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Welcome to the Legislature Today Im Randy Yohe.

This is the first episode of our show for the 2026 regular legislative session.

Now, the 60 day sessio officially began on Wednesday, January 14th.

It will run until March 14th this year.

Said it will come to order.

Have also please come to order.

Both chamber Galvin for the regular session on Wednesday at noon as required by the Constitution, and took up a few procedural bills to make sure staff gets paid.

Then they introduced bills and sent them to their respective committees to decide what gets debated and what moves forward.

So far between the House of delegates and the Senate, there have been more than 900 bills introduced to be considered this legislative session.

Now, for perspective, last year, just shy of 2500 bills were introduced, but only 249 were completed.

Legislatio 232 were signed by the governor.

That was a typical year.

Now leading up to this legislative session, three members have resigned their seats.

Delegate Brandon Steele, a Republican from Raleigh County, resigned, and Delegate John Jordan, also from Raleigh, was sworn in the evening before thi session began to take his place.

Now that leaves two vacant seats.

Delegate Mike Davalos a Republican from Marion County, stepped down, as did Senator Donald Boley, a Republican from Pleasants County.

Now, Boley was the longest continuously serving member of the legislature, having been in office for 41 years and reelected 11 times.

At one point in the early 1990s, she was the only Republican in the Senate.

Governor Patrick Morrise will appoint both replacements.

Governor Morrissey delivered his second state of the state address to the West Virginia Legislature Wednesday night.

He went over his plans for the state, much of which he will nee the support of the legislature to accomplish.

Berea Young has more.

His Excellenc the Governor of the Great State of West Virginia the Honorable Patrick Morrisey.

Before a packed House of delegates Wednesday night, Morrisey highlighted points of prid in his first year as governor, including billion in private sector investments, microgrid laws and workforce readiness all part of an economic strategy he calls the Backyard brawl.

The Mountain State comeback is underway, but he quickly pivoted to what the state will need for a successful future, including increased funding for higher education.

Tonight, I'm also asking to increas funding for our higher education institutions and critical infrastructure investments.

Apart from the road fund I'm going to ask the legislature to invest $100 million to supplemen our road and bridge repair work.

It's sorely needed.

He also wants funds for tourism to add to a $9 billion annual economic impact.

I'm asking this body for $20 million to improve our state parks.

We need better lodging, more campsites, and improve roadways leading to these incredible destinations.

He touched on the $199 million Rural Transformation Fund.

The highest per capit award of any surrounding states funds more, as he said, will be used to make rural America healthy again.

Now for generations in West Virginia, poor health.

It's fueled an economic decline, which in turn worsened our state's health outcomes.

And we tell you we are going to break that cycle, and we're going to replace i with a new, more virtuous one, a cycle where better health care strengthens the workforce and improves productivity.

And he wants lawmaker to further fund those efforts.

I'm asking lawmakers to support our rural health care transformation by advancing legislative initiatives that promote prevention, wellness and personal responsibility for generations more.

As he said, West Virginia has powered America.

And he said it will continue to do just that.

That's what our 50 by 50 plan is all about.

You guys know this.

It's an ambitious plan to more than triple our power generation.

By 2050, we'll be prioritizing reliable baseload power through coal, natural gas, nuclear, while supporting all major energy sources.

But we're building an energy strategy that's going to increas our power generation from 16GW.

Now to over 50GW by 2050.

And you know what that does that will power America for the next half century and beyond.

At the same time, Morrisey said he wants to continue making government smaller.

Our state government is too large, too many agencies, too many boards and too much bureaucracy standing in your way.

The public Employees Insurance Agency will have to increase the cost of premiums again this year, but Morrisey aims to keep that increase low, he said.

After years of double digit premium increases pay premiums this year they're going to be limited to 3%.

Let me say that again.

That's not ten.

That's not 14.

It's three.

Another key initiativ of improving the state's foster care system and working to care for kids in the system here in West Virginia, rather than sending hundreds of them out of state with a modest investment of $6 million at the state level.

Much like a park, we can rehabilitate existing state facilities, transform them into world class centers of care, and begi bringing our children back home.

I believe this approach, it's going to save our state many tens of millions of dollars, and it's going to provid our children with the stability, the care and the foundation they need to grow, heal and to prosper.

