MORGANTOWN – Saturday is the 60th and last day of the legislative session. The House and Senate are both set to convene at 10 a.m. and the session concludes at midnight.
Here is a running look at House action. It will be updated regularly, with newest entries at the top.
SB 468 is the Unborn Child with Down Syndrome Act. The House spent close to 90 minutes debating it before passing it with a number of Democrats voting yet and two Republicans voting no.
It forbids performing an abortion on an unborn child with a disability – including Down syndrome, though that isn’t named in the House version of the bill – except in the case of medical emergency or a nonmedically viable fetus. It contains reporting requirements and provides that a licensed medical professional who violates the code is subject to licensing board discipline.
The House adopted a Judiciary Committee amendment, rejecting three Democratic secondary amendments, including one making an exemption for rape and incest.
Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, said the bill may discourage some pregnant women from seeking care for a problematic pregnancy because it has the contradictory effect of allowing abortions on healthy fetuses.
The bill doesn’t protect or support children with disabilities or their families, he said. “This is an attempt to use people with disabilities as props for an anti-abortion agenda. … Bans on aboriton based on the reason for abortion doesn’t make the state a better place for people with Down syndrome. … This bill is about government-mandated trauma.”
Delegate Kayla Kessinger, R-Fayette and lead sponsor, said she’s sat and comforted women who’ve shared their stories of abortion with her.
“I believe that every life has value, regardless of its diagnosis, regardless of its place,” she said. “Every life in this room, in the mother’s womb … was created in the image of the same God you and I were created in.”
The bill is not about pushing religion on others, she said, but about science and morality. “It’s about when does life begin and whether or not it has value.” She referred to the World Health Organization decision to classify Down syndrome as a severe birth defect, part of a worldwide move to abort babies with Down syndrome.
The vote was 81-17 and it returns to the Senate for amendment concurrence. Locally, all Republicans voted for it; all Democrats voted against it except Danielle Walker, who was not present for the vote.
The Senate concurred and repassed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 4627 limits the number of labs permitted to operate to test medical cannabis to two. The Senate amended it to end the limitation effective Jan. 1, 2025 and prohibit the labs to conspire to fix prices.
The vote as 30-3 and it returned to the House, which concurred. It will go to the governor.
HB 4111 began as a bill to allow advance practice registered nurses and physician assistants to prescribe Schedule II drugs for up to three days. But they patched in SB 574 dealing with PEIA hospital inpatient and EMS reimbursement rates, to be set at 110% of Medicare rates. It also adds that PEIA coverage may only be extended to employee spouses who do not have alternate primary coverage through their employers.
Judiciary chair Charles Trump, R-Morgan, commented, tongue in cheek, that it’s a good bill. “I like this idea of giving the House of Delegates multiple opportunities to look the things we send to them.”
It passed 34-0 and returned to the House, which stripped back out the PEIA portion and sent it back to the Senate.
HB 4012 deals with employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates. It says a state or local government may not require proof of vaccination as a condition of entering the premises or using services provided by a state or local government. The prohibition does not apply to any local government-owned facility that is leased to a private entity where the local governmental unit primarily serves as a property owner receiving rental payments.
The bill also says a hospital may not require proof of vaccination as a condition of entering the premises and higher education institutions may not require proof of vaccination as a condition of enrollment or for entering the premises.
It contains exemptions for cases where federal law takes precedence and for employees of covered employers who work in Medicare or Medicaid-certified facilities subject to federal regulations.
Sen. Ron Stollings, D-Boone, said the bill is hardly needed now with COVID waning, but if a new variant would come along it will reduce flexibility of local governments to respond.
The vote was 23-9 and it returned to the House. Locally, all Democrats voted against it, all Republicans for it. The House concurred and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 4502 is the BUILD WV Act. It provides for tax incentives for approved companies to build housing for graduate and post-graduate and professional job holders, technical workers and entrepreneurs in up to three designated areas (down from 12 in the House version); projects would be certified by Economic Development Department. It caps total credits at $40 million (down for $150 million in the House version) and sunsets the program in five years.
The vote was 29-3 and it returned to the House. The House concurred and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 2910 is the bill to reallocate county magistrates. The Senate adopted a Judiciary amendment.
It calls on the Supreme Court to conduct or arrange for a caseload study to determine how many magistrates are needed in each county. This study would be completed this year for review and legislative action during the 2023 session – in preparation for the 2024 election.
The bill allows for an increase in magistrates from the current 158 to 170. It allots one new magistrate to Berkeley effective July 1. No county will lose magistrates under this version, unlike the House version.
It allows the Supreme Court to direct a magistrate to serve on a temporary basis outside their county. It also calls on the court to develop a rule creating a system to assign magistrates on a periodic alternating basis, to preside over initial appearances, petitions for domestic violence, emergency protective orders, emergency mental health petitions, emergency juvenile delinquency petitions, and applications for the issuance of search warrants arising outside normal court hours or in an emergency on a circuit-wide or other regional basis.
