By Gary Zuckett, WV CAG Co-Director
Last week, the 2025 legislative session kicked off with Governor Patrick Morrisey’s State of the State address to a joint session of the legislature, with state Supreme Court justices and as many others as could be packed onto the floor of the House of Delegates. For nearly an hour, he replowed the ground that he’d been working since his inauguration last month. West Virginia Watch has a detailed review.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that former Governor Justice’s creative accounting, fueled by spending down one-time federal COVID and infrastructure dollars to compensate for losses from excessive tax cuts, resulted in a large and growing deficit. Now, the new governor is left to clean up the mess.
Eight years of flat budgets have starved education, childcare services, clean drinking water, emergency and other essential services. We need to spend more on these essentials, not less. Governor Morrisey wants to give away more public education funds to private schools and continue down the road of more tax giveaways to the already wealthy. It just doesn’t add up!
His undeclared war on West Virginia’s air, water, and health was apparent as he spoke about his plans to decimate environmental protections and to burn more fossil fuels, climate be damned! His commitment to fossil energy will lock West Virginians into years of unaffordable electric bills and guarantee more frequent and severe climate-fueled disasters.
The State of the State marked the beginning of a new administration’s more energetic, —and potentially more destructive— four years. Hold on to your seats!
Public Hearings Cancelled
A new legislature’s first order of business is for the Senate and House to pass resolutions outlining the rules under which they will conduct their business. Usually, they tweak this or that to try to make things run more smoothly. However, during this session, the House decided to take on a major reorganization of its committees and how it moves bills through those new committees. Most agree this may be a step toward more deliberation and a better end product. We’ll see how that works.
Despite this potential improvement, our advocacy community took issue with one significant change: the new House Rules provision that strips the public of its right to request a hearing on any legislation. This has been our right for at least the last half century! WV CAG worked with partners and allies to hold a press conference outside the House Chamber opposing this power grab by House leadership. In addition, we formally requested a public hearing on HR 1, the rules package in question, but were ignored.
Our allies in the minority party proposed several amendments on the floor when HR 1 was being debated, including one to preserve public hearings to make the new committee process more fair and accessible to the public. All failed as the Republican supermajority in the House voted thumbs down on every one at the behest of House leadership.
We’ll be monitoring how this new process unfolds and how much the public can weigh in on bills while they are considered in committee, so stay tuned for further actions on this issue.
One Thousand, One Hundred and One Bills
As of Day 7 (Tuesday) of the session, 1,101 bills have been introduced between the House and Senate. Many of these are basically the same bill introduced in both chambers, but it still makes our heads spin! Luckily, many of these will never see time on a committee’s agenda and die a quiet death. We’ll do our best to track the ones that get ‘legs’ and begin their long journey to the finish line – the governor’s desk.
Two bills moving through the WV Senate would harm our youth in West Virginia. UPDATE: On Wednesday, Feb. 19, Senators laid over SB 460. They now plan to vote Friday on legislation that would loosen the state’s school vaccination requirements. SB 460 would codify an executive order from Gov. Morrisey that requires the state to allow religious and moral exemptions to school vaccine requirements. On Tuesday, Feb. 18, the Senate Health Committee advanced a bill (SB 299) that would place further restrictions on access to gender-affirming care for minors by eliminating narrow exceptions that allow young people diagnosed with severe gender dysphoria and at high risk of suicide to receive this life-saving care. The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee for further consideration.
Meanwhile, the House Health Committee is considering a bill (HB 2376) that would lower vaccination requirements for potential foster families and another (HB 2033) that would bar the state from dismissing potential foster families because of their religious beliefs regarding sexual orientation, raising discrimination concerns.
Two Protests (So Far) at the Capitol
Harking back to the days of the first Trump presidency, protestors have assembled at the State Capitol, Parkersburg, Morgantown and other locations to show their displeasure about the dismantling of critical federal agencies through mass layoffs and intrusions into federal data systems by Musk’s teenage vandals. WV Citizen Acton staff were at the Capitol protests to help.
Green Energy
As we promote access to green energy for all West Virginia residents, we also need a little from you! Lobbying is one of our activities that is primarily member supported. Most foundation grants have strict barriers to using their funds for lobbying. So here’s a BIG THANKS for taking a minute to renew your membership or make an additional donation. You can also support our work by purchasing a ticket or becoming a sponsor of our 50th Anniversary Celebration, which has been rescheduled for Saturday, May 17, at the WV Culture Center. All tickets purchased for January 11 will be honored for the new date.