Without giving dollar amounts Morrissey also proposed a school within a school program for at risk students, a faith based initiative that will tap the support of faith based communities, and a truancy diversion program to catch students before they fall through the cracks.

He also said battling the drug epidemic, fighting crime and increased border security ar all priorities for his office.

And thank Go we have a President, Donald J. Trum who enforces borders to Ukraine.

Amen.

Morsi is asking for a 3% pay raise for all state workers.

A 10% income tax cut fund to prepay the hope scholarship, as well as investments in public education, including digital literacy and letters, a science based approach to reading.

Finally, Morsi said he is asking for $10 million to fund a pilot program called century that offers advanced warnings about flood dangers.

Those forecast they actually promised identify flood risk 1 to 6 hours ahead with a target accuracy of more than 90%.

This is about saving lives.

It's about giving West Virginians time.

Time to act.

Time to move and time to stay safe.

Touching on a personal not his new status as a grandfather.

Morsi said the goal and the sacrifices they require are what parents and grandparents do.

Make the hard choices so their kids and grandkids can inherit a better world.

The state of our state is getting stronger.

We are building a better West Virginia and we are just getting started.

Thank you for West Virginia public broadcasting.

I'm Maria Young in Charleston.

Senator Mike Waffle and Delegate Shawn Horn Buckle are both Democrats from Campbell County who serve as minority leaders in their respective chambers.

They sat down with Eric Douglas to discuss what Governor Morrissey said i his state of the state address, and they talked about being a minority to a supermajority in the legislature.

Welcome to the legislature today for our interview segment.

I'm joined here with, Delegate Shawn Hornbuckle and Senator Mike waffle.

I'll make a quick note.

We understand that tha this is your last, last session.

You're going to be, joining us for.

So thank you for all tha you've done for, for this state.

They're both the respective minority leaders, from the House and the Senate, both from Campbell County as well, which is kind of interesting.

I thought that was, unique.

I'm going to jump right into it, gentlemen.

I want to talk about, the governor's state of the state address.

Just to start, just kind of broad picture.

I'd like to hear your kind of big picture impression of the government.

Governor went for, like, an hour and two minutes or something like that was just about an hour.

But I'd kind of like to hear your your overall thoughts on the speech.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I mean, it's mixed, right?

I felt like at times he was sort of all over the place and, some of the math.

The math, if you will.

There was other times where I was sort of excited.

I don't know about you, but he really adopte a lot of our democratic ideals.

I mean, he came out strong talking about clean drinking water.

He talked about infrastructure, and he talked about higher education spending.

And I know the leade across, the chamber and myself, our caucuses have advocated for that for a very, very long time.

And so while I was excite to hear those types of things, we want to make sure we hold him accountable.

On that, if you're going to come out and say that, but then there were a lot of things that, again, that we didn't hear and the, the math and math, felt like we didn't hear a clear, concise plan as far as our energy plan.

Again, I know the senator and I, we've been very strong on utility bills.

I know that is my number on priority as minority leader in the House is getting relief to all of us Virginians.

We also really didn't delve into child care.

Like I would, when he talked about health care, he talked about 189 million, but he left out the West.

Virginia's going to lose $1 billion because of the bill that th federal administration passed.

And so, you know, we've got to be able to tell, you know, all the story on that.

So, I will sort of pass it to, the senator, if there were any initial thoughts that he had as well, where we can get into more of that.

Yeah.

So the governor is a smart guy.

He's a hard working person.

So I respect his leadership.

I look forward to working with him during the session.

West Virginians is in a position where we're still 49th or 50th in most things that matter.

And, this is a time for us to be serious people and do serious thing to help our people move forward.

And, it just seems to me that, the speech was fine.

It's like most that I've seen.

But, you know, at this point, we're going to have to do better than what we have.

Again, utility bills are util our utility bills are rising faster than any other state.

And, our, our water prices for residential us are the highest in the country.

So, I'm really looking forward to some, bills that we have that will maybe hold the public service Commission a bit more accountable, make them elected, make them transparen and accountable to the people.

So, you know, we just have so many things to work on in the past, in the Senate at least.

We've spent so much time on, you know, the majority party trying to protect child marriage.

You know, young girls can marry older man.

That was like, we spent.

Seemed like two weeks on that.

We did.

