This news story originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

3/1/04

Legislature

More bad than good

COMMENDABLY, the Legislature lowered West Virginia’s official intoxication level to 0.08 percent blood alcohol, a step that prevents loss of federal highway funds — and may save lives.

And finally, after seven years of failure, lawmakers passed a bill to protect riders of all-terrain vehicles — although the weak compromise foolishly allows the dangerous, unlicensed buggies onto 20,000 miles of paved roads.

Meanwhile, the rest of the 2004 session offers little benefit to West Virginia, so far. Here’s the bad news:

Bravely, led by Speaker Bob Kiss, D-Raleigh, the House of Delegates unanimously passed a bold bill to save West Virginians an estimated $500 million a year on prescriptions, by letting the state buy drugs at low rates paid by the federal government. However, Senate Health Chairman Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, has blocked any Senate vote on it. He says he’s having “a good dialogue” with pharmaceutical corporations, who bitterly oppose the House bill, in hope they’ll offer more discounts instead.

Records in the secretary of state’s office show that Prezioso got $3,750 in drug company gifts in 2000. Altogether, West Virginia legislators got $48,050 from pharmaceutical sources in 2000 and $37,735 in 2002, according to the Citizen Action Group and the People’s Election Reform Coalition.

Prescription prices affect seniors most of all, and West Virginia has America’s highest ratio of them. Instead of getting a big break in costs, oldsters may get little except outrages like the $302,000 income being grabbed by the Wyoming County senior center director.

Meanwhile, House Education Chairman Jerry Mezzatesta, D-Hampshire, is causing two problems. He wants to create another state bureaucracy by setting up a separate governing board for community colleges, with a chancellor earning $200,000 a year. And he’s pushing a bill that seems crafted to prevent West Virginia State College from becoming a university.

The latter bill would withhold university status to any college with less than a 33 percent graduation rate. But State has multitudes of part-time commuting students, most of them working adults. Many take only a few classes, with little prospect of reaching a degree. Thus State’s graduation rate is just 17 percent — only half the standard demanded by Mezzatesta.

We hope that both his new bureaucracy and his sabotage of State are defeated.

Another terrible idea is being pushed by House Finance Chairman Harold Michael, D-Hardy. He wants to amend the state constitution to remove the phrase setting Charleston as the “seat of government” — a change that would let state agencies be scattered around West Virginia. Michael previously sneaked through a new community college for his county. Maybe he wants to move the Supreme Court or Legislature to Hardy County. Luckily, this proposal caused a walkout in a House committee Friday, and may be doomed.

Yet another terrible bill is the proposal to give fertilized eggs and fetuses the same legal status as people. The “Unborn Victims of Violence Act” would make it a special crime to injure or kill an egg or fetus — but irrationally would exclude damage from abortions and morning-after pills. This is merely another fundamentalist attempt to stigmatize women’s right to choose, and Gov. Wise should veto it.

Finally, what about the impossible budget? The state faces a $120 million revenue shortfall this year — plus projected deficits climbing above $300 million in coming years. To reduce the gap, Gov. Wise requested another $40 million tax on cigarettes, snuff and chewing tobacco — a wise plan that would save lives and medical costs by preventing teens from becoming addicted to nicotine.

But legislative leaders flatly refused to consider the tobacco tax. (We’re sure they will say this decision has nothing to do with the fact that tobacco interests gave West Virginia lawmakers $23,975 in 2000 and $32,950 in 2002, according to the Citizen Action Group.) So, how can the Legislature balance the state budget?

At this point — three-fourths of the way through the 2004 session — there are few rays of hope. Just two weeks remain, plus the extended budget period. If genuine benefits are going to emerge, we hope it is soon.

This news story originally provided by The Register Herald

3/2/04

Fight brewing in House over coal truck weight reporting

By Mannix Porterfield/REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER

CHARLESTON - A fight is brewing in the House over an industry-backed effort to discard weight reporting mandates for coal trucks outside the 15 southern counties with a 120,000-pound ceiling.

