House of Delegates Speaker Tim Miley, D-Harrison, brings down the gavel to call the House to order to open the Legislature’s special session Monday.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In what could be called a cleanup session, legislators convened in special session Monday to correct errors in or omissions from bills passed earlier this year.
That includes bills to make appropriations for accounts including Tourism and the Courtesy Patrol that previously had been directly funded from video lottery profits, and to remove an unintended change in overtime regulations from legislation raising the state minimum wage.
In a one-day special session March 14, the Legislature passed a bill moving several accounts that had been automatically funded with video lottery profits — including Capitol Complex improvement funds, Development Office promotion funds, debt reduction accounts and the Division of Tourism promotion fund — to accounts that have to be approved by the Legislature.
Because the Legislature already had passed the 2014-15 budget bill earlier that day, the bill’s passage left those accounts unfunded.
Special-session legislation (SB2003) will restore those accounts, but with 10 percent funding cuts.
The Tourism promotion fund will get $6.2 million, but under a 2009 law, the bulk of that account goes to support the Courtesy Patrol.
Currently, the Tourism Commission is required to directly transfer $4.7 million a year from the promotion fund to the Courtesy Patrol, but another special session bill (SB2004) would instead set up a fund to cover up to $4.7 million of patrol expenditures.
The arrangement raised a number of questions Monday, including a question from Delegate Ron Walters, R-Kanawha, asking if the bill could cap salaries for executives operating the roadside assistance service.
The Courtesy Patrol is operated by the nonprofit Citizens Conservation Corps of West Virginia, whose most recent IRS 990 disclosure showed five executives with salaries totaling more than $530,000, including a $248,330 salary for Executive Director Robert Martin.
“We certainly considered it, but because this is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, counsel advised we could not tell that company how their employees or executives are compensated,” said Jason Pizatella, deputy chief of staff to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.