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Welcome to the legislature.

Today I'm Maria young.

We are a little over one third of the way through the 60 day legislative session.

More bills are moving through the committee now and on to the chamber floors.

Tuesday was Marshall University Day at the Capitol.

Among the attendee were students from the TV news production class taught by our very own Randy Joey.

Randy is Wes Virginia Public Broadcasting's Marshall Huntington bureau chief, as well as an adjunct professor at Marshall.

His students spent the day interviewing legislators on various proposed bills and issues.

The House of delegates honored former Minority Leader Doug Scarfe on Thursday.

The House unanimousl approved House resolution nine, honorin Scout's life and public service.

Following his death in a car accident last June.

Clerk Jeff Pack read the resolution on the floor, noting staff's service as House Minority Leader and his business accomplishments.

His legacy will be remembered not only through the laws he helped to craft, but through the friendships he forged and the mentorship he provided to many who sought to serve.

The Mountain State Park read.

The resolution also extende the body's condolences to staffs family, who were present in the chamber to receive the honor.

Currently, voters who inadvertently cast their ballots at the wrong precinct can still have their votes counted on Election Day at the discretion of County commissioners.

Senate Bill 61 would change that.

It prohibits the counting of any ballot cast in the incorrect precinct, and removes each county commission's discretion to disregard technical errors, omissions, or oversights.

It also provides for criminal penalties for those convicted of doing so with intent.

On its third reading on the Senate floor Monday.

Senator Joey Garcia, a Democrat from Marion County, argued that the bill could make it harder for voters who have made an innocent mistake to have their votes counted.

He was alone, nay, with 33 yeas.

The House of delegates also took up legislation this week that would affect elections in West Virginia.

West Virginia cod currently says absentee ballots that have been postmarked by Election Day can arrive up to two weeks after the election, on the day of the election canvass.

Hous Bill 4600 would make the 8 p.m.

closing of polls on Election Day.

The deadline for all ballots.

The bill's co-sponsor, delegate Josh Holstein, a Republican from Boone County, says voters have ample time in the lead up to Election Day to get their votes in.

The United States Postal Service recently changed policy to no longer postmark mail at the post office, but rather at regional sorting stations.

Supporters say if legislators pass Senate Bill 173, it will close a loophole in West Virginia's anti-abortion laws by banning the delivery of medications, intending to end a pregnancy for someone in West Virginia.

The bill came up for discussion this week in the Senate Healt and Human Resources Committee, where there were, as you might imagine, strong opinions on both sides.

As previously stated, my name is Thomas Dinkle.

I'm the state captain for Students for Life of American West Virginia and the team president for West Virginians for life.

I am here to share my personal experience ordering abortion pills, my home in a pro-life state, With the assistance of students for Life of America.

I conducted an undercover investigation to document how easily abortion pills can be ordered online and shipped into West Virginia.

The ordering process took less than two minutes.

I was not asked my age.

I was not asked my sex or whether or not I was even pregnant.

There was no medical screening, no legal verification, no consultation with a licensed physician.

Approximately one week later, after putting my name, address, and payment.

The pills arrived in my mailbox.

The pills were shipped in a discreet packaging, which I actually brought here today.

I received a total of 30 pills containing mifepristone, and misoprostol.

Upon further research, we discovered that this quantity of roughly 30 pills could be used to induce up to four abortions.

Alarmingly, there was no clear medical instructions included regarding dosage or timing.

Someone without medical knowledge could easily misuse these drugs, resulting in serious harm.

After placing my order, I received an email explicitly stating that they will ship to states including West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and others that have enacted bans or strong limits on abortion.

This, in my opinion, directly undermines state law.

I urges committee and legislature to pass Senate Bill 173 to close this dangerous loophole and ensure that West Virginia' laws are respected and enforced.

From conception to natural death, So anyone of any age instead of West Virginia could have gone on this website or website like these and ordered these without parental consent and hold the package up for me, please.

And it does not even warn what is in the container.

What is in the package If your child checks that mail?

Am I not correct that that child could get that package go to their bedroom or wherever they may want to hide from a parent and take that without parent's knowledge?

You're correct, sir, and there is no instructions whatsoever in either of the packages on when to properly, take the pills.

And just, just to reiterate, how much did you say that was for you to get that $75, $75, $75 to shipping was not included, shipping not included.

Okay.

So 80 bucks to roughly that any old creep could get an murder.

So when these chemical abortion pills are taken and this abortion happens.

Can you tell the members of this body where that abortion typically goes?

Yes.

I mean, just usually goes down the drain.

And women are having these abortions in their dorm room, bathrooms, at home, in the shower.

And some people even report seeing, you know, tiny hands and feet, and it's jus extremely traumatizing to them.

