CHARLESTON – The West Virginia Legislature managed to end its 2024 legislative session with a budget for the next fiscal year after the House of Delegates agreed to a compromise on the state Senate’s bill changing the structure of unemployment benefits. Plus, some bills important to social conservatives made it across the finish line while others were left in limbo on Day 60.

GETTING THE JOB DONE

The House and Senate Republican caucuses met Saturday morning through early afternoon in a combined meeting to hash out a compromise on Senate Bill 841, making changes to the amount of number of weeks of unemployment benefits. The bill passed the House in a 66-31 vote.

SB 841, as it came over from the Senate, would have increased the dollar amount of weekly benefits for the first four weeks of unemployment, dropping the dollar amount every four weeks thereafter.

Instead, the House amended the bill Saturday evening to freeze the taxable wages that are taxable to employers at the approximate current amount of $9,500. The amendment conforms the maximum weekly benefit rate to the current maximum weekly benefit rate of $662. It keeps the maximum number of weeks of unemployment benefits to 26 weeks. And the bill would go into effect on July 1, 2024, instead of Jan. 1, 2025.

The bill continues to allow an individual on unemployment to accept a part-time job while collecting unemployment as long as their part-time wages are less than their weekly unemployment benefit. It also requires a unemployment recipients to show a minimum of four weekly work search activities out of a possible 10 activities.

The bill includes a new requirement for employers to report the refusal of any recipient of unemployment benefits to accept an offer of employment through a job referral from Workforce West Virginia to the commissioner of Workforce West Virginia. It also requires employers to report those that accept employment through Workforce West Virginia referrals who leave or are dismissed from employment after six weeks.

“This bill keeps the weeks the same,” said Del. Clay Riley, R-Harrison, the co-sponsor of the amendment. “It keeps the threshold the same for our employers so you’re not raising taxes. It keeps the average salary the same … and it keeps the weekly benefits the same as the people are receiving now.”

The House had parked the bill Friday on its inactive calendar in response to pressure from the Senate to take up the bill. But after Saturday’s joint caucus, the House Rules Committee put the bill back on the active calendar.

Del. Evan Worrell, R-Cabell, raised concerns about the claims of some supporters that the bill is needed to shore up the state’s unemployment trust fund long-term. The fund currently sits at $390 million and even with an unemployment rate of 4.3% the fund would only be depleted by more than $20 million by 2028 according to data provided by Riley.

“We don’t have a problem; there’s nothing that needs fixed here,” Worrell said. “We’ve heard of projections and how this fund is going to drop, but that is not true … I’ll always advocate for good policy, but this is not it.”

“Here we are, just year-in and year-out finding ways to chip away at who actually built this state: the blue-collar worker,” said House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio. “The same people will say ‘you should just pull yourselves up by the bootstraps,’ while at the same time taking away the bootstraps.”

While the bill passed, opposition to the bill was bipartisan. But some members decided to support the bill despite reservations.

“As far as improving West Virginia’s workforce participation, this bill reminds me of a three-day-old fish. It stinks,” said Del. Larry Kump, R-Berkeley. “Nevertheless, and in the short-term, while this legislation doesn’t do much, I don’t think in the short-term it does any harm but it might do a little good. So, I’m going to hold my nose and tremble and vote yes.”

State senators concurred with the House changes to SB 841 in a 24-7 vote Saturday night. State Sen. Eric Nelson, R-Kanawha, urged support for the compromise, while state Sen. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, urged caution.

“We’re stabilizing this,” Nelson said of the state unemployment trust fund. “(The bill is) there for the stability of the fund. It’s there for the certainty of those that are unfortunate and lose a job. And then it’s there for the predictability for our employers.”

“Workers have a lot of pride, and nobody wants to be laid off. They want to work,” Caputo said. “Let’s make sure these benefits are there for them when that unfortunate circumstance happens to that family. Let’s slow this bill down. I know it’s going to pass, but I just got to say that I think it’s a horrible, horrible idea to move so quickly on a piece of legislation that could affect so many lives in the state that we love.”

MONEY MANAGEMENT

As a result of unparking and passing SB 841, the Senate passed a clean version of House Bill 4880, relating to the personal income tax Social Security exemption, passing the bill in a 32-0 vote Saturday night.

The bill would phase out the remaining income tax collections on Social Security benefits for single filers earning more than $50,000 and joint filers earning more than $100,000. The phase-out would be retroactive to Jan. 1, reducing taxes by 35% this tax year and 65% in tax year 2025, with the tax phased out completely in tax year 2026.

The Senate Finance Committee had amended HB 4880 to tie the reductions to whether there is a reduction in personal income tax rates in calendar year 2025 depending on tax revenues after this fiscal year. If a trigger meets the 10% threshold, there would be no reduction of income taxes on Social Security benefits. But if the state doesn’t meet the trigger, then income taxes on those remaining Social Security beneficiaries would be completely eliminated. But the Senate restored the bill to the House version.

The Senate passed HB 4883, providing teachers, school service personnel, and employees of the West Virginia State Police a 5% pay raise at a cost of more than $80 million. The bill passed the Senate in a 32-2 vote. The Senate Finance Committee pulled an amendment that would have reduced the pay raise to 4% and tied it to whether there was a personal income tax reduction.

The compromise paved the way for lawmakers to consider the Senate Bill 200, the budget bill. The Senate amended the bill to include a compromise between the House and Senate, setting the general revenue budget for fiscal year 2025 beginning in July at $4.996 billion. The bill passed the Senate in a 31-0 vote, and passed the House in a 73-25 vote.

