CHARLESTON — West Virginia’s Legislature ended its special session Friday with tweaks to the gas tax and state energy policy among the final bills to pass.
Party-line debates and votes marked the House’s approval of both those measures. The Senate ended its work with unanimous passage of the energy-related bill, and of a funding measure that earmarks $27 million for the state’s secondary roads.
Lawmakers approved all but one of Gov. Joe Manchin’s 11 proposals during the four-day session. The House and Senate also endorsed one resolution honoring U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., as history’s longest-serving member of Congress, and another defending the state’s coal industry.
The coal measure reflects anxiety over increased federal scrutiny of mining practices, and the Capitol Hill debate over climate change legislation. The House’s minority Republicans invoked such concerns in opposing Manchin’s energy policy proposal, which passed 59-28.
The governor has set a 2025 goal of relying on alternative and renewable sources for 25 percent of the energy sold by West Virginia’s producers. The policy counts several forms of “clean coal” technology as alternative sources. The bill approved Friday aims to encourage high efficiency coal-burning power plant boilers, capping the credits for less-efficient types.
“The bill allows coal to be used more efficiently to meet our energy needs and is a step forward for energy independence and for our natural resources industries,” Manchin spokesman Matt Turner said Friday.
Manchin’s fuel tax bill, passed 64-23, limits the annual changes to that levy that are based on average wholesale prices. Raising the tax’s price floor from 97 cents per gallon to $2.34, the measure also sets a 10-percent range for any changes after 2010.
Republicans argued the bill would prevent the tax from dropping 1.7 cents per gallon Jan. 1, as currently projected. They also targeted the bill’s provision making permanent a nickel-a-gallon component of the tax. Adopted as a temporary measure in 1993, it has since been repeatedly extended and would otherwise expire in 2013.
West Virginia’s fuel taxes total 32.2 cents per gallon, ranking it 13th nationwide in figures compiled last month by the American Petroleum institute. Among its five neighbors, only Pennsylvania’s are higher.
Manchin and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature argued that Friday’s proposal makes more predictable this chief revenue source of the chronically strapped State Road Fund. West Virginia’s government maintains 92 percent of the roads found within the state’s borders, and is by that measure the sixth largest road system nationwide. The average for other states is 19 percent.
Other states holding autumn special sessions are largely wrestling with recession-blasted budgets. The key item on Manchin’s agenda, passed Thursday, helps municipal police and fire pension plans deal with massive funding shortfalls.
The governor’s other successful items include one allowing counties to sell up to $225 million in stimulus-related development bonds. A pair of funding measures distribute $28 million, with more than half that benefiting state Medicaid programs.
The sole failed bill offered a temporary reprieve from the way the state’s public employers account for the cost of retiree health coverage. County school boards in particular are struggling with the reporting rules for these “other post-employment benefits.”
West Virginia
Tweaks to the gas tax, state energy policy among final bills to pass
- West Virginia
-
-
Man gets life sentence for ex-wife’s death
A man was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in the beating death of his ex-wife.
Thomas Charlie Lee Runner, 46, of Galloway, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder Wednesday at the Barbour County Courthouse in Philippi. -
State campaign finance limits challenged in court
A political group formed to aid West Virginia incumbents this November won a partial victory Thursday after suing over the state’s limits on campaign contributions and a policy addressing corporate spending.
-
Relatives other than parents raising kids
Sharon Davis jumped in and obtained custody of her young grandson when her daughter got tangled in a web of drugs. A decade later, her daughter is straightened out and now has her own little girl, while her son remains with Davis.
-
Project aims to get West Virginians active
A new wellness project aims to motivate West Virginians to get off their couches and be healthy.
LiveWell West Virginia is a collaboration of the West Virginia University Extension Service and the Charleston Gazette. -
Missing girl’s mother gets eight months for welfare fraud
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the mother of a 3-year-old girl who vanished eight months ago this week to spend eight months behind bars for welfare fraud.
U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey ruled that Lena Lunsford must begin serving her sentence June 28. -
West Virginia seventh in death rates for accidents, violence
Drug overdoses and motor vehicle crashes helped push West Virginia’s death rate involving accidents and violence to the seventh-highest in the nation, according to a report on injury prevention released Tuesday.
-
W.Va. could add hurdles to primary ballot
West Virginia officials have several options if they want to avoid repeating an outcome of this month’s primary election, when imprisoned felon Keith Judd attracted nearly 41 percent of the vote against President Barack Obama.
-
W.Va. could add hurdles to primary ballot
West Virginia officials have several options if they want to avoid a repeat outcome of this month’s primary election, when imprisoned felon Keith Judd attracted nearly 41 percent of the vote against President Barack Obama.
-
Computers used to grade WESTEST essays
Thousands of essays written by West Virginia students are largely going unread by human eyes.
-
West Virginia coal mining employment at high level
State figures show that coal mining employment in West Virginia is at its highest level since the 1990s.
The Charleston Gazette says a recent analysis of Workforce West Virginia figures by Ted Boettner with the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy shows there were nearly 22,700 mining jobs in 2011. - More West Virginia Headlines
-
Man gets life sentence for ex-wife’s death