Rigs in 40 other counties may not exceed 80,000 pounds, and given that limit, the West Virginia Coal Association feels it's unfair to make them report weights.

A bill abandoning the requirement was passed by the razor-thin margin of 17-16 Tuesday after Sen. Karen Facemyer, R-Jackson, amended it to extend the 10 percent variance to log trucks, saying the provision "mysteriously disappeared" from last year's bill.

"There are no scales in the woods," Facemyer said, noting maximum allowable truck weights vary from 65,000 to 73,500 pounds. "Loggers have no way of knowing what they have on a truck."

In the House, however, Delegate Mike Caputo, D-Marion, an opponent of last year's successful bid to elevate legal weights to 120,000 pounds in southern counties, suspects an attempt to let other haulers skirt the law is motivating the bill.

"My question is, what are they trying to hide?" Caputo asked. "If they're abiding by the law, and they're 80,000 pounds and there's a 10 percent variance, why would they have a problem reporting that. I think the 40 counties have a right to know if there are heavier trucks hauling coal in their districts."

Bill Raney, head of the coal association, disagrees with Caputo that truckers can run overweight without the reporting mandate.

"That's not the case at all," Raney said. "What it says is, it doesn't apply outside the 15 counties where there are designated roads that can haul 120,000 pounds under the bill passed last year."

That measure imposed a number of safety rules, including increased training, enforcement and forced haulers to report weights at both ends of deliveries in the 15 counties.

"If you don't have the opportunity to haul greater than what the older law did, then none of those requirements ought to apply, and certainly the reporting requirement shouldn't apply," Raney said.

Caputo envisions a scenario where truckers in the 40 counties will haul as much as they can sneak past law enforcement.

"The only way you're going to know is if they get caught, and we know how difficult it is to catch these overloaded trucks," the delegate said. "You catch one and the other 10 get radioed and simply pull off the road and don't get caught."

Raney said the proposal in no way means truckers get carte blanche in the other 40 counties.

"It doesn't authorize in any way anyone to haul greater than what the law is," the coal leader said. "Reporting is simply a burden on them that's unnecessary because they can't haul any more than what the law says."

- E-mail: mporterfield@register-herald.com 

This news story originally provided by The Charleston Daily Mail

3/5/04

Control of water standards up for debate, legislator says

House leader says fight is between science, industry

Brian Bowling
Daily Mail staff

The debate over who should write the state's water quality standards has come down to a choice of either the state Department of Environmental Protection or a group of agency heads, House Judiciary Chairman Jon Amores said.

Amores, D-Kanawha, said a Senate proposal to have the DEP write the standards is much better than a previous proposal floated in both houses that would have had seven agency heads with no technical expertise setting the standards.

Environmental groups, however, held a press conference Thursday afternoon to push for killing both ideas.

They want to keep the current arrangement where the state Environmental Quality Board, made up of four college professors and a businessman, writes the standards.

Norm Steenstra, executive director of the West Virginia Citizens Action Group, said his group originally opposed the creation of the board but has since come to see the advantage of having technical standards set by an apolitical board.

"Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. But the one thing the EQB has always seemed to do is separate the science of water from the politics of water," he said.

Carol Warren, of the West Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, said lawmakers regularly say they want to help and protect children.

Keeping a system where water quality standards are decided by science rather than politics is one of the best ways they can keep toxins out of children's drinking water, she said.

"Their little bodies just can't handle (toxins) like adults can," she said.

If the Legislature allows either the DEP or state agency heads to write the standards, they'll inevitably weaken those standards and increase the toxins children are exposed to, Warren said.

Amores said Thursday afternoon that environmental groups can pretend the choice is between the DEP and the board, but "that analysis would be misguided," he said.

"There has been consistent pressure to do away with the EQB entirely."

The pressure has come from industry groups who feel the board moves too slowly and has an inherent conflict of interest because it both writes the standards and hears appeals of DEP decisions based on those standards, he said.

Amores said there's also an argument that college professors are not the best option for a board that has to balance scientific and technical information against "real world" considerations.

