CHARLESTON — West Virginia’s Legislature has less than a week to decide the fate of proposals targeting abortion, corporate political spending and prescription drug abuse.
Other surviving measures that caught fire during the regular session would change who can perform laser eye surgery, and bolster the state’s substance abuse treatment programs.
The bulk of Gov. Joe Manchin’s agenda also remains pending. Among other topics, he’s asked lawmakers to allow for more toll roads, bring state vehicles under a central agency’s oversight, hand more power to cities and offer public funds to 2012’s Supreme Court candidates.
As they count down to Saturday’s midnight finale, the House and Senate have sent only a dozen bills to the governor since the session began Jan. 13. More than 300 others remain in play following Wednesday’s deadline for legislation to cross over from one chamber to the other.
Given the still-fragile economy, few if any of these propose major changes to taxes, spending or public policy. Senate Finance Chairman Walt Helmick said he and his committee intend to keep it that way as they sift through House-passed bills this week.
Besides recession-weakened tax revenues, the state also faces huge funding shortfalls in key benefits programs. Investment losses from Wall Street’s meltdown worsened the already massive liability in public pensions, to around $7 billion by mid-2009. The session will also end without any measures addressing an even larger funding gap for non-pension retiree benefits, mostly health coverage.
“We’ve been very conscious, the entire Senate has, of the debt that we’ve got. We don’t want to grow that debt,” said Helmick, D-Pocahontas. “We’ve been very careful not to pass any legislation, or at least very little legislation, that would encumber the state any further.”
Bills headed toward that tightfisted stance include one increasing the ranks of substance abuse treatment centers. While supporters considered a beer tax hike and a Medicaid reserve to fund it, the latest version instead relies on any available revenue sources.
“If you can live with one approach, that’s the approach you could take,” Helmick said of that bill. “We don’t have a source of revenue, and there’s not going to be one generated here in the Senate.”
The tight economic times have also helped prompt opposition to Manchin’s public financing pilot program for Supreme Court races. As passed by the House, it would raise needed funds through fees charged to lawyers and on court filings. Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeff Kessler expects his committee to raise questions about that bill as well as a pair of measures targeting election ad spending.
One of those would require shareholder approval and reporting for political spending by in-state corporations. The other attempts, for a third time in recent years, to require disclosures of third party election-related advertising.
Kessler, D-Marshall, also cited Manchin’s proposal that would ask voters to amend the constitution to allow counties to exempt at least some business inventory and equipment from property taxes.
“That’s got a lot of folks in education, in the unions and in the counties very nervous and concerned,” Kessler said, noting that those taxes provide for both schools and local governments.
Thorny issues confronting the House this week include one defining when doctors must offer a view of ultrasound images of the fetus to women seeking abortions. Another would expand eye-related procedures performed by optometrists, pitting them against ophthalmologists for much of the session.
The House Health and Human Resources Committee has both bills, along with a package of measures that aim to crack down on prescription drug abuse.
Though the regular session ends March 13, Manchin is expected to keep the Legislature in Charleston for about a week longer for the new budget. Taking effect July 1, the governor has shrunk the proposed spending plan by around 2 percent when compared to this year’s.
