West Virginia Blue
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A handful of cities in West Virginia are one step closer to getting what they've always wanted -- home rule and the ability to govern themselves.
On Jan. 1, four cities -- Bridgeport, Charleston, Huntington and Wheeling -- submitted application packets to the state's Home Rule Board, which will review each city's plans during the next several months before announcing later this year which cities can proceed forward with home rule on July 1.
All four may be picked to take part in the pilot program. Or some may be denied. Legislation passed in 2007, however, requires at least one community be selected.
"I think for some cities, they see this as a real opportunity to prove to themselves and others that they know best how to run their cities," said Lisa Dooley, executive director of the West Virginia Municipal League. "For a long time, their hands have been tied. Now the ropes have been loosened."
Who is against home rule? Many big businesses are, for one. They like having a single legislature and centralized government they can lobby to do their bidding.
Although the devil is in the details, as a general philisophy I'm all for "home rule." Decisions should be made by people who are as close to the problems being solved as possible. That's the view shared by advocates of home rule.
[Wheeling Mayor Nick Sparachane] also said home rule brings government closer to the people: It allows local leaders to set the tone, rather than having lawmakers in other parts of the state deciding how things should be done.
"People are scared to death of taxes, I understand that," he said. "But home rule is a chance for people to be closer to their elected officials -- there are seven representatives at our council table, and what a great opportunity for people who want to voice dissent to come and talk to them, face-to-face. You don't get that opportunity at the state level, and certainly not at the federal level. At the end of the day, those seven people will ... make the decisions that most affect them, and they will have the ability to talk to them."
Dooley said she understands some people's fears about home rule, but she points to the four cities' applications as proof that home rule isn't just some code phrase for new taxes. None of the cities are taking that approach. The cities' approach, if anything, is to make the cities better for business, not worse, Dooley said.
"What we've been doing isn't working, or, at least, it isn't working very well," she said. "Give it a chance and see what happens."
She said the people who lead cities tend to know the needs and challenges of their neighbors, co-workers, friends and constituents better than folks sitting under the gold dome in Charleston.
"If you work on the assembly line making cars all day, you know which type of wing nut works better in certain areas than maybe the president of the company," she said. "It's the same thing here. I feel certain cities know best how to deal with city problems."
There is a storm starting to brew up regarding the Captive Audience Bill that came out of the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary during the WV Legislature Interim Session at the end of November. Basically what the Bill does is bar employers from making attendance compulsory for employees when the topics to be discussed are political or religious. A synopsis discussing this Bill can be read here in an article by Mannix Porterfield in the Beckley Register Herald.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — An effort to bar employers from staging mandatory talks in the workplace to discuss political and religious matters under the threat of retaliation against workers who boycott them cleared its first hurdle Wednesday.
But the so-called “captive audience” measure didn’t exit the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary without a spirited battle.
After a lengthy debate, Delegate Tim Miley, D-Harrison, coaxed a divided voice vote in sending it out with a recommendation for approval by the full Legislature next year.
Have you ever found yourself in the position of having to attend a "meeting" at work with politicians running for office? I have... and it is not a very pleasant experience when the candidates that are being thrust on you are Republicans with no offset on the Democratic side. My boss actually required every one of his employees to gather in one place to hear political speeches by candidates running for state offices. My feelings are pretty clear on this subject... the owner of a company certainly can conduct a meeting and present political views, however, I as well as anyone else working for the company should be free to walk out or choose not to attend and not have to worry about any retaliation or punishment for not participating. Of course not attending or walking out would certainly put about 2 strikes against you as it would be obvious how you felt about something that was near and dear to your bosses heart.
Now the Bill is being touted as a Union sponsored attempt to take away the ability of mine owners to coerce employees to listen to anti-union propaganda from their bosses. In another article published this past week in both Bluefield Daily Telegraph and the Beckley Register Herald that can be read here,
Delegate Tim Mile, (D-Harrison) has taken a stand that...
While that provided some of the impetus, Delegate Tim Miley, D-Harrison, says his stand was that no such bill would be crafted that solely benefited union organizing.
“We were going to identify those areas that might be sensitive, those areas of speech and communications there might be some sensitivity to, so that we were going to make it hopefully a bill that would address areas of sensitivity and great concern to people,” Miley said Wednesday.
“We just weren’t going to pass something solely for the fact that somebody was mad at Massey Energy or (CEO) Don Blankenship. I’m not into targeting people or retaliation by legislation.”
The old standby of "another unnecessary law" comes forward from those that don't like the idea of protecting worker's rights to not listen to propaganda on political and religious matters. You aren' t protected if the boss says you have to go period! The argument is that workers are already protected under Federal law. Read what Senator Clark Barnes (R-Randolph) the Minority Whip in the State Senate says about this legislation...
Barnes wondered why such a law is needed in West Virginia if federal law now bars discrimination at the work site based on race, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation and other reasons.
“Could this be considered a brand new attack on the constitutional rights of free speech?” he asked. (emphasis mine)
Free Speech??? What a crock... the workplace is not a setting that should be abused by someone who owns a company to proselytize his or hers ideas and beliefs on those who work for their company. The real concern that Barnes and others apparantly have is that the Bill is an outright attack on Massey Energy and their CEO Don Blankenship who have blatently used mandatory meetings to threaten their employees trying to organize in our state. There was a time when worker's rights were protected... those rights have eroded since the Reagan administration, and we desperately need legislation such as the Captive Audience Bill to protect our work force from the abuses of their bosses. It doesn't just apply to union organizing... it applies to every business. I don't work in a business that is typically union, and I along with my fellow employees were required to listen to one point of view at work.
