WV Senate Story Archives - Page 7 of 11 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Unions Gather at Capitol to Fight Prevailing Wage

“Slow this down. Let’s find some compromise.”

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.

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In his research, White said he found states that have repealed the requirement have seen no costs savings on public projects and lower overall wages for construction and trade workers.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.

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.

Senate Bill Would Streamline Vaccine Exemption Process

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.

Will Lawmakers Repeal the Unfair Trade Practices Act?

A debate that started during the 2014 legislative session continued during interim meetings in Charleston Sunday. State lawmakers are still questioning if a 1939 law affects today’s gas prices.

Jan Vineyard, president of the West Virginia Oil Marketers and Grocers Association or OMEGA, addressed lawmakers during a Joint Government Organization and Operations meeting in the House Chamber about the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act which has been in state law for more than 70 years.

During the 2014 legislative session, Sen. Herb Snyder led a charge for repeal of that act, but his attempt failed.

“The Unfair Trade Practices Act was created to maintain fair and healthy competition. The law was put into place in 1939 largely due to the practice of then chain grocer A&P Supermarkets,” Vineyard told lawmakers.

Vineyard says at the time the grocery chain A&P was moving into small towns in West Virginia and cutting their prices so low that the local mom and pop shops couldn’t compete.

Once they forced the competition out of business, A&P jacked up prices causing the state legislature to step in.

The act makes it illegal for a retailer to sell their product below cost and allows them to mark up their goods by up to 7 percent. Snyder said its that provision that’s allowing gasoline retailers to hike up their prices.

Vineyard, though, disagreed saying should the bill be repealed, locally owned gasoline retailers would be hurt along with the average West Virginian.

“By repealing the law, this would incent large out of state corporations, the haves who have the overwhelming advantage of volume purchasing, to lower their prices to drive local West Virginia operations out of business. Once that occurs, these large chains would have free reign to charge what they want, leaving the state’s residents, in this example the have nots, with potentially higher fuel costs yet and fewer choices and less access to gasoline and other products.”

Snyder was the former chair of the Senate Committee on Government Organization which looked at the law during interims. Sen. Craig Blair signed on as a co-sponsor of the repeal legislation in 2014 and will now chair the senate committee.

W.Va. Coalfields Panel Grants $20k for Trail Project

A state Senate panel seeking to revitalize the struggling southern coalfields has awarded a $20,000 grant to a trail project.

At a Thursday meeting in Princeton, Senate President Jeff Kessler and task force members gave the grant to the Piney Creek Trail Committee.

The money will help build a hiking and biking trail starting from Beckley’s YMCA soccer complex, heading to the Raleigh County Airport, then down Piney Creek to the New River Gorge National River.

The panel’s funding went toward matching a $250,000 federal grant.

The Piney Creek Trail Committee is part of the Raleigh County Transportation Authority.

The state Senate’s Southern Coalfields Organizing and Revitalizing the Economy initiative, or SCORE, aims to diversify southern West Virginia. The panel plans to make recommendations before the January legislative session.

Hall Says Political Flip to Keep District Relevant

Wyoming County Senator Daniel Hall made the political switch from Democrat to Republican this week giving the GOP an 18 to 16 majority. On Viewpoint Friday, Hall said he made the switch to keep his district relevant.

Hall said members of the state Republican Party approached him to make the switch before the election, but he hadn’t considered it because of the strong majority the Democrats held in the chamber. But after Tuesday evening’s election wins that tied the body 17 to 17, Hall said he reconsidered the offer.

“My job is to represent the people of my district and this decision was solely based on putting my district in the best decision to move forward,” he said.

Hall said there have been discussions about what his position in the new leadership will be, but he hasn’t been promised a committee chairmanship.

As for his credibility with the voters when he runs for re-election in 2016, Hall says this:

“The people of my district don’t care about party politics. They care about their people, they care about their families, they care about their district moving forward and their communities improving. That’s what they care about. They don’t care who is in charge, whether its Democrats or Republicans, as long as their lives are getting better.”

After Tuesday's Election West Virginia's State Senate Was Tied. Now, It's Not.

Updated Wednesday, November 5, 2014 at 7:45 p.m.

State Senator Daniel Hall has switched from Democrat to Republican, switching the balance of power.

For more, see this story.

Original Post from Wednesday, November 5, 2014 at 3: 51 p.m.

After Tuesday’s mid-term elections, Democrats in the West Virginia Senate are living with a new reality. There are 17 of them and 17 Republicans, leaving the upper chamber in a dead even tie.

The results mean control of the Senate, and Senate President Jeff Kessler’s position of power, hang in the balance, but it’s not one that’s likely to be decided any time soon.

“At this point, I think the rules of the Senate are what you look to and, basically, we set our own rules,” Kessler said Wednesday. “There are some Constitutional provisions that we need to look at, but I’m comfortable and confident that working with our colleagues across the aisle, we’ll find a way to make the Senate work.”

Kessler pointed to the work Senators did in 2010 to create an acting Senate President position after Earl Ray Tomblin stepped in as Acting Governor. At that time, however, Democrats held a 26-8 majority.

Still, the parties will have to work together to negotiate how the Senate will be led in the upcoming legislative session. Looking to the history of the issue in the state, however, may not be helpful.

The first time the West Virginia Senate experienced a deadlock was after the 1910 election, and then again in 1912. In both years, there were 15 members from each party.

From the West Virginia Encyclopedia:

At the time, U.S. senators were appointed by the legislature. During the 1911 legislative session when the two parties deadlocked, Republican senators absented themselves from the state. They rode a train to Cincinnati where they stayed in a hotel and prevented the Senate from being able to meet in Charleston because of the lack of a quorum of 16 members. The tie was never broken, but a compromise was worked out whereby Republicans elected the Senate president and Democrats chose the U.S. senators. Much of the credit for the compromise is given to the clerk of the Senate at the time, John T. Harris of Parkersburg.

Such a compromise is no longer relevant in West Virginia. Instead, lawmakers could look to other states that have experienced similar situations more recently.

In Wyoming, the tied state Senate in 1974 decided control of the chamber with a coin toss. South Dakota and Montana have passed legislation to have the chamber leader selected from the party of the governor.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, though, the most common resolution is for both parties to come to a negotiated agreement which can take three forms.

“Co” Agreement- Used most recently in the Oregon House in 2010, dual leaders of both the chamber and committees are appointed who alternate the times at which they preside
Divided Power Contract- Used most recently by the Virginia House in 1997, one party names the leader of the body while the other appoints the chairs of all major committees. Minor committee chairs alternate by party.
Negotiated Resignation- Used most recently by Maine’s Senate in 2000, one party elects a leader for a set period of time who agrees to resign after that period. The other party then elects a leader following the resignation.

Kessler said it was too soon to speculate what members of the West Virginia Senate would decide.