Tag: house

For the week ending April 4, 2025

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Members of the House of Delegates began the process of completing a balanced state for the next state Fiscal Year, which begins July 1, 2025.

The House passed its budget bill, House Bill 2026, by a vote of 80 to 17 with three Delegates absent Friday afternoon. The total General Revenue budget in the bill is $5,113,274, 982 with an expected General Revenue surplus of $128,750,000 reserved for what is commonly referred to as the “back of the budget.”

The House Finance Committee built the budget using the Fiscal Year 2025 budget as its starting point and guide. The bill used long-standing vacancies in many agencies to effectuate a small 2% savings as well as roughly $300,000 savings in salaries as a result of department mergers. House Bill 2026 increased the employer share to PEIA for all agencies by about $40 million. The House budget put back the broad 10% cut made to the Department of Human Services last year, as well as an increase to the Department’s line items based on its requests for a total of about $90 million. The Department of Health’s Birth to Three program sees an increase of $7 million and the Division of Corrections receives a $30 million increase over the previous year’s budget in House Bill 2026. Another increase from the previous budget included in this year’s budget bill is $5 million going to appointed counsel as well as a new $1.8 million to court-appointed special advocates. The measure now goes to the Senate for debate.

The House passed Senate Bill 458, the Universal Professional and Occupational Licensing Act of 2025, by unanimous vote Monday. The measure would require the board of any profession regulated under W.Va. Code Chapter 30, which includes dentists, funeral directors, practical nurses, accountants, architects, foresters and physical therapists, to issue an occupational license to a resident of the state who is licensed in at least one other state in the same discipline and who meets several requirements for good standing. The bill currently is with Gov. Morrisey for action.

House Bill 2002, Establishing the One-Stop Shop Permitting Process, also passed the full House Monday by unanimous vote. It has gone to the Senate for debate and would streamline the state’s permitting processes while making them more accessible through a public dashboard. All 100 Delegates voted Tuesday to send House Bill 2152, the Prompt Payment Act of 2025, to the Senate for deliberation. It would require state agencies to pay legitimate and uncontested invoices within 45 days of receipt and late payments would be reported to the State Auditor, who would be required to publish and online list of noncompliant agencies.

The 60-day, regular legislative session ends at midnight April 12.

Contact: Ann Ali at (304) 340-3323

For the week ending March 28, 2025

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Members of the House of Delegates began meeting twice a day this week as the legislative deadline for bills to pass from the House of Delegates to the Senate draws near.

The House overwhelmingly voted Tuesday to pass Senate Bill 199, which was more than a year in the making. The measure would address student behavior intervention and teacher safety. It would establish guidelines for the re-entry of a student who has been excluded from the classroom or school bus for disorderly conduct. A behavioral plan, developed by a school counselor, school social worker or school psychologist, would need to be developed before the student could return. It also would require the counselor or social worker to participate in a conference and implement a behavioral plan before a student who had been excluded twice in one semester could be readmitted.

Delegates spent a great deal of time on the floor this week discussing foster care and child welfare. House Bill 2027, which passed the full House by a vote of 97-2, would change the process for the state to remove a child from a foster home. It would specify that a child who has been in a suitable placement for more than 15 consecutive months, or 50 percent of the child’s life, cannot be removed unless it is in the child’s best interest.

House Bill 2880 had only one vote against its passage. It would assign a “Parent Resource Navigator” through the Court Improvement Program or Public Defender Services to serve as part of the Bureau for Children and Families’ multidisciplinary team. This individual would be charged with helping parents trying to be unified or reunified with their children work through the legal system.

House Bill 2377, which unanimously passed the House Thursday, would bring more transparency to fatalities and near fatalities of children involved in the child welfare system while still maintaining necessary confidentiality. It would update child welfare data reporting and create a Critical Incident Review Team to review both fatalities and near fatalities involving children in the child welfare system. It would allow the Foster Care Ombudsman to access relevant reports and would require reports to be retained for at least one year.

House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, addressed the House at the end of Wednesday’s floor session, reminding them the incremental changes they had voted on that day ultimately result in systematic reforms.

“It may not have seemed that way to those outside the body, outside the building, but we took up questions today of how we address — how society addresses — some of the most vulnerable people in our charge,” Hanshaw said. “We took up a discussion about foster care and young people who are our responsibility. We talked about issues of criminal justice reform, how one gets a black mark expunged from one’s record to enter the workforce and rejoin society as a productive member. We talked about issues of criminal justice. This was a big day.”

Speaker Hanshaw also noted the oversized emphasis that often becomes put on the Legislature when crises occur.

“You know, not every problem — not every problem — can be solved by the government. Not every problem can be solved by a law, not every problem can be solved by a judge, not every problem can be solved by the governor,” he said. “We had, on the discussion of our first bill today, what I believe to be a very meaningful conversation about what the role is of families in society and how we as the government relate to those who are just simply trying to keep a family together.

“And I think it’s important to note that we have children in foster care in West Virginia. We have a foster care problem that wasn’t created by the government, that wasn’t created by the courts, that wasn’t created by the Legislature, that wasn’t created by DHHR. It was created because men and women chose to prioritize drugs and substance abuse and other things over their children.”

Hanshaw reminded the Delegates to “continually reflect on the fact that the very best we can do is our best.”

“Our goal today, for the next period of time we have together, for this legislative session and always, needs to be to contribute as well as we can contribute in the society to allow men and women of West Virginia, families of West Virginia, citizens of West Virginia, to solve our own problems and continue to create an environment in which that’s possible.”

The 60-day, regular legislative session ends at midnight April 12.

