Thursday marked day 30, the halfway mark of the 60-day annual legislative session. It’s all downhill from now to midnight on Saturday, March 14, when the regular session adjourns sine die.

At the beginning of the session, I had a hard time predicting whether this session would be a flurry of action or be slow, but it appears slow and steady wins the race. That’s not terribly surprising given that this is a midterm election year. Lawmakers want to do enough to look like they’re doing something, while also not doing things to avoid rocking the boat.

The House of Delegates has mostly stuck with what they said they would do: a focus on one-hitter economic developments bills. Taken individually, the bills are not necessarily all that exciting. But as a package, I think they’re pretty good and will send good messages, both outside of the state and to our in-state small businesses.

The fact that Senate Bill 1, the Small Business Growth Act, could be the first bill to land on Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s desk later this week if the Senate agrees to the changes the House made to the bill, is a sign that lawmakers are seriously taking to improving the economy, which has polled well over the years.

The fact that a Senate bill could be the first bill to complete the legislative process is even more amazing given the focus the Senate has had on bills many believe to be nonsense. One of those bills passed last week is Senate Bill 531, creating the weirdly named First Amendment Preservation Act.

While it claims to be fighting back against viewpoint discrimination by certain media monitoring organizations that rank certain conservative media outlets poorly, in reality, it likely violates the First Amendment by requiring state agencies to not use advertising companies that contract with NewsGuard to determine the best media outlets to place state advertising dollars.

President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission has been harassing NewsGuard, egged on by conservative media outlet Newsmax, because NewsGuard ranks Newsmax poorly, even though other conservative-leaning news outlets, such as Fox News, rank higher for factual accuracy and trustworthiness.

Fact of the matter is Fox News also has more eyeballs watching it than Newsmax, so even if you’re using a media monitoring service to determine where to place state Department of Tourism ads based on viewership, Newsmax would still not get those state ad dollars. So, what’s the point? The point is to use the levers of state government to use pressure to force a company, NewsGuard, to alter its First Amendment rights to benefit the politics of the GOP supermajority.

That’s not very Republican or conservative. But as we all know, those things don’t mean what they used to me even a decade ago.

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While the House has continued to be the adults under the golden dome, that doesn’t mean there are not instances of distractions in that body. The near-annual fight over whether to require certain small businesses under a certain number of employees to participate in E-Verify to ensure their new hires are not illegal immigrants wound up taking nearly two hours and stressful floor debate back-and-forths.

Another issue, over whether to make it clear in State Code to make bestiality illegal in a bill upping certain animal cruelty penalties, resulted in House Judiciary Committee Chairman J.B. Akers, R-Kanawha, offering his own anti-bestiality amendment simply to one-up an anti-bestiality amendment offered by House Minority Leader Pro-Tempore Kayla Young, D-Kanawha.

Akers made it clear he didn’t think any amendment was needed, believing bestiality could be combatted by existing animal cruelty laws even without a specific prohibition. He was disgusted that anyone would engage in bestiality, but also annoyed that the Young amendment was offered in the first place, disparaging the need for the amendment for nearly eight minutes. Young, to her credit, simply asked for her amendment to not be considered and joined Akers’ amendment as a co-sponsor.

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Gov. Morrisey continues to exert pressure through public appearances, interviews and social media to get the Legislature to consider his bill for a 5% personal income tax cut (returning $125 million to taxpayers when fully implemented) and for the Legislature to get its own hands dirty and make budget cuts for an additional 5% personal income tax cut to give him the full 10% personal income tax cut he wants.

Is that pressure working? As we pointed out last week, Morrisey and his allies (i.e. Americans for Prosperity) have recruited GOP primary opponents to certain Republican lawmakers they believe to be hindrances to their agenda (all while needing their assistance and votes this session). Other pro-Morrisey groups, such as Black Bear PAC, have a war chest to use against GOP lawmakers who don’t go along.

But again, is that pressure working? All signs point to no. While most Republican lawmakers want to phase out the personal income tax, none want to do it faster than the growth of the state’s economy. That was the whole point of the personal income tax trigger mechanism passed a few years ago. While Ohio and Kentucky have lowered their flat personal income tax rates, their economies are also more robust than ours at the moment.

Also, the general public has now had a couple of years to review the 21.25% personal income tax cut passed in 2023 and the 4% cut (made possible through the trigger formula) and the 2% cut (made possible through the October 2024 special session) to see how those cuts benefited them. The effects were negligible. Sure, they got some money back in their pockets, but in such small amounts to not really be noticed.

You’d also be surprised to know that the business community also has concerns about cutting personal income tax rates faster than economic growth. Sure, the state has around $500 million in its personal income tax reserve fund set aside in case the state cuts taxes too fast and there is an economic downturn that hurts the general revenue fund. But businesses also believe that if personal income tax collections falter, the governor or Legislature could raise business taxes to compensate.

It is apparent Morrisey wants to do more budget cutting, but he doesn’t want all the blood to be on his hands. However, this is a part-time Legislature that now has 27 days to move hundreds of bills, including the budget bill (which they have a constitutional mandate to do). If the general revenue budget can absorb a full 10% personal income tax cut, he needs to explain how.