A bill being considered by the state Senate would make it a crime to abandon a deer, fish or other game animals caught in West Virginia.
The Senate Natural Resources Committee forwarded the bill Monday to the Judiciary Committee.
Under the bill, game animals cannot be abandoned without making a “reasonable effort” to retrieve it for human consumption. The bill carries maximum penalties of 100 days in jail and $2,500 in fines.
Col. Jerry Jenkins, chief of the Division of Natural Resources’ law enforcement section, says deer poachers every year use the head or antlers as trophies and leave the rest of the animal to waste.
Farmers with permits to kill crop-damaging deer would be exempt.
The bill does not include smaller, furry animals such as raccoons.
A bill that would exempt the mass release of West Virginia hunters' contact information to the public is making its way through the state Legislature.With…
A bill that would exempt the mass release of West Virginia hunters’ contact information to the public is making its way through the state Legislature.
With little debate, the Senate Natural Resources Committee forwarded the bill Monday to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill would let the Division of Natural Resources withhold names, addresses and other information in a mass request under the Freedom of Information Act of hunters who killed a particular animal.
Such records would be made available to law enforcement and other government entities.
A legislative audit released earlier this year encouraged lawmaker to get rid of the state’s certificate of need process. A Certificate of Need is essentially approval from the state to open a new hospital, clinic or health related facility. Senators have introduced bills to get rid of the process, but delegates are trying to save it.
More than 30 states have a Certificate of Need process like West Virginia. It’s meant to prevent the inflation of health care costs by limiting the services provided in a geographic area based on need.
Two bills have been introduced into the Senate this session to completely remove the certificate of need process, eliminating the West Virginia Health Care Authority, but in the House members are attempting to clean up the certificate process through House Bill 2459.
Delegate Matthew Rohrbach, a Republican from Cabell County, is a sponsor of the bill. As a doctor, Rohrbach says he understands that getting rid of the process might increase competition in the healthcare system in West Virginia.
“Some states have done away with CON that are bordering us,” Rohrbach said, “and unfortunately that’s created an unfair advantage for some of our border states against our local hospitals that are providing care to our patients and they’re employing our citizens.”
Rohrbach says, though, other states that have gotten rid of the approval process have faced challenges too.
“In Pennsylvania in particular, they’ve had a lot of problems when they’ve dropped their CON, with the expansion of services, volume has went down, and they’ve had some quality problems.”
Both of the Senate bills to repeal the certificate of need process are sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Ryan Ferns, a physical therapist and business owner from the northern panhandle. While neither of the Senate bills have been considered by the Senate’s Health and Human Resources Committee yet, Del. Rohrbach calls the House bill a fair compromise that balances healthcare access for rural communities with the quality of service provided.
House bill 2459 passed 98 to 1 Monday and moves on to the Senate.
West Virginia Senators have approved a bill to dismantle the wage bonding requirement for certain industries in the state.
Members voted 21-12 Monday morning after some debate on the chamber floor.
Senate Bill 224 removes a decades-old requirement for employers in the construction and mineral extraction industries to put up a wage bond.
Wage bonds are money an employer pays to the state to cover the cost of employee wages and benefits for a month should the business close. They’re a security for workers and have to be funded by the company for its first five years in operation.
Credit Will Price / West Virginia Legislative Photography
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
Sen. Glen Jeffries gives a floor speech on March 6, 2017.
Three of West Virginia’s bordering states—Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia—do not require a wage bond, but Putnam County Democratic Sen. Glen Jeffries told his fellow Senators those states don’t rely on extraction industries like West Virginia and Kentucky do.
Jeffries– who owns his own construction company and opposed the bill– said he wishes the state could expand the bonding requirement to every industry.
“But we don’t need to because the other businesses,” he said, “because they’re not as vulnerable as what construction and mining is.”
While Democratic opposition remained focused on the implications for workers, Republicans focused on businesses, including Sen. Jeff Mullens from Raleigh County.
Mullens said on the chamber floor that potential business owners must have impeccable credit to have the wage bonds covered by creditors like banks, otherwise they have to find sometimes tens of thousands of dollars up front to cover the cost.