It passed 34-0 and returned to the House for amendment concurrence. The House concurred and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
SB 487 deals with depositing surplus revenue into the Rainy Day Fund. Current law says 50% of any fund surplus at the end of a fiscal year must be transferred into the Rainy Day Fund A to make its balance equal 13% of the General Revenue Fund balance at the end of that year.
The House amended it on Thursday to change the threshold to 8% and returned it to the Senate. But based on bond-rating agency adivce, the Senate re-amended it on Friday to raise the threshold to 20%, but including the combined totals of Rainy Day Funds A and B. The House concurred with Senate amendments and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 4847 is called Brenda’s Law and requires missing persons information to be submitted as soon as possible to State Police. Law enforcement must assess risk factors, including the newly added risk factor that the person is age 75 or up. The House concurred with Senate amendments and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 4787 is the Fully Autonomous Vehicle Act and sets up regulations for driverless vehicles. The House concurred with Senate amendments and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 4025 provides for a five-year severance tax exemption for extracting and producing for commercial benefit rare earth elements and critical minerals, starting July 1 this year. The Senate amended in another Senate bill allowing counties to impose an amusement tax up to 2% of admission price, which died in the House.
The vote was 30-4 and it returned to the House. All local senators except Democrat Mike Caputo voted for it.
On the House floor, it was moved that the amendment was not germane because it’s unrelated to the original bill and violates the state Constitution’s single-object mandate for a bill.
Delegate Chris Phillips, R-Barbour, argued against the motion because Tucker County’s small population – 5,000 households – can’t provide enough tax revenue to sustain EMS services for the county’s enormous tourist numbers, approaching 1 million per year.
Delegates Buck Jennings and Terri Sypolt, both R-Preston, and others joined him in supporting the amendment.
Delegates Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, and Geoff Foster, R-Putnam, argued for deeming the amendment not germane on the mistaken notion that the amusement tax would be statewide and would burden everyone who wants to have fun with supporting Tucker County. The amendment in fact allowed for each county to impose its own tax.
Virtually all the debate was about taxation and fairness and not about the issue of whether the additional topic was actually germane to the original bill and would survive a veto.
The vote to refuse to concur with the Senate amendment was not as close as the long debate suggested – 76-23 – and the Senate was notified.
HB 4020 splits the Department of Health and Human Resources into the Department of Health and the Department of Human Resources. The House concurred with Senate amendments and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
HB 4008 is the Higher Education Policy Commission funding formula bill. The House concurred with Senate amendments and re-passed it. It will go to the governor.
SB 653 was the bill to make Pierpont Community and Technical College a Division of Fairmont State University. After debate stretching six hours across three days, the Education Committee changed it to require FSU to apply to the Council for Community and Technical College Education to transfer Pierpont’s aviation maintenance technology program to FSU in order to allow Pierpont’s program to survive without doing away with Pierpont.
It passed 90-3 and returns to the Senate.
SCR 55, to urge the Biden administration “to open federal lease sales onshore and offshore, supporting critical energy infrastructure to safely deliver energy produced in West Virginia, and ensuring American energy companies can access the capital they need to hire American workers.” Adopted 81-12.
HB 4355 deals with disclosures to college students of the costs of their educational materials. The House concurred with Senate amendments and re-passed it. It goes to the governor.
SB 250 is the budget bill. The House began review of the details of the agreement between the House and Senate on the final version late Friday night and spent two more hours on it Saturday morning.
Saturday’s debate wasn’t so much about the items in the $4.6 billion budget but the process.
Delegate Brent Boggs, D-Braxton and a former majority leader and Finance chair, criticized the current method of reaching a budget agreement – essentially done between the two Finance chairs during the last week of the session.
It’s better, he said, to wait until all the bills are passed and they know what they need to spend – and then have what used to be Budget Week after the regular session. Conference committees would meet and haggle over different sections, and all that would be combined into the final document. They had more solid figures to work with and the process was more transparent.
Delegate Geoff Foster, R-Putnam, raised another of the morning’s themes. The projected surplus is expected to fall somewhere between $600 million and $1 billion. The Constitution requires the Legislature to pass a balanced budget, and the governor submits artificially low revenue estimates that create the so-called surplus.
Through the surplus spending priorities listed at the back of the budget, he said, “We’re trying to get around the Constitution because the governor’s playing a game with us. … What’s here is us taking back control with the surplus revenue.”
The budget the delegates had before them was the version worked out between the two chairs and came to the House in the form of a Senate message asking the House to concur with the amended version. The House concurred and passed it 90-9. It now heads to the governor.
