McGeehan
WEIRTON, W.Va. — Delegate Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, says he’s sanguine about a disciplinary letter he received last week from House Speaker Tim Armstead.
Was this the political equivalent of being sent to the corner?
Not quite, McGeehan said.
“There’s these little meetings every now and then where all the Republicans get together behind closed doors. I’m not invited to those meetings,” he said, describing the letter as a “scare tactic.”
McGeehan, 36, of Chester, received a letter from Armstead last week excluding him from the Republican Caucus for the remainder of the special legislative session, which opened on May 16.
“As you are aware,” Armstead wrote, “we have spent substantial time in recent Caucus meetings discussing the expectations of members of the Republican Caucus. It is my belief and the belief of the leadership of our Caucus that your recent actions have failed to meet these expectations.”
The letter did not elaborate on which “actions” the leaders found objectionable.
But McGeehan said he believes it was referring to his opposition to any tax increases in the budget bill currently under consideration in Charleston, specifically his efforts to organize legislators against the Armstead-endorsed bill.
“Once it became clear that the speaker was going to try to impose $100 million in new taxes … I called for a joint meeting with Democrats and like-minded Republicans. About 35 Democrats showed up, and a dozen Republicans showed up. We had a good open dialogue,” he said.
McGeehan received the letter on May 23, and on May 24, the House voted 55-44 against a 45-cent tax increase on tobacco products – a measure that would have raised an estimated $70 million in new revenue in fiscal year 2017.
The tobacco tax increase was one of three proposed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin as a way to deal with an anticipated budget deficit of $270 million – the other two being a 1 percent increase in the state sales tax and removal of the sales tax exemption for telecommunications devices.
In an April 20 letter addressed to Armstead, McGeehan called such tax proposals “immoral and fiscally unsound” and, with 13 signatories, tried to rally House leadership against the tax increases.
Entering the special session, McGeehan said 21 delegates, including those in the Liberty Caucus, had essentially taken a no-new-taxes pledge.
McGeehan contends that the tax proposals are “regressive” and will have a disproportionately negative impact on the Northern Panhandle.
“We’re in a recession right now, and people are struggling to get by,” he said. “I’m not going to sit idly by and go along with some plan to tax poor people and folks struggling to make ends meet, just to pay for runaway government spending in Charleston. … We just can’t afford this exuberance in Charleston.”
While 35 out of 36 House Democrats voted against the tobacco tax increase, some of them told news outlets afterward that the tax wasn’t big enough. Delegate Mark Zatezalo, R-Hancock, was one of 20 Republicans to vote for it.
On Friday, the House passed a $4 billion budget and sent it to the Senate by a vote of 61-37. McGeehan was one of only three Republicans to vote against it.
Legislators return to the Capitol on Tuesday.
(Huba can be contacted at [email protected])