“This helps the little guy. The guy that wants to start a little construction company to build houses. The guy that’s just barely getting by and [doesn’t] have the money to put up a wage bond,” Mullens said. “The wage bond helps people that have money. It doesn’t help the little guy.”
Senators approved the bill, 21-12, on a party-line vote, with one member of the chamber absent.
The bill now goes to the House of Delegates for further debate.
As the owner of a construction company, Putnam County Sen. Glen Jeffries said Friday a bill to end a decades long practice in West Virginia of bonding employee wages in certain industries worried him.
“This industry, they are vulnerable businesses, construction especially,” he said on the chamber floor. “In a five year period, 38 percent of the businesses are still open. Thirty-eight percent.”
Currently under state law, employers in certain industries—including mineral extraction and construction—are required to bond the wages and benefits of their employees for the first five years of operation.
The bond is money paid to the state that would cover a month of wages and benefits for employees if the business closes, but Senate Bill 224 would get rid of that requirement.
Senators debated an amendment to the bill Friday, one that would keep the requirement in place, but give businesses some relief, according to Jeffries, by requiring it only for the first three years of operation instead of the current five.
“I came from a working family, but I also look at it and see it from an employer’s standpoint how I got to be a business owner is that employee who made me who I was, made my company who I was,” Jeffries said on the floor. “There’s a reason that those wage bonds were put in place.”
Democratic members of the chamber stood to back Jeffries’s proposal, including Sen. Doug Facemire who was concerned about employees who lose their wages due to bankruptcies and have some protection through a wage bond.
Credit Will Price / West Virginia Legislative Photography
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West Virginia Legislative Photography
Sen. Doug Facemire on the floor Friday
“I think that the good way, way outweighs the bad in keeping this in place for those people who go to work every day and the only thing they are guilty of is showing up,” he said. “They’ve done their job, they’ve done what they were supposed to do and I think they’re entitled to their pay.”
Senate Judiciary Chair Charles Trump, who is also a sponsor of the legislation, called the bond an impediment to business growth in the state.
“We have an obligation to pass legislation that allows people to start businesses in West Virginia without unreasonably expensive barriers,” Trump said. “We need jobs in this state. We need to promote that economic development, and this bill will do that.”
Jeffries’s proposed amendment failed Friday on a 12-20 vote. The bill will be up for a final vote in the chamber Monday.
Editor’s Note: This story initially identified Sen. Glen Jeffries as being from Kanawha County. The senator is from Putnam County and this story has been updated to reflect that.
A bill to create guidelines for drones in the state has made its way through the West Virginia Senate.
Senate Bill 9 creates guidelines for the private and commercial use of drones or unmanned aircrafts.
The bill says drones cannot be flown within 100 feet of someone else’s home, says you cannot take video or still images on someone else’s property without their expressed permission, and requires law enforcement to get a warrant before using a drone in an investigation.
There are exceptions for police officers though that allow them to use drones for public safety and search and rescue purposes.
The bill also prohibits the taking of photos and video on industrial sights, like at a coal mine, a natural gas processing facility, or a power plant, although Senate Judiciary Chair Charles Trump explained on the floor there is an exception to the provision.
“We recognized in trying to craft this piece of legislation with some balance that there are times when a designated industrial facility or the owner of it wouldn’t want a drone over that property,” Trump said on the floor.
Media outlets, according to Trump, who obtain a license from the Federal Aviation Administration receive a number of exceptions under the bill to protect the freedom of the press.
Senators, however, were interested in how personal usage of drones would be affected by the legislation, like Senate Minority Leader Roman Prezioso who questioned Trump about taking aerial shots of entire cities.
“If you…took that picture, there’s not expectation of privacy there. You’re shooting the buildings, the streets, the traffic, the people, people have no expectation of privacy when they’re out and about like that,” Trump explained, “but if someone were to fly a drone from someone’s bedroom window and take pictures from the outside of inside the house, there is an expectation of privacy.”
The bill does create a number of misdemeanor offenses for violating various areas of the bill, including harassment or operating a drone while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Fashioning a weapon on a drone would be a felony.
All three offenses are punishable with fines and jail time.
