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Crossover Day: West Virginia lawmakers work through bills on public information, child welfare, insurance

Lawmakers met Wednesday on Crossover Day, the 50th day of the 60-day legislative session ending at midnight on Saturday, April 12. (Photo courtesy of WV Legislative Photography)

CHARLESTON – Wednesday marked day 50 of the 60-day annual legislative session, with members of the West Virginia House of Delegates and state Senate passing dozens of bills to each other to meet the Crossover Day deadline.

Joint rules of the House and the Senate state that day 50 is the last day to consider bills on third reading in the house of origin not including the budget bill or other appropriations bills. That means House bills needed to be passed and sent to the Senate and vice versa prior to the close of the 2025 legislative session at midnight on Saturday, April 12.

The Senate passed 16 out of 17 Senate bills on its third reading agenda Wednesday, sending those bills to the House. One of the bills passed was Senate Bill 89, creating alternative high-risk population public charter schools. The bill passed in a 32-2 vote.

SB 89 would create alternative public charter schools specifically designed for high-risk students. These schools would need to demonstrate that at least 70% of their initial enrollment meets defined criteria for being high-risk, such as prior expulsions, suspensions, court involvement or homelessness. The bill requires the state Board of Education to establish rules for funding these specialized charter schools.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Amy Grady, R-Mason, said the concept is very similar to the Mountaineer ChalleNGe Academy operated by the West Virginia National Guard. She also said there are private schools across the country that offer similar programs for troubled children that are interested in coming to West Virginia.

“I think this is a good start to seeing if we can have some of these that work,” Grady said. “We have a Mountaineer ChalleNGe Academy in West Virginia right now. It is very successful. This could allow more of those to open up.”

State Sen. Craig Hart, R-Mingo, was a no vote on the bill. A teacher by trade, Hart raised concerns that foster students could be lumped into the high-risk category and be forced into these new charter schools.

“In my experience, these are the students that…not always, but quite often, they’re forgotten kids,” Hart said. “Lumping foster kids in with kids who have been expelled, suspended, dropped out…It seems like a good way to take a great kid and turn them into something other than a great kid.”

“These schools…are optional, meaning they’re choices for parents,” Grady explained. “If they would feel that their child fits into that high-risk population and the school, when it opens up, feels that that child fits into what they’re trying to accomplish, then they would be admitted into the school.”

The Senate also passed Senate Bill 944, creating the West Virginia Child First Advisory Committee, in a 34-0 vote. The bill creates a committee that will be administered by the Department of Human Services to evaluate the state’s children welfare system and recommend improvements.

“I honestly don’t know what the answers are to fix all these challenges, but I think this encapsulates an ability for us to try to get our arms around this problem in a way that actually provides permanent solutions,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha. “I’m just saying that we have a child welfare crisis in West Virginia. And I think this goes a long way for us to make a bold statement. All of us collectively.”

The House passed 22 House bills Wednesday, sending those bills to the Senate. One of those bills – House Bill 2015 – was amended Monday to extend the state’s moratorium on new property and liability insurance coverage through the state’s troubled Board of Risk and Insurance Management.

The bill, which passed in a 93-7 vote, originally extended the BRIM new coverage moratorium indefinitely, but an amendment adopted Wednesday extends the moratorium until July 1, 2026. BRIM paid out more than $500 million in claims in 2023 and 2024 on behalf of state departments, agencies, and non-profit organizations.

“The purpose of this bill is to keep the current moratorium in place…to allow us time to figure out exactly where we’re at with BRIM and what we need to do going forward,” said Deputy Speaker Matthew Rohrbach, R-Cabell. “Those would be the same reasons that we had a year ago when we put this moratorium in place. We’re just asking to extend it in its current posture for one more year.”

The House passed House Bill 3412, relating to exemptions from disclosure of certain records and exempting the legislative branch if it adopts its own rules, in a 58-42 vote.

HB 3412 would remove the Legislature from the list of definitions of public bodies included in the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The bill includes a legislative exemption that would go into effect once the House and state Senate adopt their own rules regarding disclosure of public documents or adopt joint rules governing the release of public documents.

Questions arose Wednesday about the need for the bill and why the Legislature should create its own rules on public documents instead of amending State Code to spell out what legislative documents should or should not be available to the public.

“My understanding, as it’s being presented, is our staff is overworked and maybe we need to narrow down the criteria here for what’s permissible,” said Del. Henry Dillon, R-Wayne. “I’m just not understanding why we need to do that through House rules. Why can’t we just do that through common code?”

“Because we govern ourselves,” said House Finance Committee Vice Chairman Clay Riley, R-Harrison. “The Legislature governs ourselves by our rules. That’s the way the (state) Constitution has it and that’s how we govern ourselves…It’s not unconstitutional to have it in code. It’s more appropriate to have it in our rules.”

“This is a place that has absolute accountability every day,” said Del. Tristan Leavitt, R-Kanawha. “We are as public and transparent as we could possibly be. And so regardless of what this law looks like, I think this is a good bill. I think this is a very useful change to be able to address the best allocation of our resources, because we all believe in transparency and that’s why we’re here.”

While the bill passed, it had a bipartisan group of House members opposing the bill.

“This bill is an absolute tragedy and disgusting and wrong,” said Del. Larry Kump, R-Berkeley. “Perhaps the best way I can say it is I do not like this bill. I do not like it. I do not like it at all. Foxes should not be guarding the henhouse. I think this bill should fail.”

“Putting this in rules defies the entire reason why we have a FOIA statute to begin with,” said House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio. “I don’t know what we’re planning to do here, but using the whole ‘just trust us’ model to the public is not one I’d like to follow…I can tell you my constituents do not want me to follow that.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com

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