We did the ten commandment bill, last year.

Again, lot of time spent on social issues.

Telling, you know, ninth graders not to commit adultery.

So we we need to be serious people.

We need to focus on our serious problems.

And, publi education will be one of those, because where I'm from, Wayne County and Capital County are struggling.

We're losing population.

And we've got to do something with the school aid formula.

To, to, support our teachers, our school service personnel, our parents and our students.

Fair enough.

I want to drill down into all of that.

I wanted to ask you a question.

Delegate the or minority leader.

What would you like?

Prefer to be called leader.

Whatever you like.

Fair enough.

In th the House Democrats put out a, a regular piece on Substack.

The.

You know, that just kind of let you know what's going on.

There was a piece came out last night.

Or after the, after the state of the state, but there was a note or there was a line.

And it is an intrigued me.

It was why does life keep getting harder?

What do you think it is?

What's going on?

That that life is not getting easier for people in West Virginia?

Absolutely.

I mean, when you look at and I, you know, I like to look at things in windows, right?

You look at the past ten years.

The past ten years.

Right.

We have been, leading th country and population decline.

We've been at the bottom and job growth.

And like the Senator, I like and respect our governor.

However, he still couldn't get away from social issues within the speech, which tells me that he's not aligne with us on kitchen table issues.

There is not one social issue right now that is putting food on the table for people.

There's not one social issue right now that is helping to lower utility bills.

There's not one social issue right now that is helping people to afford their rent.

We have housing issues.

We have serious issues.

And so the tone of the Republican super majority legislature, again, for the past ten years has been on issues that don't move the needle for regular, everyday West Virginians.

And that's why we're seeing lot of these, issues right now.

And so, we are, preferring action over talk.

And to do something, Senator, d you want to jump into that or.

I do, our children are foster children.

We have over 6000 of them.

Some of those kids are living in Airbnbs.

Motels.

And we're at a five alarm fire with that.

So I would have liked, the governor to have talked about that immediate crisis a little bit more in terms of what he's going to do.

I know he cares about the issue, but our child welfare system has been broken for, well, it's been broken since the Democrats were running the state.

So it's really, each party gets, gets, blame for not embracing that issue.

And so that's something I'm passionate about.

Those kids are going to grow up in our, in our state and be our neighbors.

And, you know, it sort of goes along with public education.

We have to support it so that we have a workforce that can compete in the modern world.

I wanted to I just made a short list.

It's probably not everything, but, the governor outlined a 3% pay raise for state employees.

He also, said he was going t ask for 10% personal income tax.

Tax cut $100 million for roads.

$20 million for state parks.

And there was no number attached to it.

But funding the, Hope scholarship.

Yeah.

Last I saw, that was probably about a $300 million hole.

Exactly.

He talked about expanding the scholarship funding.

That's bee one of the biggest detriments, all right, to our public education system right now.

And if we are not able to truly bolster our workforce, it's going to be tough, for our future generations and the now.

We also saw from the economic outlook by deskins, we have to do something to contain that cost.

We are not going to be able to survive.

And so I think that he, i missing the mark there for sure.

I know one thing that I'm very passionate about as our flooding issues.

He talked about $10 million.

Appreciate the gesture, bu that's simply not enough, right?

And he talked about an alarm system.

But we're not talking again about preventative measures in our infrastructure.

To make sure that we never even have to get to that spot.

Anyway, and so again, I thin there are a lot of things that, we're not speaking to.

And you talk about those numbers, with the, 3% raise.

The 10%, income tax, cut.

He's also talking about 2% across the board cuts.

The math is just simply not math, right?

And so, we stand ready, to work.

And we'll work with them, to make sure that we're doing right by the people and fix some of thes budgetary issues that we have.

You know I actually I had a thought, the, Professor John John Deskins from Denver, who annually gives the kind of the economic outlook for the, for the state.

When I looked through the unfortunately misse the presentation, him giving it.

But I looked through his his slides from it.

So wasn't a lot of good news in that, that I saw.

And so that's, and I appreciate that.

And I know, but he's, he's given it fro a non-biased standpoint.

Sure.

And so he's not trying to put a campaign spin on it, to get votes.

Right.

We're going to be able to look these issues in the problems in the eye for what they are and start doing something about them, because at the end of the day, only probably are going to be hurt.

