Your legislature has now completed two special sessions. As you will recall the first was to deal with a bill to lower state income taxes. That bill passed by a wide majority in the House of Delegates but was allowed to die in the Senate. Also, the governor agreed to place House Bill 302 on the agenda at that time. HB 302 would become known as the abortion bill. Essentially the bill, as passed out of the House of Delegates, would halt all abortions in West Virginia except the case of rape and incest. Within the bill was the requirement that rape and incest must be reported to law enforcement
When HB302 arrived in the senate it was debated and changes were made to the reporting requirement of the bill and the penalty section was changed as well. The bill then came back to the house and we refused to concur. At that point, we were adjourned while a compromise was reached on the changes made by the Senate. A compromise was made and we were called back during September Interims to debate and vote on the final bill. We met, debated the bill and passed it.
During the September Interims, the governor called another special session to deal with transferring monies to the Highways Department and to deal with a bill allowing property to be sold to Berkshire Hathaway in the Ravenswood area. We voted, as requested, to put another 150 million dollars into the Highways Fund for the purpose of paving secondary roads throughout the state. We have the extra money due to increased coal and natural gas severance tax collections. I anticipate more funding will be moved to highways over the coming months to support continuing upgrades and repairs. The bill allowing land to be sold to Berkshire Hathaway also passed with no opposition. Berkshire Hathaway will, at little to no expense to the taxpayers, develop an industrial complex along the Ohio River near Ravenswood that will employ up to 1000 people when fully operational. That industrial site will be designed to be independent of the electric grid in West Virginia and will only use fossil fuel-generated electricity when the renewable systems on site cannot keep up with the demand.
Both of these special sessions were conducted within the time already set aside for interim meetings and were no extra expense to the taxpayers.
I continue to need your advice and criticism as you see fit and I can be reached at (304) 646-1209. We are still harvesting hay and will soon start the corn harvest so the best time to contact me would be late evenings or early mornings.
