Government, Opinion, WVPA Sharing

Statehouse Beat —  Is another budget debacle ‘business friendly’?

By Phil Kabler

The Charleston Gazette-Mail

Quote of the week: “This is a dysfunctional group. They’re good people, but this is silly.” — Gov. Jim Justice, on the Legislature’s inability to pass a 2017-18 state budget or accompanying revenue plan.

Phil Kabler

With the special session of the Legislature recessed until Monday, with the bulk of the agenda — revenue plan, 2017-18 budget bill, governor’s road-funding bills, state employee furlough bill — still pending after 15 days in session, it’s hard to dispute the governor’s assessment.

Senate Republicans, with Justice’s support, seem dead-set on pushing an income tax cut as part of the revenue bill, despite the reality the House of Delegates has twice rejected that plan so far in special session, and seems poised to reject a House-Senate conference committee report this week if it includes the income tax rollback.

House leadership, meanwhile, has contributed to the impasse with its ongoing objections to relatively innocuous tax increases to close the budget shortfalls.

Much of the debate has been over the need to make West Virginia “business friendly,” but the spectacle of a Legislature that finds itself incapable of agreeing on a budget plan until the last possible moment — or beyond — for two years in a row cannot foster much confidence for businesses considering investing in the state.

Last year, the Legislature spent 17 days in special session before passing the budget bill on June 14 — milestones that almost certainly will be blown away by the current cast of 134.

Each year, legislators have had a sort of paralysis, finding themselves frozen with fear to make either the substantial spending cuts or revenue increases needed to resolve systemic problems with the state budget, and have ended up just plugging the hole just enough to get through the pending year — with the $98 million tobacco tax hike last year, and the proposed sales tax increases this year.

To throw something to get by in 2017-18, but leaving larger deficits looming for the 2018 session, in an election year, would seem the most dysfunctional option of all.

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I understand the state AFL-CIO has attorneys researching the law to determine whether Sen. Robert Karnes, R-Upshur, based on information published here previously, is eligible to serve in the state Senate.

To summarize previous items: As best we can determine, either Karnes did not have the required five years of state residency when he was elected to the Senate in 2014, or he voted illegally in the 2010 general election in Florida.

Residency issues come up from time to time, usually involving candidates for office, not officials post-election. Most recently, there was an effort to seek a court order to remove Sen. Randy Smith from the ballot in the 2016 14th Senatorial District race, after he moved from Preston County to Tucker County to run for the seat, with the argument being that he didn’t spend much, if any, time at his new residence in Davis. The motion was dismissed.

An interesting sidebar as to whether Karnes is legitimately serving as state senator comes with the Jan. 21, 2016, Senate vote to pass the state right-to-work law.

That bill passed on a party- line 17-16 vote, with one vacancy, since Daniel Hall had resigned to become an NRA lobbyist, and the courts had not resolved the issue of whether his replacement should be a Democrat (as he was when elected), or Republican (as he had transmogrified during his term), leading to the state Supreme Court’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decision that held that the vagaries of the individual take precedent over the will of the voters.

If Karnes was ineligible to be a state senator on that date, then arguably the right-to-work bill died that day on the Senate floor on a 16-16 tie vote.

Whether an elected official can be removed retroactively from office for failing to meet the eligibility requirements to run for that office is a question requiring legal research beyond my pay grade.

However, the state constitution (Article 6, Section 25) does provide that the Senate may expel a member with a two-thirds majority vote.

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During the regular session, the Legislature passed a bill giving authority to the House speaker and Senate president to hire and fire judges (soon to be called commissioners) and clerks on the Court of Claims, a move critics saw as a way to oust longtime Clerk Cheryle Hall.

Sure enough, last week the Legislature posted a help wanted notice for a clerk of what will become the Legislative Claims Commission on July 9.

Hall confirmed she is retiring June 30, but said she isn’t being forced out after a 48-year career as clerk. Hall said she had originally planned to retire last October, but stayed on following a fracas over a legislative audit last summer that raised issues with payroll and leave-time discrepancies for court employees.

While 48 years seems like a sufficiently long tenure of government service, Hall said she’s actually worked for the state for 49 years, having worked a year in the state auditor’s office before the position in the then-two-year-old court came available.

Hall said she’ll be kicking off retirement with a trip to Hawaii with family members.

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Top ten state lobbyists, by dollars spent, per January-April financial disclosures (keep in mind, spending disclosures frequently include costs of the lobbyists’ associations or organizations hosting receptions and/or dinners during the session): 1 .Chris Hamilton, $24,135; 2. Charlie Burd, $12,154; 3. Josh Sword, $9,347; 4. Patti Hamilton, $8,562; 5. Carol Fulks, $7,629; 6. Phil Reale, $6,910; 7. Bill Raney, $5,563; 8. John Canfield, $5,131; 9. Larry Swann, $4,808; 10. Chad Robinson, $4,212.

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Finally, Bray Cary, former mini-media empire magnate, has been spotted at the Capitol on multiple occasions of late. Speculation is, he’s grooming Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, for a 2020 gubernatorial run.

Reach Phil Kabler at [email protected], 304 348-1220, or follow @PhilKabler on Twitter.

– See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-columnists/20170610/statehouse-beat-is-another-budget-debacle-business-friendly#sthash.0IgvbT65.dpuf

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-columnists/20170610/statehouse-beat-is-another-budget-debacle-business-friendly#sthash.0IgvbT65.dpuf

 

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