The West Virginia legislative session in Charleston is now over - the first session in more than eighty years with a Republican majority in both houses. While it did not quite live up to the hype, it was for the most part a positive session with what might be called “baby steps” in the right direction. On balance, this session potentially lays the groundwork for good things to come.

Starting with the negative, the biggest disappointment by far was the failure to repeal Common Core. According to MetroNews, “Senate President Bill Cole admitted [that] halting the bill which would have killed the Common Core was very difficult”. They go on to say, “Cole worried about the monetary cost of junking the Common Core standards now”. Quoting Cole, “I feel like this is Big Government intrusion on us and for that reason I’d like to kick it to the curb. I hate to always go back to money…”

Methinks that Senator Cole doth protest too much and that his decision to quash the repeal of Common Core will come back to haunt both him and the state of West Virginia. I suspect that the cost of scrapping Common Core is a bargain compared to the cost of implementing it - both in financial terms and the future consequences for the kids. The Common Core testing costs alone are putting a strain on education budgets around the country, to say nothing of the privacy concerns and the questions that have been raised regarding the standards themselves. Senator Cole squandered a great opportunity to rid our state of that boondoggle.

On the positive side, progress was made on a number of fronts, including raw milk and prevailing wage. Although the legislature could have gone further, at least raw milk is now available in our state, albeit only through “herd share” arrangements. Well, it is a start. Regarding prevailing wage, legislation was passed that will “recalculate” it. Again, that’s a start, but I’m sure that contractors can negotiate wages with employees without the government’s help. That there needs to be a “recalculation” is an admission that the government is incapable of arriving at the right price - something best left to the market.

Further, prevailing wage laws don’t achieve their intended goals. At a meeting I attended several years ago in Charleston a consultant working in the governor’s office suggested that since West Virginia had one of the lowest per capita incomes in the nation (this was mid-2010), prevailing wage was there to help mitigate that problem. However, there’s a problem with that argument. In 1934 West Virginia ranked 30th in the nation in per capita income - below average, but not near the bottom. Prevailing wage came into being in West Virginia in 1937. Since then, West Virginia’s per capita income ranking has declined significantly. Clearly, prevailing wage laws aren’t the solution to low per capita income levels. You simply cannot legislate economic outcomes.

Another big positive that came out of this legislative session was judicial reform. Quoted in the West Virginia Record, Roman Stauffer, executive director of West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse said, “I think we had a very good legislative session to address legal reform issues that have plagued West Virginia for many, many years. The legislative leaders made legal reform a priority. They recognized it is one component of an economic development package.”

The reaction from Democrats regarding the legislative session, to me, goes a long way toward explaining the party’s reversal of fortune in West Virginia. Quoted in the same article in the West Virginia Record was State Democratic Party Chairwoman Belinda Biafore. Putting it mildly, she was highly critical of the new GOP leadership. The quotes are priceless.

Said Biafore, “Republicans campaigned on a promise to create jobs, and we did not see one jobs bill or plan to create jobs this session”. I know, I know - she doesn’t get it. The government does not create jobs. She doesn’t understand that legal reform, regulatory reform and tax reform are job creation bills. While government cannot create jobs, it can make it hard to do business in our state and over the past 80 years, the Democrats have done just that. What Biafore fails to grasp is that it is business that creates jobs that generate economic activity that in turn allows the government to collect taxes.

Here’s another priceless quote from Biafore, regarding Republicans, “We will not let them continue to hinder the quality of life for the hardworking West Virginians that have built this state and the children that are the future of this state.” She has a real grasp of historical context, doesn’t she? On the one hand you have 80+ years of Democrat control of the West Virginia Legislature, with our state coming in at or near the bottom of nearly every economic or quality of life category. On the other hand, we have the Republicans that have just completed their first legislative session in control. I think that Chairwoman Biafore hasn’t done the math on that one.

Aside from Biafore’s comments I believe that Governor Tomblin (who of course is also a Democrat) did considerable damage to his party. All in all 262 bills were passed by the legislature, however not all of them became law. The Governor vetoed two very high profile and popular pieces of legislation demonstrating further how out of touch his party has become with West Virginia voters.

One of the vetoes, HB 4588, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, was actually overridden by the legislature - something extremely rare in our state. I couldn’t find anyone who could cite another example. The other high profile veto was HB 347, which was not overridden, the Constitutional Carry bill that would have made concealed carry of a firearm equivalent to open carry which doesn’t require a permit.

Senator Joe Manchin (also a Democrat and former governor) came out against HB 347 and it is widely believed that Governor Tomblin succumbed to out of state lobbying efforts in his decision to veto the bill. According to one poll, 72% of voters in West Virginia support HB 347 (and the numbers are even higher for HB 4588). In my humble opinion, Tomblin’s veto of these two bills is going to create big headwinds for the Democrats in 2016.

As for the Republicans, this past legislative session showed some promise and some progress but there is plenty of room for improvement. The party platform says that it supports “advising parents in advance of any new or controversial programs in the schools, and giving them the option to participate or not”. Common Core is as controversial as it gets.