MORGANTOWN – The House of Delegates on Wednesday passed the governor’s bill elevating the Tourism and Economic Development offices to cabinet departments with their own secretaries.
Delegates also sent a good deal of time hashing over proposed amendments to a new school scholarship program called Hope.
HB 2019 is the Economic Development and Tourism departments bill. Gov. Jim Justice announced the plan during his State of the State Address Feb. 10.
If the bill also passes the Senate, both new departments will be pulled from their current positions in the Commerce Department.
Current Economic Development Director – and former Senate President – Mitch Carmichael will become Economic Development secretary. Tourism Director Chelsea Ruby will become Tourism secretary.
Government Organization Committee chair Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, explained the bill and told the delegates that the bill will have no fiscal impact. The new departments will incur no new costs, and the new secretaries will not get raises from their current salaries.
The bill passed 86-13 with eight Republicans and five Democrats voting no.
Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, was among the opponents. He said he understands the importance of both offices. “I agree that those are areas of the utmost importance and deserve more attention.” But he wishes they could have divided the bill and voted on both offices separately.
During the pandemic summer, he said, when people were crying to the Legislature for help and the House had a bipartisan supermajority ready to call itself into session to appropriate the $1.2 billion CARES Act money, Carmichael stopped it from happening.
Pushkin likes Carmichael, he said, and they’re friends, but it could be said Carmichael was the greatest barrier to economic development over the past several months.
“This is the swamp folks. … Let’s drain the swamp,” Pushkin said.
Delegate Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, also voted no. “I thing we’re expanding bureaucracy in West Virginia to a monumental degree,” he said, adding there’s no documentation that the changes won’t cost any more money.
Chelsea Ruby has been a great success, Rowe said, but they shouldn’t create agencies and departments based on the performance of one person.
Finance vice chair Vernon Criss, R-Wood, said he was in the Legislature back when Gaston Caperton was governor and created the current system of cabinet secretaries. The structure has needed tweaking over the years and this is another tweak. The change reflects the importance of the new departments and not the current individuals who will head them.
“I think it’s going to help West Virginia and I think that’s the most important part,” he said.
Delegate John Doyle, D-Jefferson, voted yes but said he believes Economic Development should remain in Commerce. “To me the Development Office is the Department of Commerce.”
He hopes the Senate will amend the bill to just apply to Tourism.
All local delegates except Guy Ward, R-Marion, voted for it. It goes to the Senate.
Hope Scholarship
The Hope Scholarship bill is HB 2013 and was on second reading, the amendment stage, Wednesday.
The program will be a state-funded education savings account program. It was intended to allow public school students to transfer to a private school or be home schooled. The estimated per-pupil scholarship of $4,600 could be used for a variety of specified educational expenses, including tuition and fees at a participating school; tutoring services; fees for nationally standardized assessments; tuition and fees for an industry-recognized career credential; occupational, behavioral, physical speech-language and audiology therapies; and transportation service fees.
As conceived, delegates said on the House floor, the program would apply to about 5,000 students at a total estimated cost of $23 million.
But Delegate Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, proposed an amendment, effective July 1, 2026, to open the program to all students “enrolled, eligible to be enrolled, or required to be enrolled in a kindergarten program or public elementary or secondary school program in this state at the time of application.”
That will expand the eligible applicants, delegates said, to 22,000 at a cost of $101 million.
“This is going to blow massive holes in county school system budgets,” said Delegate Cody Thompson, D-Randolph.
Delegate Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson, argued that the amendment has no fiscal impact for several fiscal years, no one knows how many might apply and a future Legislature could always amend the bill again if it looks like the expenses will be too great.
Burkhammer also noted that every child will eventually be eligible anyway, this just moves up the date.
His amendment was adopted in a voice vote.
The GOP supermajorty rejected Democrat amendments to cap program enrollment at 2,500; set family income caps at $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples; and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, religion or disability.
Education chair Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, addressed each of the five elements of the third amendment, offered by Doyle, separately.
Ellington said several of those categories are already covered in federal law. But it’s illegal to withhold scholarship funds for religiously oriented private schools or single-sex private schools.
And gender identification is not identified as a protected category in federal or state law for public or private schools, so this creates rights not available to other students.
He said some of the protections Doyle wished to offer would be better addressed in the state Human Rights Act and not in this bill.
On the income cap, Delegate Evan Worrell, R-Cabell, pointed out that a single mom with four kids would be ineligible. Delegate Lisa Zukoff, D-Marshall, agreed that an income cap should be on a sliding scale, but said the overall bill needs work because it contains fundamental inequities.
HB 2013 is on third reading for passage Thursday.
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