free market should dictate wages. They expect amendments to come on the Senate floor.
The bill will be on first reading Friday and up for a vote as early as next week.
The House of Delegates has not considered yet the repeal.
That was the message the director of the Affiliated Construction Trades of West Virginia, Steve White, delivered during a gathering of union officials and members at the state Culture Center Wednesday.
White, his union and other members of the AFL-CIO gathered to speak out against a bill that’s fast tracked through the West Virginia Senate. Senate Bill 261 would repeal the state’s prevailing wage, the hourly, overtime and benefit rates contractors agree to pay their employees when bidding on publicly funded projects.
The bill was introduced in the Senate last week and single referenced to the Committee on Government Organization, which passed a committee substitute Tuesday changing the bill from a total, immediate repeal to expiring the wage rate on April 1, 2015.
“We all know that the federal government has really picked the winners and losers when it comes to our coal industry and the same thing happens with prevailing wage,” Sen. Craig Blair, the bill’s sponsor and chair of the Government Organization Committee, said Wednesday.
“It’s the state government actually picking out the winners and losers.”
Blair maintained repeal would allow government money to be spent more wisely, resulting in savings for West Virginia taxpayers, but White said there’s no evidence to support Blair’s position.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Members of the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions gathered in the Great Hall of the state Culture Center.
In his research, White said he found states that have repealed the requirement have seen no costs savings on public projects and lower overall wages for construction and trade workers.
Some Democratic lawmakers have stood with union leaders to oppose the change, including Sen. Ron Miller who called it a chipping away at workers’ rights during the committee meeting Tuesday.
“Over the past few years, we’ve kind of ignored the workers in many ways. This particular piece of legislation doesn’t just chip, it takes a crow bar and a sledge hammer to workers’ rights,” he said Wednesday.
Both Miller and White, however, maintain there is room for compromise in the bill. White would like to see that come in a change to the calculation of prevailing wage rates and a minimum cap on projects.
Current wage rates are set through a survey the state sends to all state contractors asking about their going rates. White said that could be changed to a process that includes the gathering of more data.
White also said unions would agree to a $250,000 minimum project requirement for new construction projects and a $100,000 for renovations. Once those limits are reached, White said, the prevailing wage would kick in for construction and trade workers.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Sen. John Unger, a Democrat from Berkeley County, was one of many lawmakers who attended the rally.
“We see that we could find common ground, but we’re not having an opportunity to talk about common ground. Instead, bills are being pushed out on party line and we don’t want to be caught between the parties, we just want to have our contractors and workers have a fair deal,” White said.
Senate Bill 261 is scheduled to be reported back to the full Senate Wednesday, leaving it to be voted on early next week.
Blair expects members on both sides of the aisle to attempt to amend the bill on the floor, and expects some of those amendments to be approved, but said leadership does not intend to slow the bill any further.
“We know that the clock is our enemy. We’ve got to make sure we can get this legislation through our chamber, through the other chamber [and] to the governor’s office,” he said.
“The governor always has the potential to veto it and then we have the potential to override that veto.”
Blair said his party does not want to lose a crucial piece of legislation because they couldn’t beat the clock.
A Senate committee removed religious exemptions from a bill allowing local physicians to exempt children from some vaccines with the approval of the state chief health officer Tuesday. The original bill would have allowed for the religious exemptions in addition to medical exceptions already contained in state law.
Three Senators removed their names from the bills as sponsors before the Senate Health Committee took up the bill Tuesday. Sen. Mike Hall said his sponsorship was a clerical error to begin with, but Senators Mark Maynard and Chris Walters removed their backing because of concerns over the religious exemption in the original bill.
“We need to keep the strict requirements. We don’t have the problems they have in other states, we don’t have the outbreaks,” Walters said.
The committee, however, removed the religion provision Tuesday through a committee substitute. The revised bill instead calls on physicians and parents to prove “the immunization of a child is medically impossible or improper.”
Currently when a parent sees a doctor for an immunization except for his or her child, that doctor’s decision is sent to the local county health officer for final approval or disapproval.
Under the new bill, a physician’s medical exemption must be sent to the state Bureau for Public Health where the state chief health officer oversees and approves the exceptions according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
Dr. Rahul Gutpa, Commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health, is that chief health officer. He told the committee Tuesday he had concerns over some provisions in the committee substitute, including mandating certain dosage amounts and ages that are subject to change by the CDC.
As to streamlining the process at the exemption approval process at the state rather than the county level, Gutpa didn’t object to the change, but told lawmakers he would need an additional physician in his office to spearhead the process.
“It is our full intent to make sure the inconsistencies that do exist in the system are eliminated, but they are eliminated in a way, in a manner that doesn’t put our children, our families at risk for disease outbreaks,” he told the committee.
“We believe that there is enough authority within the existing code to be able to do that with or without this piece of legislation.”
The Senate Health Committee voted to lay over the bill for later consideration.
As U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin considers a 2016 return bid for governor, Republicans hope to block him from handpicking his Senate successor for two years.
If he reclaims his old job, the Democrat will have served enough of his Senate term that he, as new governor, could name the next senator through 2018.
With majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in more than eight decades, Republicans can stymie Manchin’s ability to name a potential replacement.
Republican House Speaker Tim Armstead said his party has already drafted an election law change requiring special elections, not appointments, in cases like Manchin’s.
Manchin first won his Senate seat in a special election after Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd died in 2010. There was debate then about special elections versus appointments.
