On Wednesday, I will begin my 15th year involved with the start of the West Virginia Legislature’s regular 60-day session.

I moved to Charleston during a snowy January in 2010 a week before the start of that session. I had just started one year prior a news website on behalf of a libertarian think tank focused on government transparency and accountability called West Virginia Watchdog. This was a good 13 years before non-profit-funded journalism would become cool.

As a print and radio news reporter in the Mid-Ohio Valley in the mid-2000s, I followed West Virginia politics and wrote blogs about the goings-on in Charleston, but I had only paid attention to the legislative session from afar. When I moved to Charleston for the 2010 session, it was supposed to be a temporary assignment.

Yet, 15 years later I’m still here. Once considered controversial for the now-tame act of covering news for an organization funded by grants, I now cover the statehouse for this fine family-owned newspaper company for the last seven years. When once I couldn’t find space in the Capitol Press Room to work, I now enjoy my own private office as the last of the full-time reporters working from this space year-round.

I have 10 years of experience covering the legislative session as a reporter and TV news producer, plus another four years working for the state Senate as a communications specialist, and 1 1/2 years working with lawmakers when I was the press secretary of the Secretary of State’s Office. My wife I were married in June 2016 in front of the Senate Chamber.

In short, the annual legislative session is my Super Bowl. This is what I gear up for every year, covering the lawmakers, the bills, the debates, the lobbyists jockeying for their clients, the usual cast of advocates and staff and weirdos who all call the golden dome home for 60 days each year.

But this session will be somewhat different. There are a lot of new faces in the House and state Senate. In fact, on the Senate-side the entire leadership is brand new. Almost everyone I had a relationship with as a reporter has been backbenched. While much of the leadership on the House-side is the same, the revamped committee and bill process is brand new to me and everyone.

I feel almost like it’s 2010 all over again and I’m a new reporter coming into a building I had never entered before, knowing no one and not even knowing where to go. That first week in 2010, I got lost and took a neat-looking glass elevator to the ground floor. I did not know this was the governor’s elevator, which goes directly to the Governor’s Office. I exited the elevator right in the middle of an event going on in the Governor’s Reception Room (Joe Manchin was the governor then).

Everything feels brand new. We have a new governor in Patrick Morrisey, who I expect to be as active with lawmakers as Manchin was during his tenure as governor. He is going to have a lot of bills and a budget to propose. We have new Board of Public Works members who are also going to have their own agendas. And with so many new lawmakers, it remains to be seen what directions the Legislature will go.

I am buoyed by hope, however. I know I’ll get my sea legs and provide you the legislative coverage you’ve come to expect over the last nearly seven years. We have a good group of statehouse reporters from multiple outlets who will be setting up this week and for the next nine weeks. And I encourage you to read, watch, and listen to all of us, as sometimes that’s the only way to get the complete picture about what is happening during the session.

So, with all of that said, here’s to year 15 of being under the golden dome.

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The one question I keep getting regarding Gov. Morrisey’s claim that the state faces a $400 million hole in the fiscal year 2026 general revenue budget is what does former Department of Revenue Secretary Larry Pack think?

Pack, who is now State Treasurer, was an advisor to former Gov. Jim Justice before Justice appointed him to replace former Revenue secretary Dave Hardy. It was Pack’s Department of Revenue that began work on the fiscal year 2026 budget to hand off to Morrisey when he took office Jan. 13.

Before heading out the door last year, I asked Justice whether there would be a hole in the fiscal year 2026 budget, and he told me no. I got to ask Pack about the differences between what Justice said and what Morrisey claims.

“Everybody’s got different definitions of wants and needs,” Pack said. “And I’m not surprised that out of almost a $6 billion budget, that there’s about a $400 million difference between what we believed and when those numbers were reconciled.”

As I said before, I don’t think Justice lied to me. I just think the way Justice went about creating budgets is different than how Morrisey’s team is crafting the budget now. Pack said he is looking forward to seeing what kind of budget bill Morrisey will present to lawmakers Wednesday.

“I’m a little bit of a budget nerd, so I probably look forward to it a little bit more than most people,” Pack said. “I think it’s going to meet the needs of the state. I’m very confident about Gov. Morrisey and his administration and the successes they’ll bring to West Virginia.”