Editor, News-Register:

While I appreciate the sentiments of The Intelligencer’s editorial board in its Aug. 16 editorial entitled “It’s Time for West Virginia To Get Into the Game,” as both a member of the House of Delegates and a physician, I’d like to respond to several of the points made in that article.

Referring to the entire Legislature as the reason the ball was dropped in advancing meaningful legislation focusing on economic development and improving our education system is a bad call. In Charleston, getting the ball across the goal line requires both sides of the Capitol. Throughout the entirety of this year’s legislative session, however, the House of Delegates was never in a position to play offense in the Backyard Brawl because it was too busy having to play defense instead.

Instead of focusing on legislation that could have improved educational outcomes for West Virginia’s students, Senate leadership chose to spend a significant amount of that chamber’s time trying to eliminate our state’s childhood immunization requirements for diseases such as polio and measles. Thankfully, those efforts, led by Wheeling’s own Sen. Laura Wakim Chapman, failed at a time when the U.S. is seeing a record high number of cases of the measles — cases that tragically included the deaths of several children from this once nearly eradicated disease.

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, instead of working on ways to continue our efforts at reforming our judicial system, a fair amount of that committee’s time was instead spent on attempting to create new ways to sue someone. These attempts (some of which were frustratingly passed by a majority of that committee) would have helped no one but the personal injury lawyers who have now found their latest niche — contributing tens of thousands of dollars to the campaigns of the far-right senators attempting to undo prior Republican-led efforts of tort reform.

Simply put, the West Virginia Legislature only gets 60 days a year to make changes that will improve the lives of all West Virginians. This year, however, we wasted those precious days on issues that affect nothing more than a small minority of the population while neglecting our state’s interests as a whole.

Prior to the current Senate leadership team, the leaders of both the House and Senate worked hand in hand to set an agenda and lead our chambers in passing bills that helped attract new job creators and expand existing businesses, support infrastructure improvements, provide our public education system with historic levels of investment, and give parents school choice options through the Hope Scholarship program. Our two legislative chambers worked together as a team — a team that created wins for everyone.

By working together to keep the pressure on the ball where it mattered most, those years saw West Virginia finally headed in the right direction. Our game plan included the largest tax cuts in state history, significant expansion of broadband internet, and some of the largest economic investments our state has ever seen.

It is my hope that in the 2026 legislative session, Senate leadership comes back together to form a winning team with the House and re-focuses its efforts on leading West Virginia with forward-looking, meaningful legislative efforts. Because without the strong offense we’ve had in years past, I’m afraid we won’t see more of what we’ve accomplished so much of in recent years: helping our families better afford a good quality of life, supporting current businesses so they can thrive and create more jobs, and celebrating ribbon cutting ceremonies across the state as new employers decide to make West Virginia their home.

Dr. Michael Amos

W.Va. Delegate, R-Wayne