All right.

Are the people of West Virginia, if we're not honest, open and transparent and willing to do the heavy lifting, then it's going to take and it' also going to take both of us.

It's we have to get awa from this one party domination.

That is what has got us in this hole again for the past ten years.

It's not a coincidence on our downward trajectory.

Well, let me let me see if I can disagree with my colleague here and say that, I've studied the 11 or 12 years.

I've been in the Senate and the 11 or 12 years prior to me coming into the Senate, and I came in exactly when that changed.

The DS lost power and the R's took power.

I think if you look at 22 years, you'll see that we haven't done very well either party.

I mean, really, we've been 48th or 49th or 50th, which is where we are right now in workforce participation.

We haven't done well for a long time because we haven't had seriou people take on serious problems.

And I feel like the social issues, are meant to divide us and distract us.

And I hope our leadership in the House and the Senate will avoi those issues as much as possible and try to help the people out there in West Virginia that need help.

Let me add this for those that are watching right now or listening.

If you're thinking about running for a political office, I don't care what party you're affiliated with.

If you are, get in here.

Get into the game.

We need a longer bench.

If you're super conservative, progressive whatever your beliefs might be, if you're watching this show, you're engaged.

We need you in the system.

We need people to run for the county commission, the schoo board, the legislature, please.

It's all hands on deck in West Virginia.

We're in dire straits.

Our people are.

They can't pay their utility bills.

They can't afford groceries.

A lot of folks childcare we haven't talked about.

We're in desperate, shape where people can't afford to work.

Childcare can be more expensive than college tuition.

So if anybody is on the fence, jump in.

And I would have a slight, slight disagreement with my my friend and colleague.

In 2015, our population was 1.84, 1.84 million 2024 and 1.77.

It's gone down.

I would also argue that, at times a lot of the leadership in our state House, regardless of party, has been very homogenous and has mirrored some of the same ideals at times.

And so I think it is time and we talk about new people running, regardless of party.

I would agree with that.

We see a lot more young people.

We need people to get active, and we need new thinking to go forward here in our state.

So that's why he's a leader.

I think you agree with that shot.

Well done.

Well, sir.

Just for the record we scouted the long interview, but we're down to two minutes left already.

This is gone very quickly.

So I'll give you each a minute if you want to.

I mean, there's I mean, I've got a whole list of questions I never made it to, but, Go ahead.

Closing thoughts.

Closing thoughts are, you know, we are going to be firm.

We will continue to be the adult in the room.

We are going to agree where we can agree, but we are going to speak out against extremism that puts West Virginia behind.

And we have to focus on kitchen table issues.

And we want to make sur that our priorities are utility bills, health care, child care, housing and education.

Fair enough.

Senator, we need transparency in our government and the fact that this show is only going to be, on the air one, one day a week.

Very disheartening to me.

And, you know, that's on of the ways that people are able to tune in to what's happening in their state government.

And it's and it's it's sad and it's shameful.

It's not by accident that you're that your budget is what it is.

But, I just I just will finish by saying, I hope people pay attention.

Come to the Capitol.

Read all news media and and, we need input and we need to do a lot better.

Yeah.

So, generally, you want to hear you guys all want to hear from your constituents?

Absolutely.

The Democrats, the House Democrats did the kitchen table talks all around the state.

You've used that phrase several times, but yeah, that that's a theme for you.

Yeah, we did, and we made it known from the jump.

We we want Democrats Republicans, independents there.

I don't govern for party, a governmen for the people of West Virginia.

And that's what my House Democrat caucus, is hell bent on doing.

We will continue to do that.

My caucus onl has one other person besides me.

We're not ours.

We're not des.

We're West Virginians.

And that really should be our motto.

And shout out to Senator Garcia, too.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Gentlemen, I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

That's it for tonight.

Thank you for joining us.

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

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is also launching a new podcast of all our radio stories throughout the week, called The Legislature.

This week, it will drop at 5 a.m.

Saturday mornings so you can listen with your Saturday morning coffee.

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

I'm Randy Yohe.

Good evening.

And we'll see you here again next week.

Support for the legislature today is provided by.

West Virginia University.

Serving our stat with pride, impact, and purpose through education, health care, and discovery.

Let's go visit wvu.edu.