The Legislature goes back to work in Charleston next week so let your Delegates and Senators know how you feel on this Bill. All of the House of Delegates is up for reelection in November and so are a lot of Senators. I think they might just listen to you if they want to remain in office.
How about it Randolph County? I hear that Clark Barnes is going to have a tough ride in the November election... this might be an issue that can be used to send another Democrat to the Senate to replace Barnes.
Does anyone even care anymore about the West Virginia Legislature? According to our State Constitution, the Legislature only convenes for sixty calendar days within the first three months of each year. It is unfortunate to me that while the Legislature convenes next week, there have been scant postings on this website regarding the upcoming session. There have been few mentions of the session in any of the major publications in our State.
I watched WVU trounce Oklahoma, too. I even had an ongoing friendly rivalry with my boss (an OU graduate) about the game. I am actively researching the upcoming lawsuit by WVU against Rich Rodriguez. But, the business of the State Legislature is of much truer importance to our citizenry than the outcome of the Tostito's Fiesta Bowl.
So, I write this diary entry to encourage the moderators of this blog as well as its avid readers to begin posting more entries on the legislative session. This website has become, in my opinion, too heavily interested in non-local election coverage.
In a letter to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that was sent by email just yesterday one of our local Democrats loudly expressed his opinion on Joe Manchin's bill that has been put on hold till the January sessions in Charleston.
The letter by Bill Morefield is republished here with his permission. The letter to the editor can also be read here. Our local Democrats aren't afraid to speak out when they believe the Governor is wrong.
Joe Manchin is pushing legislation that would essentially prohibit land owners from suing drilling or natural gas distributing companies for contracted royalties.
When a landowner and a gas company contract for paid royalties to be one eight of the market price of natural gas at the well head, it is not a complicated contract.
When a gas company tries to defraud a landowner by factoring in operating costs as a means of reducing the price of natural gas at the well head, it is simple fraud. It is not complicated.
When a politician tries to help gas companies defraud landowners it is time to remove that politician from office. When one gas company buys another gas company and does not address liability for past management practices it is extreme mismanagement.
As we say in our market economy; “let the buyer beware.” Government intervention is just another form of corporate welfare.
I know lots of people are disappointed with Congress these days on Iraq war funding, but after many battles I have learned the virtue of gratitude for good news. (And I've never had the expectation of getting everything I want.)
Earlier today I posted about the huge progress that has been made on the federal budget since 2005. We've moved from cuts in needed services to increases--something unthinkable only a year ago.
And here's some more good news. The online New York Times reports this afternoon that Congress is finally moving towards passing a relatively "clean" bill raising the minimum wage in steps to $7.25 an hour. Previously, in what was a really bad idea, the wage increase was bundled into the war spending bill.
From the Times:
WASHINGTON, May 24 — Congress is moving this afternoon towards approving the first increase in the federal minimum wage rate in a decade, in a vote that would be a victory for Democratic lawmakers and labor groups.
The measure, which would raise the wage rate for the nation’s lowest paid workers to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 in three stages over the next two years, was attached to the Iraq spending bill. The bill also includes $4.84 billion in tax breaks on small businesses, which have made a case that the wage increases represent an economic burden to them.
President Bush has said he will sign the measure, which is expected to be approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate later tonight.
Folks may not realize that WV had a part in pushing the issue. See below.
Is anyone else out there as tired as El Cabrero and the critters at Goat Rope Farm of the ceaseless barrage of commercials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about what a terrible legal climate we have here?
They love to harp on a survey of the corporation-backed American Tort Reform Association that claims to show that WV is a "judicial hellhole." Most likely, they surveyed members, corporate defendents and their attorneys.
Scientifically, methinks it's almost as good as asking eighth graders whether algebra sucks and using the results as a basis to evaluate that branch of mathematics. Here's an evaluation of the "judicial hellhole" rankings from The Center for Justice and Democracy.
From the West Virginia Blue archives, here's another greatest hit, deep cut, or timeless classic... Antipode makes the complex subject of combined reporting easily understandable. Originally posted on Feb 19, 2007.
A 2003 study by the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) suggests that states lost as much as $7.1 billion in corporate income tax revenue in fiscal year 2001 due to aggressive tax avoidance strategies on the part of large, multi-state corporations. This study also estimated that West Virginia lost 58 percent of its corporate income tax collections (as a share of revenue) in 2001 due to tax shelters, the highest in the nation. The estimated revenue lost due to domestic tax sheltering alone was between $17 and $36 million in 2001.
Click on There's More... for the rest of the story.
As Paul Harvey always said "now for the rest of the story." After all the haggling over pay raises during the regular session it was announced today that the lawmakers that are putting together the 2007-2008 state budget said in an article published today by the Associated Press that...
Thousands of state employees won't be getting the full 3.5 percent pay raise promised by the Legislature, as lawmakers intend to limit individual increases to $1,200.
Legislators assigned to craft the 2007-2008 state budget during this extended session said they aim to ensure increases for all the state's 39,000 or so full-time workers. The House had set aside $21 million in its version of the budget bill for the raises.
"you have to do it that way. There's a fairness issure" Senate Finance Chairman Walt Helmick said Tuesday. "it's to keep it fair between the upper echelon salary ranges and the lower end."
The article goes on to say...
The ranges do not apply to the 3.5 percent raises approved for teachers and school service personnel, said House Finance Chairman Harry Keith White, D-Mingo.
Its obvious that there is a lot of work left to do regarding pay for state employees, and that it may not get done without the Governor calling the Legislature back into special session to resolve some of the issues.
Getting the job done in 60 days, and then putting together a budget in a week is a major chore. There should be a better process to get this done that treats all state employees fairly not just certain classes of jobs. There is no doubt that pay for teachers is sub par as compared to the rest of the nation, and that the pay for other state workers is obviously just as bad.
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