Legislature approves WVU-P bill

Lawmakers look back on 2008 session

By DAVE PAYNE Sr., dpayne@newsandsentinel.com
CHARLESTON — Political maneuvering continued until the late minutes of the West Virginia Legislature’s 60-day session, which ended at midnight Saturday.

One issue which drew a lot of local concern was a bill that will sever administrative ties between the state’s colleges and the community and technical colleges which work with them, including West Virginia University and West Virginia University at Parkersburg.

Despite concerns from local officials and legislators and efforts to exclude WVU-P from the bill during the final days of the legislative session, it received final approval Saturday night and will be sent to Gov. Joe Manchin to be signed.

Manchin said Saturday night he wanted to assure local residents and officials that the bill will not have the negative impact they have feared by permanently cutting ties between WVU and the local regional campus. The amendments in the bill specifically allow the two schools to continue their relationship on a contractual basis, he said.

Manchin said he had been in contact with WVU president Mike Garrison and WVU-P president Marie Foster Gnage and assured both that the language of the bill allows the relationship to continue as long as both schools wish it to continue.

“Nothing will change in the contractual agreement between the university and the local college,” Manchin said.

“I want to put people’s fears to rest,” he said.

The two schools were joined through legislative action in 1989, making the former Parkersburg Community College a regional campus of WVU. Once the bill goes into effect July 1, the legislative connection between the schools will end but Manchin said he believes that is plenty of time to put into place a contractual agreement between the two schools that will be beneficial to both.

“I think it will help WVU-P continue to grow,” Manchin said.

The bill began in the House of Delegates as a measure to sever administrative ties between Shepherd University and Blue Ridge Community and Technical College. A last-minute amendment to the bill in the state Senate, however, would have a similar effect on all state colleges, including WVU and WVU-P.

“When we (the House) passed that bill,” Del. Dan Poling, D-Wood, said, “it was 21 pages and broke the link between Blue Ridge and Shepherd University. It went to the Senate and gets a 102-page amendment added to it that breaks the link between all the schools in the state.”

State Sen. Frank Deem, R-Wood, and state Sen. Donna Boley, R-Pleasants, were among those fighting the bill in the Senate. Deem proposed his own amendment, but it was voted down by a close vote.

“We don’t want to sever that relationship,” Boley said Saturday afternoon. “Students like having the WVU degrees. In the last eight years, every year, out of the backroom in the Senate Education Committee something comes out at the last minute that attacks some college and stirs up the whole educational community. We need to leave higher education alone for a few years and let people work with what we’ve got,” she said.

Deem said he talked to Manchin and others about the bill and “we’ve been assured it won’t do much harm, but I still don’t intend to vote for it. We’d just like to be left alone,” Deem said Saturday afternoon.

Despite the session-ending excitement regarding the college issue, the local legislators said the 2008 session in general has been slower and quieter than previous years.

Delegate John Ellem, R-Wood, said with 2008 being an election year, the session lacked some of the controversy of previous years.

“I thought it was a little slower than previous years, but we’ve done some stuff on important issues, such as tax bills going through for businesses to help retain business in the state. I would have liked to have seen an increase in the homestead exemption, something to help with people’s property taxes. We did have a fairly decent DUI bill that is passing that creates an enhanced DUI offense, but took away mandatory jail time for first offense. That will help with the regional jail cost,” Ellem said.

Wood County Commissioner Bob Tebay said he believes the DUI bill will save counties money.

“That’s probably going to save a lot of money. It probably costs (the county) $25 in gas each way, plus you’ve got to pay the officer transporting the offender, so you’re talking at least $100 just to get them to the jail and you’ve got to bring them back. Then, you (the counties) get billed for a day in jail,” Tebay said.

Deem also said this has been a slow session compared to other years.

“This has been one of the slowest sessions I’ve ever attended. It’s an election year, so it’s an off year down here. The governor doesn’t have any big programs that he’s pushing, he’s got a 70 percent approval rating and doesn’t want to get involved in anything too controversial. We’ve had some reductions in business taxes. We hope that will attract new business to West Virginia. We are (taxing) higher than surrounding states and that has kept businesses from locating in West Virginia,” he said.

For Poling, this session was a chance to gain valuable experience to learn more about the lawmaking system in Charleston as well as how to work that system. Poling was appointed by Manchin last year to fill the seat left vacant by J.D. Beane.

“The beauty of it is you have thousands of people come into this capital every day. There’s 100 delegates, 34 senators, hundreds of registered lobbyists. It’s a living, breathing, thing down here. Every session, you get a few major bills, but for the most part, it’s little tweaks here and there to make government more efficient. You learn something every day, you learn how the committee process works and how to work that process. You find out what is good for people in Wood County and try to help those bills along, find out what is not good for people in Wood County and try to stop that. The way things move here, it can come from either side, you take a good bill, it goes to the Senate, gets an amendment added and suddenly it’s a bad bill,” Poling said.

One of the issues being hammered out in the final hours of the session was a proposed raise for teachers and a compromise proposal to help those with ailing 401(k)-style retirement accounts. Deem said in the late 1990s, the Legislature put newly-hired teachers into those retirement plans, then switched back to the previous plan in 2005.

“That was a bad situation and the legislature forced them into that plan,” he said.

During the session, the Legislature passed the “Castle Doctrine” bill, which would protect residents who use deadly force against attackers or intruders from liability and eliminated the hotly-debated Tier 2.5 clean-water stream classification.

In the interim between sessions, the West Virginia Supreme Court will studying the effects of bail bonds, Ellem said.

“We need to see how many people are sitting in jail because they can’t make bond and try to get a grip on that,” Ellem said.

Staff writer Wayne Towner also contributed to this article.