And terrible for our water as well, I mean, when you say something about, an abortion pill and how it goes into the water and all that, I mean, I hear rumors about a whole bunch of things.

There's people that still believe that we didn't do a moon landing.

But I think it's a little different about whether or not you've actually seen it, because that's normally a basi for which you have credibility.

And so I guess that's my question to you.

Have you seen any of these things?

Yes.

There's been studie done on on the water, the study on, women and their insurance claims and abortion.

I wouldn't stand her in front of you and put my right hand up if I was just presenting lies, you know?

So, I think we all can agree that we want to protect women and children in this state, and we want to make sure that our laws are upheld.

That being said, medication abortion is safe, it is effective, and it does save lives.

What are your concerns for the safety of women?

Also, for the practitioners of of, the medical practitioners in this state?

Sure.

We've already seen nationally that we are having fewer people apply to Ob-Gyn residencies in state that have these types of bills.

When you have fewer people participating in residency within your state, it's harder to recruit and keep physicians in your state.

West Virginia already has a large shortfall.

We're seeing, hospitals closed.

So, for example, Greenbrier Valley will stop providing Gyn care or, I'm sorry, obstetric care.

So we established tha in West Virginia it is illegal.

This bill is to enforce the current current laws, doesn't expand abortion, doesn' expand the abortion prohibition.

It's about enforcing the current law.

Do you are you opposed to enforcing the current law?

I believe that medication abortions are safe and the states that have set out rule through their board of medicine and their state laws are different than West Virginia.

They are different.

Yes.

And in West Virginia, we decided it is better for a patient who wants to have an abortion to go see a medical doctor.

So you want a patient to go to a medical doctor?

You would rather they perform it themselves.

I believe that medication abortions are safe.

Okay.

The bill also prompted more than two hours of debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, where senators debated whether the bill's $10,000 civil penalty for out-of-state distributors constituted a deterrent for those companies, or perhaps a motivation for pregnant women who abort and then later want to sue.

Our student report this week comes from Nevada Segers and Jenna Walker, as they discuss resources available to track and research the bills and procedures of the West Virginia Legislature.

Good evening, West Virginia.

I'm David Segers, and I am Joe Walker.

We are two members of the Wcvb 2026 student reporting team.

My family has always encouraged me to think independently and form my own opinions.

I have always been interested in political issues and how they impact everyday life, especially for young people.

Growing up, my parents were very aware of the importance of politics and how we can make change.

I'm excited for the legislatur this year and be able to report on the upcoming issues that they will be addressing.

Being informed citizen is important, and a component of citizenship is being informed about local, state and national issues.

Today, we will be demonstrating how to navigate the WV legislators website and focus on keeping track of legislation.

If you're following along with the list at home this year, an essential resource to stay involved and aware of all the upcoming events is the West Virginia Legislature website.

The main page features eight tabs.

The homepage offers several helpful sections, including to 2026 calendar downloads, interim meetings, and job postings.

Under downloads, there's a link to the 2026 Information Packet and the Membership Directory.

The Information Packet contains maps, charts, toll free number and further in-depth websites.

The first two of the tabs presented on the main page are labeled Senate and the House.

These two sections are very similar in the way that they're set up for the Senate.

It lists president, senators, committees, etc.. This is the same for the House, but instead of listing President and Senators Elizabeth, speaker of the House and the delegates in both of them, you can find the rules clerk staff as well as previous audios and meetings.

Third tab focuses on joint projects between the House and Senate.

Under the State Law tab.

You can find out basic information on West Virginia policies, including the West Virgini Code, Acts of Legislator, etc.

this page will provide yo with the Constitution and U.S.

Constitution.

If you would like to check a bill, you must create an account.

Once an account is created, you can save the bills you're interested in and easily monitor the progress.

If you are interested in learning which bills have been introduce and in the progress of a bill.

The Bill status tab will take you to the page where each bill is tracked as it moves to each house.

The reports tab contains a list of the agency reports.

Grant awards, available, performance evaluations, and post audit reports.

We hope that this encourage you to look deeper into the work of the West Virginia Legislature and become active, engaged citizen for the legislator today.

I'm Jenna Walker and I'm Nevaeh Segers.

While the legislatur may consider hundreds of bills during the 60 day session, there is only one thing they are require by the state constitution to do and that is to pass a balanced budget.

The state is not allowed to operate in a deficit.

Eric Douglass spoke with House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Chris a Republican from Wood County, and Delegate John Williams, a Democrat from Martin Gallia County and the Finance Committee's minority chair, to discuss the proces for creating the state budget.

Welcome to the interview portion of the legislature today.

We've done this before gentlemen, but good to see you.

