By Mallory Panuska
FAIRMONT — Local lawmakers are gearing up to return to Charleston this week for the Legislature’s first full assembly since the adjournment of its annual 60-day session last month.
House Majority Whip Mike Caputo, D-Marion, described this initiative as a budget/interim/special session set to begin Tuesday and likely last about eight to 10 days.
Caputo explained that members of the House and Senate will balance and pass the state budget, tweak the language of several passed bills that were bounced back to the legislature for technical reasons, and revisit some failed bills that the governor expressed a desire to see make it into law this year.
First and foremost is the budget, which lawmakers said has to be approved by July 1.
“We are going to attempt to balance the state budget. It has been a very interesting puzzle based on all the moving pieces with the federal stimulus dollars and our tax revenues,” Sen. Mike Oliverio, D-Monongalia, said.
“I am anxious about the state’s financial condition; I guess I have some cautious optimism,” he added. “We appear to be holding up better than many areas of the country but there is still a lot to happen regarding the economy.”
Delegate Linda Longstreth, D-Marion, said the budget is the “biggest issue” for the upcoming session. And Delegate Tim Manchin, also D-Marion, explained the process by which it will be approved.
In an effort to make the session move along as quickly as possible, he said members of the House will likely try to suspend the rules of reading the budget three times and forward it right to the floor so they can start working their version out with the Senate’s version.
And once both parties are satisfied, it will be forwarded to the governor for final approval.
Manchin said the budget the legislature will be working with during this session is about 4 percent, or $200 million, less than what was originally proposed this year. But as compared to last year, it is closer to 3 percent less.
Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, expects that the budget will be passed by the House and Senate within two to three days but could take until Saturday or Sunday. Then immediately after that, he said the Legislature will jump into the special session and begin tackling the bills.
Oliverio said there are about eight or 10 bills that were vetoed for technical problems and four or five that are being looked at again.
Manchin said one of the bills that was vetoed was actually a bill clarifying the residency requirements for county commission candidates. He said it was vetoed because there was a piece of incorrect code left inside of it, but he does not anticipate any problems with its official passage after it is corrected.
“I expect it to be among the bills that are corrected and (approved),” he said.
As for the bills that will be revisited, nearly all of the local lawmakers mentioned a bill dealing with post-mine land use.
Manchin explained that this bill, which basically puts more requirements on the usage of land following coal-mining efforts, is a positive initiative.
“I think it needs to be passed and adopted and enforced,” he said. “We have some legislation out there with some requirements but this will be a better bill with some teeth.
Another bill mentioned by Manchin that is on the agenda to come up during this session is a bill dealing with proposing a tax on the construction of electrical transmission lines.
With the TrAIL project set to run through parts of West Virginia, Manchin said this legislation would help state citizens who are being affected by its construction.
Caputo, Manchin and Oliverio also talked about several education-related bills that are set to come back up this session.
Caputo said one of them deals with the school calendar, which was an issue during the regular session because of concerns brought up with teachers’ contracts.
He said that the education committee chairs in both the House and Senate have been trying to come up with a compromise to ensure that students have 180 days of instruction time without detrimentally affecting the teachers.
Manchin said he thinks the House came up with a decent proposal regarding this issue before the regular session ended, and he expects that a final compromise will be reached.
Oliverio said there is also a bill set to be looked at that will help struggling third- and fourth-grade students get back up to par with their peers through a summer instruction program that would be positive.
Lawmakers also mentioned a bill dealing with the implementation of school innovation zones.
“There are a lot of things going on the world of education, and we are going to take a look at implementing them on a piecemeal basis,” Manchin said.
There are also some bills in the health-care field that will be looked at, which deal with subjects like mental health benefits and autism medical savings, lawmakers said.
In any case, Prezioso said said the goal of the legislators this session is to tackle these issues as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
“We are ready to get to work. We want to get down there and get out of there as fast as we can so we do not cost the state a lot of money,” he said. “It’s a necessary evil that we have to get done.”
E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.
