Capitol Beat: Lawmakers in Charleston look at priorities in final ten days of session

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WVVA) - With just nine days to go on Thursday, state lawmakers in Charleston said they’re getting down to the wire. Both chambers worked in split-sessions on Thursday, telling WVVA they are taking a hard look at what they can complete before this year’s legislative session wraps up.

One bill that won’t be making it to Gov. Jim Justice’s desk in 2024, is the Restoring Sanity Act. Sponsored by Sen. Rollan Roberts (R-Raleigh), it would have made it illegal for public colleges and universities to create and fund Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices, among other requirements.

For Roberts, while he said he’d like to see the legislation become law -- he and others said having bills die at this point in the session is par for the course.

“The sanity bill, that’s not going to go away,” said Sen. Roberts. “That whole issue and how we kind of fit those topics into our culture is going to be complicated…Right now you’re beginning to get numb. The challenge is real, the topics are so much of a variety it’s so hard to keep up w/ everything and up to this point in the session a senator doesn’t have time to keep up with The House.”

“I know before I walked over here, I had 16 new bills that hit my desk this morning, and I had more to come today. So I have to prioritize those bills, it’s not possible to run them all, so we’ll have to go through and prioritize, you know, what we’re going to be able to take up,” said Sen. Jack Woodrum (R-Summers).

Some of that legislation sent over late includes House Bill 4621, which would prohibit police from posting mugshots of people not convicted of a crime. It passed the house on Wednesday, and now sits in the State Senate.

And more locally, the State Senate adopted House Concurrent Resolution Five on Thursday, to name a bridge on Courthouse Road in Mercer County after George Hall.

Hall was born into slavery, and reportedly saved records from the Mercer County Courthouse from being burned, when Union troops burned the courthouse in 1862. Historians in Mercer County had been working to get that recognition for several years, and Commissioner Bill Archer told WVVA he was ecstatic to hear the news.

Stay with WVVA as we continue our Capitol Beat reporting into the final week of this year’s legislative session.

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