Delegate Vernon, Chris and delegate John Williams.

What county and Mont and Galia county, right.

All right, all right.

But you're th the basically that your party's principles on the House Financ Committee in the, in this case.

So it's budget time.

Is it always is as it always is.

But, you know, we're a third o the way into this session now.

So I think things are probabl starting to get a little pick up speed a little bit where it will because, we're we've got another, tomorrow we have another budget hearing with the Public Service Commission and the consumer advocates.

And then next week we will finish up budget hearings.

And and after that, we'll start running bills that have been presented to the finance committee.

And then we'll, staff will start putting numbers together, preliminary numbers together compared to what we did last year.

As you recall, last year, we took, the previous year's budget, looked at the stress points that we were seeing from the administration, and we interjecte those into the into our budget and not into the governor's budget.

And we will do the same thing this year.

Governor's budget is only a suggestion on his part.

And as far as the legislature is concerned, that it is only a suggestion.

He last year offered a budget that spent every dollar and every and this budget this year will he offered to do the same thing.

I think you're reading my notes while we were sitting here because you're really hitting.

No.

So I guess that was my my next question was going to be what is the process?

So.

So the governor at the state of the state address or immediately thereafter he presents his wish list and then he presents a budget.

But then it's really the the legislature has the purse strings.

You control, everything.

Well, we don't we don't control it all because of the modern budget amendment of 1968.

The governor presents us with his revenue estimates.

Those are the hard dollars that we have to work with.

Now, he has increased his hard dollars by $170 million, which in normal growth in the in the past has spent somewhere between 130 and $150 million.

So he evidently has seen something that allowed him to to grow his estimates by $170 million.

But he also, in his budget, offered additional $170 million of expansion of expenses.

I literally that was the next thing.

Next question on my list was revenue projections.

So yeah, just for for th listeners who don't understand, you have to, as the legislature have to fall within.

You can' you can't say, well, we're going to spend X amount of money.

You have to follow what the governor say the state is expected to make.

John, you want to weigh in on this?

Yeah, that's that's exactly right.

And and from my standpoint, I think that weakens the legislature.

That typically does have the power of the purse.

We can come in and allocate based off of those revenue projections.

But we've seen before how a governor can play with those revenue projections to, push a narrative.

And so maybe they they artificially depress the revenue projections so that then they can celebrate and cut red tap when those numbers are exceeded, when in reality, we knew that we were going to hit that all along.

I would like to see a future.

And I think the chairman, has has taken the lead on, on a lot of this where we function almost in the same way that Congress does, where you have a Congressional budget Offic that answers to the legislature and not to the governor, because it's really hard to get things right when you're not getting all of the information from the executive.

The previous administration was kind of famously flat budgets, and then we had up, $800 million, I think, budget surplus one year.

And then and then we use those dollars for one time infrastructure projects.

So because we'd had trying to take care of the sins of the past as far as infrastructure in our state, like state parks and highways and all those types of thing that we that we had neglected.

And we know now to that that we've got, the cultural center, for instance, that, that that the Commissioner for Touris and Culture and History wasn't before our budget meeting today, talking about the fact that that building celebrates 50 years in age this year and little or no maintenanc has been done to that building.

And now we're looking at substantially increased increases and deferred maintenance problems that we've got over there that we've got to address.

I listened to the the, your finance committee this morning and I heard that and I that was my reaction is like that building's been neglected.

I you know, that's just pure and simple.

It's been neglected.

But it was kind of kind of shocking, to be honest with you.

So I know you're I'm sure I well, I'm sorry, I, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sure your party is interested in tax cuts.

Generally.

Right.

I don't know.

I'll let you answer the question for you specifically in a moment.

The governor I understand I actually haven't done the math myself, but I understand his his proposed budget had about a 5% tax cut in it.

That's correct.

But then he also asked for about, he he challenged the, the legislatur to make it about a 10% tax cut.

The current budget or the current, tax cutting bill we're under right no has triggers built in that work based on revenu that will actually lower taxes.

So what's going to happen?

Where does this stand?

Well, in my opinion as a as a delegate.

Not necessary.

Speaking as the chairma of the finance we we implement.

Excuse me.

We implemented a tax plan.

The stair steps based on the growth in our economy.

As we grow, we take those steps to draw down the percentage on on personal income tax that is owed to the state by individuals who are employed.

As that works, we can see that that we have a natural growth in income, because you've actually lowered the rate.

Now when you get beyond your growth in income, you are going to starve your revenues further out.

And what the projection happens too, is that when you're trying, your goal is to finally eliminate personal income tax and state West Virginia.

You're putting you're stepping that out so fa by accelerating these tax cuts that you'll never get to the point where you can do the final end.

