By Lawrence Messina
CHARLESTON — West Virginia cities with cash-strapped pension funds could be in store for some relief when the Legislature heads to the Capitol next week.
Gov. Joe Manchin issued a call Friday for a special session to coincide with the previously scheduled three-day series of monthly interim meetings that starts Tuesday.
The governor’s agenda details eight proposed bills. Its more substantive items include a long-debated plan to help ease funding shortfalls in municipal police and fire pension programs.
Negotiated over the summer, the measure would allow municipalities to enroll new hires in a state-managed retirement program. That would freeze their current plans, some of which suffer from massive gaps between assets and the retirement benefits they’ve promised their police officers and firefighters.
The proposal has been dubbed the “Huntington Plan,” as that city has some of the worst unfunded liabilities and has pursued legislative relief. Manchin had held off convening a special session until enough lawmakers appeared supportive of the measure.
Senate Pensions Chairman Dan Foster said he believes that threshold has been reached, after negotiators dropped a provision that would have rerouted tax revenues to aid ailing funds.
“It’s looking good,” said Foster, D-Kanawha, who helped lead the summer talks.
Another agenda item would offer short-term relief to county school boards concerned about their retirees’ non-pension costs. At least half the state’s 55 boards have considered suing over the way they must now account for “other post-employment benefit” or OPEB liabilities.
The costs are largely health coverage. Public Employees Insurance Agency Director Ted Cheatham said the proposal would require these public employers to pay only the cost of providing these benefits to current retirees. This temporary measure, which affects only the ongoing budget year, will give a special committee more time to resolve the dispute, Cheatham said.
Other measures would allow local governments to issue development bonds under a provision of the federal stimulus, and set a range for a part of the state tax on motor fuels that changes annually with wholesale prices.
That item would also give the road fund an estimated $25 million from a special reserve fund that had been created to offset gas tax revenue shortfalls.
House Minority Leader Tim Armstead, R-Kanawha, said his caucus would likely support that transfer. But he also said GOP members would have a concern with any provisions that extend what was supposed to be a temporary, nickel-a-gallon hike to the gas tax.
“The fact that we’ve had to go back and forth on this gas tax underscores what Republicans have been saying for some time,” Armstead said Friday. “We should try to look at revising the way we arrive at (highways) funding.”
Military absentee voting, gubernatorial pardons, a recently adopted alternative energy credit and federal tax law changes are also agenda topics. As possible supplemental funding measure discussed during October interims would add $2.5 million to a Medicaid program that aims to keep disabled West Virginians in their homes and out of institutions.
Manchin included a resolution honoring U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd as the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history. The West Virginia Democrat reaches that milestone on Wednesday, and turns 92 two days later.
Armstead has asked that lawmakers consider a resolution expressing support for the coal industry, in the face of stepped-up scrutiny by Obama administration regulators. Many of the Legislature’s Democratic leaders called for a united pro-coal front following a closed-door session with industry executives and lobbyists at the governor’s mansion earlier in the week.
