Good: SB 175 — updates offenses of extortion and attempted extortion. It specifically adds “or other thing of value” (understood to include sexual acts) to the list of things that, if threatened, would qualify as extortion. It also adds that “threaten[ing] to publish in any manner images of another person’s intimate body parts” to the list of acts that qualify as extortion. This bill passed the Senate and currently sits in House Judiciary.
Based upon the discussion surrounding the bill, it sounds like lawmakers are targeting a specific phenomenon known as “sextortion” — either threatening to share with others or to post online nude/intimate photos of someone as a way to get them to do something they don’t want to do, or blackmailing someone into performing sexual acts.
“Revenge porn” — when someone posts explicit photos of someone without permission — is considered a crime, but it only penalizes the offender after the damage has been done. This update would also criminalize the threat, which would allow victims to get help before their privacy is irrevocably violated.
Bad: SB 264 — limits compensation for legal ads to 4 cents per word no matter the newspaper’s circulation size. Pretty much every legislative session for the last several years, lawmakers have tried to defund local newspapers by limiting or eliminating payment for running legal ads.
Under current law, legal advertisements must be published in the closest newspaper as a form of public notice. This helps ensure transparency, especially for government expenditures.
Currently, compensation rates are progressive, starting at 4 cents per word and increasing with a newspaper’s circulation size. By limiting payment to the lowest possible amount, the Legislature would be slashing newspapers’ advertising revenue, possibly to the point of not even covering the cost of the materials needed to print all those legal ads.
Advertising still makes up the biggest portion of local newspapers’ revenue, but it hasn’t yet fully recovered since the onset of COVID-19, and tech giants continue to siphon away ad dollars even as they use our content. If you want to keep your local paper alive and thriving, don’t let the Legislature slash our ad revenue even further.
Stupid: HCR 55 — a resolution to make Donald Trump a non-resident West Virginia citizen, and to demand his Washington, D.C., trials be moved to the State of West Virginia.
The obvious intent is to move at least some of Trump’s numerous trials to what the resolution’s sponsors assume would be a more favorable venue. Trump and his team have pursued claims and defenses so outrageous that even Trump-appointed judges have dismissed them. So bringing his case(s) to West Virginia probably isn’t the slam-dunk his supporters think it will be.
Beyond that, though — Trump has zero ties to West Virginia beyond his popularity with a certain portion of the electorate, so granting him citizenship makes no sense.
Good-ish: SB 179 — requiring a sheriff to serve child abuse and neglect petitions. This bill passed the Senate.
We give this one a good-ish: It’s not a bad idea to have sheriff’s deputies deliver the petitions instead of social workers, since the recipient might get violent. However, we’re not sure sheriffs’ offices have the personnel to make this bill’s mandate realistic.
It’s no secret that West Virginia law enforcement is hemorrhaging officers. (Preston County recently had yet another deputy resign over low wages and poor working conditions.) Law enforcement agencies statewide are chronically understaffed. So while we like the idea of sending an officer instead of a social worker, we worry about the lack of people available to do the job.
The one upside of the bill is it does contain provisions for the petitions to be mailed (by someone other than the sheriff) if the sheriff’s office can’t deliver them. We suspect, though, that if this bill passes, most of those petitions will end up mailed.