Contact: Ann Ali at (304) 340-3323

For the week ending March 21, 2025

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Members of the House of Delegates voted this week to pass several education-related bills to the Senate for debate as the legislative deadline for bills to pass from one Chamber to the other approaches.

House Bill 2802, which passed the House by a vote of 98-0 Tuesday, was inspired by a successful local partnership between law enforcement and schools. It would allow law enforcement officers to substitute as many as eight of their required 16 hours of annual in-service training for hours served on-site in a school safety program.

“The thought is that officers would spend time in schools within their jurisdiction or immediately surrounding their jurisdiction, knowing that in the event of a school shooting every officer from anywhere close to that area is going to be responding to the school,” said HB2802 Lead Sponsor Delegate Jonathan Pinson, R-Mason. “If officers have had the opportunity to take eight of their 16 hours of in-service training inside a local school somewhere, they know where the cafeteria is, so if they get a call that a school shooter is in the cafeteria, that institutional knowledge will already be present; they’re not trying to figure out where the classrooms are, they’re not trying to figure out where certain facilities are.”

Pinson said he began working nearly four months ago with the state’s Law Enforcement Professional Standards (LEPS) Subcommittee of the Governor’s Committee on Crime, Delinquency and Corrections, which is responsible for law enforcement officers’ training and certification. The program is being modeled after the Shield Program in Jackson County, which is in Pinson’s district.

“Ultimately, they agreed this is an excellent idea,” he said, noting the bill was needed to allow the LEPS Subcommittee to set the parameters of a program and the subcommittee had already voted to create this one-to-one exchange for training hours. “I believe the LEPS Committee will go into further detail as to what they expect of these officers when they report to the schools for eight hours rather than reporting to in-service for eight hours.

“The thought being that those officers are out of their vehicle, they’re in the school, they’re around the school, they’re checking doors, they’re talking with students.”

Pinson said the Shield Program has allowed officers to develop relationships with teachers and students, which has led to several crimes against children being stopped or solved.

“It has also increased the unpredictability,” he said. “If someone wants to do harm to a school, they don’t know if that’s a day there may be an officer or two officers fulfilling their one-to-one exchange time.”

House Bill 2164, which would allow public and private schools to employ school safety officers, passed the House by a unanimous vote last week. The bill requires the state Division of Protective Services to establish standards for school safety officers, allowing them to carry firearms, requiring background checks and information sharing with the Division of Protective Services as well as annual training. House Bill 3166, which would allow each county board of education to establish standardized school safety mapping data and require the data be shared with relevant state and local agencies, also passed the House without a single vote against it this week.

House Bill 3024, unofficially called the guaranteed course transfer bill, passed the House unanimously. It would establish a framework to ensure students have a seamless road among high schools, career and technical education centers, community and technical colleges as well as baccalaureate institutions for post-secondary credits to guarantee transfer in a uniform way.

A bill to prohibit most cellphone use in schools passed the full House by a near-unanimous vote. House Bill 2003 would require the West Virginia Board of Education to establish rules for implementing the ban while allowing accommodations for students with disabilities, medical needs or Individualized Education Programs (IEP).

“I do believe there are a lot of distractions in the classroom, not only cell phones but also behavior. That’s why we had bills on discipline and behavior that came up,” said House Education Committee Chairman Delegate Joe Ellington, R-Mercer. “As far as devices, there are opportunities for devices to be used during the instructional day. We do have exceptions built into that.”

The 60-day, regular legislative session ends at midnight April 12.

Contact: Ann Ali at (304) 340-3323

For the week ending March 7, 2025.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As the 60-day, regular legislative session nears the halfway point, members of the House of Delegates continue to use their new two-step committee process to discuss potential new laws as well as solutions to issues throughout the state that may not require a change to the law.

“This process requires us to take a long, hard look at an issue, and the byproduct is that everyone in the room ends up being educated in some way,” said Deputy House Speaker Delegate David Kelly, R-Tyler. “You wouldn’t have a lot of these discussions without having the specific bills introduced, but if we can walk away from a committee meeting with some area of agreement, that’s a success to me.”

Kelly spent time this week in the House Standing Committee on Health and Human Resources discussing a bill he sponsored, House Bill 2358. The measure would impose deadlines in certain circumstances for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to perform an autopsy and provide the autopsy report.

Kelly said during his presentation of the bill that he understands the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner would say they need more money, and there is a national shortage of coroners, but West Virginia’s county prosecutors also need to be able to conduct timely investigations when necessary. Kelly said right now it takes about eight months on average for an autopsy report to be completed and shared with prosecutors.

“It’s hard to bring up shortcomings when you’ve learned just how short-staffed they are,” Kelly said after the meeting. “I am hopeful that another bill on the move to help entice more graduates to stay will help alleviate that issue.”

Members of the House Education Committee advanced two bills this week, House Bill 2572 and House Bill 2595, which would establish some guardrails for the state’s colleges and universities to best leverage Name, Image, Likeness opportunities for their student athletes. Members of the House overwhelmingly voted in favor of passing a bill to address elementary student behavior and teacher safety. House Bill 2515 passed the House by a vote of 92-4 this week, and it would establish the steps a teacher may take in an elementary school setting when it is determined a student’s behavior is what has been carefully defined in the bill as violent, threatening, creates an unsafe learning environment or impedes other students’ abilities to learn.

A total of 1,255 bills have been introduced in the House, and the last day to introduce bills is March 18. The House has passed 33 bills to the Senate for debate. The 60-day, regular legislative session ends at midnight April 12.

Contact: Ann Ali at (304) 340-3323