MORGANTOWN – The House of Delegates on Tuesday narrowly passed the Senate bill regarding teacher strikes, but easily surpassed the two-thirds supermajority needed to adopt a resolution aimed at barring court interference in impeachment proceedings.
SB 11 is the strike bill. Although no Republicans spoke against it on the floor, 21 of them voted against it. That wasn’t sufficient to prevent passage. The final tally was 53-46 and it goes back to the Senate since the House amended it.
The bill says county boards may not permit employees who participate in strikes or work stoppages to use accrued and equivalent instructional time to cancel days lost. Delivery of instruction through alternative methods does not apply and may not be used to cancel days lost.
The state Board of Education may not grant waivers to county boards for not meeting the 200-day minimum employment term or the 180-day instructional term if noncompliance results from a work stoppage or strike.
If an employee remains employed by a county board despite participating in an activity the state BOE determines to be grounds for termination, the county board must withhold that person’s pay for each day of participation. However, those days would be made up at the end of the year and the person would be paid for that time.
A string of Democrats voiced their opposition. Delegate John Doyle, D-Jefferson, said, “This is already illegal. Our courts have said so. We don’t need to.”
Delegate Ed Evans, D-McDowell, a former teacher, said if superintendents can’t close schools, the kids will come during a strike and the school principal will be their sole babysitter.
“Do you think the teachers really won’t continue to strike because of this bill? If it’s bad enough they’ll do it.” he said. “Let’s just call this what it is: a threat.”
Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, said the state Constitution Bill of Rights guarantees that “the right of the people to assemble in a peaceable manner… to instruct their representatives … shall be held inviolate.”
The 2018 and 2019 strikes were just that, she said: assemblies at the Capitol to instruct the legislators about their needs. So she believes the bill is unconstitutional. It’s also bad timing to be addressing this in the middle of a pandemic when teachers are struggling to juggle in-person and virtual instruction.
Education chair Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, defended the bill. He said the two recent strikes have nothing to do with the bill. It affects all state employees, though there are some education-specific provisions. It makes clear that teachers and school employees can assemble and express their grievances, but not on public time.
All local delegates voted with their party.
Impeachment resolution
HJR 2 proposes a Constitutional amendment to clarify that courts have no authority or jurisdiction to intercede, intervene in or interfere with impeachment proceedings of the House of Delegates or the Senate and that a judgment rendered by the Senate following an impeachment trial is not reviewable by any state court.
If it passes both houses, the amendment would be put before the voters in November for their approval.
HJR 2 stems from the summer of 2018 when the Legislature impeached all five sitting state Supreme Court Justices. Then-Chief Justice Margaret Workman petitioned to have the proceedings against her stopped.
The state Constitution says: “The House of Delegates shall have the sole power of impeachment. The Senate shall have the sole power to try impeachments. … Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold any office of honor, trust or profit, under the state.”
A substitute court sitting in for the impeached justices agreed with Workman in October 2018 and stopped the process. The court said in a 64-page statement that the Legislature violated her due process rights, violated separation of powers, and that the House violated its own impeachment rules by failing to set out findings of fact and failing to pass a resolution adopting the articles of impeachment.
Explaining the bill Tuesday, Judiciary chair Moore Capito, R-Kanawha, said the impeachment stemmed for the court’s “cavalier spending and outrageous conduct.”
The fill-in court’s ruling, he said, “really pushed the limits of separation of powers in West Virginia. … We in this body were essentially defanged.”
Delegate Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, opposed the resolution. “The court’s decision was correct, we made a mistake.” He was among several who said the House wrongly impeached the justices in one swoop instead of individually.
Capito clarified that all the justices were dealt with individually but all the charges were wrapped into a single article.
Fleischauer said the bill will provide for no constitutional restraint on impeachment and could allow any future hyper-partisan proceeding without check or balance.
Delegate Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, said the House is the only body with the power of impeachment.
“How can another body have dictatorial control over the rules in which this body arrives at that conclusion,” he asked. “How could another branch of government hand us the rules for how we are to operate something that only we can operate?”
The vote was 78-21 with two Democrats crossing over. All local delegates voted with their party. HJR 2 now goes to the Senate.
Senate resolution
The Senate had its own, less-controversial constitutional amendment resolution up for passage Tuesday.
SJR 4, if passed by both houses and approved by the voters, would eliminate a clause from the state Constitution that prohibits the state from granting charters of incorporation to churches and denominations.
Churches incorporate in order to obtain some legal protections, such as liability, and to make it easier to borrow money and purchase property.
The state of Virginia’s Constitution contained a similar clause that was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2002 for violating the First Amendment. Virginia and West Virginia were the only two states with such a ban.
Starting in 2003, then-Secretary of State Joe Manchin began granting charters and all subsequent secretaries have done the same. More than 400 have been granted.
State code also allows the granting of charters. SJR 4 would simply delete the sentence prohibiting the granting of charters from the Constitution and replace it with one saying, “Provisions may also be made by general laws for the incorporation of churches or religious denominations.”
The Senate adopted it 32-0 and it goes to the House.
TWEET David Beard@dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
