With just hours left in the regular session of the West Virginia Legislature -- it ends at midnight -- the focus is on approving a state budget for the coming year. That means any number of other important measures will fall through the proverbial cracks.
Some of that is by design. One technique used by some politicians is to introduce bills late in the session, or stall action on them until only a few days are left and other business takes precedence. Experienced practitioners will allow one chamber of the Legislature to approve a bill, then ensure that, at the last minute, the other chamber votes in favor of it only with a minor amendment. Any change requires that the bill be sent back to the chamber that first approved it, for another vote on the amended bill.
That can kill a proposal as certainly as if most legislators voted against it -- but the technique allows lawmakers to claim that, well, they supported Bill X, but there just wasn't enough time to enact it.
More often, however, the crush of action during the Legislature's last few days really does make it impossible to get everything done. It happens every year.
We ask area state senators and delegates, then, to keep their eyes open for important bill on which the clock is about to run out, and endeavor to expedite work on them. "We just didn't have enough time" is a lousy excuse for letting West Virginians down, after all.