“I think the way the two finance chairs have crafted this budget, I think it is responsible for where we are in the process,” said House Majority Whip Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson.

The amended general revenue total in SB 200 is 5% less than Gov. Jim Justice’s introduced budget of $5.265 billion, 1% more than the Senate’s original version of the budget of $4.934 billion, and a 1% decrease from the House’s version of the budget of $5.002 billion. SB 200 includes a 5% pay raise for state employees paid through the general revenue budget.

One bill that never made it out of the session was House Bill 4734, which would have provided a bonus of $6,000 for non-uniformed employees of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation with more than three years of employment, and a $3,000 sign-on bonus for new DCR non-uniformed staff. The House passed the bill but it was never considered in the Senate.

Lawmakers still expect to have a special session in May to restore some expenditures for the fiscal year 2025 budget – including items often placed in the surplus section of the budget if there is available surplus at the end of the current fiscal year in June – once the state has received word that the U.S. Department of Education grants a waiver request for complying with department rules government the use of federal COVID-19 dollars.

The Legislature passed several bills – including the pay raise for teachers and a $150 million expenditure for the School Building Authority – to help meet a spending gap of $465 million the U.S. Department of Education requires to maintain use of some of the remaining $1.1 billion the state received during COVID.

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, told the House that once the waiver is in hand, lawmakers can begin to restore various budget line items in the special session. He expects the state to end the fiscal year with just short of $800 million in surplus collections.

“We’re still working with a shortened situation because of the federal situation,” Criss said. “The Governor, as far as I know, has not received the letter that he’s looking for for that problem to be satisfied…we’ll have another two-and-a-half months of revenues in front of us and take these items and adjust them upward.”

“It’s my hope when we return in May we’ll be able to revisit these areas,” Espinosa said.

RED STATE PRIORITIES

Senate Bill 280, allowing teachers in public schools to discuss scientific theories, passed the House in an 89-9 vote. The bill prevents county school boards, superintendents, or principals from prohibiting teachers from responding to student questions about scientific theories of how the universe began or how life came to exist. The Senate concurred with the House amendments in a 29-1 vote.

“We shouldn’t be afraid for our kids to engage in discussion,” said Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh. “Because the moment that we stop letting people engage in the discussion about this stuff, we start telling them what to think.”

“There are so many things that could be done without any ability to stop a teacher from saying things to impressionable youth,” said Del. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, who opposed the bill. “I’ve heard arguments often in this body about how we want to protect youth. Well, how about this? How did life come to exist? Does this provide for a teacher without any restrictions to have the sex talk with kindergartners? That’s the question. That’s the way I read it without impunity.”

House Bill 5105, eliminating the vaccine requirements for public virtual schools, passed the Senate in a 20-12 vote, but not without Senate Health and Human Resources Committee Chairman Mike Maroney, R-Marshall, speaking against the bill.

“It’s a bad bill for West Virginia. It’s a step backwards. There’s no question. There will be negative effects to families, to children, to immunocompromised adults, not to mention the cost,” Maroney said. “What we’re about to do to the kids, to the adults of West Virginia, it’s an embarrassment for me to be a part of it. It should be an embarrassment for everybody. Time will tell.”

The bill would eliminate vaccine requirements for school students for those participating in one of the two statewide virtual public schools or future county-level virtual public charter schools except when those students are participating in activities supervised by the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission.

HB 5105 would continue to require immunizations for virtual school students if they are also participating in in-person school programs. It also expands vaccine exemptions to students attending private or parochial schools in the state, while allowing those schools to set their own vaccination requirements.

One bill that died in the final hours was both the House and Senate versions of the Women’s Bill of Rights.

The Senate Judiciary Committee revived House Bill 5243 Saturday evening in a quick committee vote, amending it to put in the Senate version of the bill. The committee heared brief testimony from a lobbyist from the Independent Women’s Forum, the group supporting the bill. An attempt to hear rebutting testimony from West Virginia FREE, a reproductive rights advocacy group opposing the legislation, was rejected.

But the bill was never taken up by the full Senate, which would have needed to suspend constitutional rules requiring the bill to be read on three separate days. Senate Bill 601, which was in the House, was placed at the bottom of all remaining bills on third reading earlier Saturday and never made it to midnight.

The bill would have prohibited the unfair treatment of biological males and females and define sex-based terms in State Code for “woman,” “girl” and “mother” to refer to biological females except in cases of developmental and genetic anomalies or accidents.

Another bill that died Saturday was Senate Bill 741, prohibiting creation, production, distribution or possession of artificially generated child pornography. An amendment made to the bill by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week included the provisions of House Bill 4654 – lifting criminal liability exemptions from schools, public libraries, and museums from displaying obscene matter to a minor when the child is not accompanied by a parent/guardian.

BACK OF THE CLASS

Senate Bill 614, relating to elementary behavior intervention and safety, didn’t make it to Saturday’s midnight finish line.

The bill would have required students in kindergarten through sixth grade to be placed in a county behavioral intervention program for violent, threatening, or intimidating behavior toward staff and other students or partner with neighboring counties with such programs. Otherwise, students would be removed from the classroom following the incidents and suspended from school for the next one to three days while alternative learning accommodations are made.

HB 4851, allowing public and private school to employ security personnel, also died Saturday. Earlier Saturday, the House refused to concur with Senate changes to the bill. The Senate version allowed former military and private contractors to be security personnel in schools, while the House version allowed retired law enforcement to participate.

The House considered the Senate’s bill to be far broader than the House version, including broad training versus specific training.