This this administration seems to be looking at things on a very short term, program.

And they don't look at the long term effect of what an accelerate tax cut would do at this point.

Well, I want to say, in terms of the tax cut to we at the state of the state, we're told it was going to be a 10% tax cut.

And roughly 12 hours later we were in house finance.

And we hear that it's a 5% tax cut, but we'd really like to get it to 10%.

So that's not starting off on great footing.

Also in term of the actual numbers of the tax cut for the average West Virginia family, a 5% tax cut would be about $60 a year back in their pocket.

Meanwhile, you have to look at the commitments that we're not able to fund if we were to do that.

So you might have a teacher that gets $60 a year back in their bank account, but because we've taken money away from something, perhaps there's a, a cu in what we're able to contribute to pay that $60 a year is now voided by $60 a month increase in pay premiums.

And so I don't think there's a person here that doesn't want to put money back in the pocket of the taxpayer, but we need to look around and realize that, we have commitments that we need to to honor.

The people of West Virginia are smart.

They know that we need to have our financial house in order.

And we have so many problems, facing us.

Meanwhile, we wonder why we have them when we're not fully funding these programs.

Do yo are there any sticking points?

You see, you know, I remember a couple of year ago, everybody was talking about a couple hundred million dollars in deferred maintenance for the jails.

I assume some of that's been taken care of.

My guess is not all of it.

Anything like that that you can think of that's going to hit the budget or that's what's going to be difficult to fund it.

It's difficult to that that i his presentation of his budget, he, took in the, in section nine, which is what we call the back of the budget and put $170 million of Medicaid funding of current funding of current expenses in the back of the budget, that when you start doing that and then if, if, if we decid that we're not going to do that and we put it back in the front of the budget, it discourages you from wantin to do a 5% sales or 5% tax cut, because the moneys that you need to take care of that.

And as you know we have to balance our budget.

We can't go beyond and we can' borrow money to do our budget.

So we have to stay within the means that we've been in the propertie that the governor have given us.

Yeah.

And I think we have incredible structural challenges ahead of us.

As the chairman mentioned, funding Medicaid in the back of the budget, I think is is kind of terrifying when you look at it, where those prioritie are typically back of the budget items are kind of your your wish list of boy, it'd be nice.

Maybe if we have a good year, we can do this.

That's not where you put something essential, like delivering health care to to hundreds of thousands of West Virginians.

Medicaid as a further subject with the one big beautiful bill, we will be getting money for the Rural Health Transformation Fund.

But at the end of the day, five years from now, the state of West Virginia is going to have 700 million to $1 billion less every single year, from the feds for Medicaid.

That should strike fea into every member of the finance committee every member of the legislature as to how we are going to, meet those commitments.

Gentlemen, this time has gone really quickly.

Actually, I had a whole bunch of things I wanted to discuss very quickly in the last couple minutes.

We have left hope scholarship.

Probably.

Well, the last I saw from treasurer PAC said expected to hit about $230 million this year.

There had been earlie estimates of 300 million or so, but it's, you know, they've sharpened their pencils and got it down.

What is that?

You know, how do we continue to fund hope scholarship and public education?

Well, we're looking at both that Hope scholarship and the education Committee is looking at structurally in the school aid formula different than where we are right now.

And the other questio that we're looking at in a, in a it's a very frank conversation, is that do we need 55 set ups of boards of education with the ability to do technology?

Are we still in the form that every county needs a board of education or can we mail together two counties together or three counties together and have administration for 2 or 3 counties, rather than each county having those administrations, and actually deliver more of of the items that we need to the classroom for the school teachers real quick, anything anything else?

We've got to wrap up but anything left for you here?

Well, I mean, between the Medicai that I've already talked about and the ever ballooning Hope scholarship, I think we have serious problems in out years.

And I'm glad that we have the six year plan that we we do that now.

But, boy, when I look at that six year plan, sometimes I wish they wouldn't put it in front of us.

All right, fair enough.

Thank you both, gentlemen.

Appreciate it.

And that was House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Chris and Minority Finance Chair Delegate John Williams offering their insight into the state budget process.

That's it for tonight.

Thank you for joining us.

Catch the legislature today on Fridays at 6 p.m.. And remember, West Virginia Public Broadcasting covers the session and our daily radio news program, West Virginia morning and on our news site at WV public.org.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting also has a new podcast of all of our radio stories throughout the week, entitled The Legislature This Week.

It drops at 5 a.m.

Saturday mornings so you can listen with your Saturday morning coffee or perhaps your Saturday morning Diet Coke.

We also broadcast the daily floor sessions of both the House and the Senate on the West Virginia Channel.

I'm Maria Yang.

Good evening.

And we'll see you again here next week.