The DEP, on the other hand, can do that.

"There's a collaborative relationship between the DEP and industry that I think is conducive to the rule-making process," Amores said.

That "collaborative relationship," however, is exactly what environmental groups don't want to see.

Don Garvin, lobbyist for the West Virginia Environmental Council, said industry wants someone else to handle water quality standards because it can't stampede the Environmental Quality Board into ignoring science.

The board is also scrupulous about holding its debates in public so that everyone can see how it arrives at its decisions, he said.

"Industry doesn't like that because they can't take the board behind closed doors and emerge with a sweetheart deal.

"That's what it's all about," he said.

Amores said any one of industry's complaints probably wouldn't be enough to persuade the Legislature to strip the board of its rule-making authority.

The Legislature is better off moving the rule-making authority to the DEP before a crisis panics it into a worse decision, he said.

"Together, they create a level of dissatisfaction that, in my opinion, if is not addressed in a measured way, it will build to a point where there will be a rush to judgment," Amores said.

As for the alleged shortcomings of the Environmental Quality Board, Amores said there's been no study and the industry hasn't provided any hard evidence to verify those allegations.

"The information I've been given is, more than anything else, anecdotal," he said.

Most of the decisions the Legislature makes, however, are based on anecdotal evidence, and the committee still has a week to look at the issue, Amores said.

Writer Brian Bowling can be reached at 348-4842.

This news story originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

3/5/04

Water-use bill has chance

By Tom Searls
STAFF WRITER

Legislation claiming West Virginia’s water for its citizens and requiring a survey of its uses began moving in the House of Delegates Thursday, giving it a good chance for floor consideration before the Legislature adjourns March 13.

“I think we’ve tightened [the legislation] up,” said Delegate Corey Palumbo, D-Kanawha, who headed a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee that has handled the bill (SB163).

Subcommittee members made some substantial changes to the Senate bill, which was passed early in the legislative session. The full committee still must approve it before it is submitted to the House floor for consideration.

“I think the most important thing, in my mind, is we claim the rights to our water, and this bill will do that,” Palumbo said.

It also requires a survey of where the state’s water is going, requiring any person or business using more than 750,000 gallons a month to participate. “Everyone’s going to have to do it for three years,” Palumbo said.

The survey will cover the years 2003-05. There are exceptions for farm use and those purchasing water from a water distribution company, or for those who move the water but don’t utilize it.

If the water use stays about the same — doesn’t fluctuate by more than 10 percent — it allows that firm or person not to have to continue to report.

But it also contains a provision for any future company doing business in the state that utilizes 750,000 gallons or more to also have to report.

Water was also on the minds of another group Thursday — those opposed to taking water quality authority away from the state Environmental Quality Board.

The House of Delegates is currently considering legislation passed by the Senate (SB724) that would give that authority to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The Rev. Jeff Allen, a United Methodist minister representing the state Council of Churches, said the Bible tells people to be good stewards of the land and water, saying they “should be streams of healing and not sickness.

“There are churches in West Virginia that use our streams for baptism,” he said.

The group, which held a press conference at the Capitol, also included representatives of an interfaith group, the League of Women Voters, the Citizen Action Group and state Environmental Council.

Don Garvin, with the Environmental Council, noted the DEP secretary has agreed to the Senate legislation, saying it is better than a House bill that died in committee Wednesday.

But, he still wonders where Gov. Bob Wise stands on the issue. So far, Wise has been silent.

Garvin read Wise’s State of the State remarks about water quality, which said, “We must continue to protect the quality of the water in our streams and rivers to preserve them for future generations. We must reject any attempt to weaken our water quality rules.”

“We agree with the governor,” Garvin said, adding that the groups hope the governor would veto the legislation if it passes.

EQB is a five-member board composed mainly of college professors with a science background that sets water quality standards. It also sits as an appellate board.

The proposed legislation would strip it of regulatory powers, while leaving it as an appellate body.

To contact staff writer Tom Searls, use e-mail or call 348-5192.