The 60-day legislative session officially commences at noon on Wednesday, and it is anyone’s guess what the next nine weeks will bring. Leadership in the House of Delegates has laid out an agenda that focuses on economic development, but on the opposite end of the Capitol, it is unclear whether the Senate will have any legislative direction or will be a free-for-all.
House Speaker Roger Hanshaw outlined the legislative agenda for the House of Delegates in December. House Bill 1 will be an initiative called TEAM-WV, meant to create a competitive, statewide nonprofit to drive a cohesive strategy for site development, partnerships, and business growth, modeled on the successful Jobs Ohio program.
That was just part of a clearly defined agenda in response to widespread criticism that lawmakers did not devote enough time to addressing issues directly impacting West Virginians.
However, the path ahead for the next 60 days for the Senate is not nearly as defined. In fact, as of Monday, there was apparently no direction at all.
During the annual legislative lookahead, Sen. Eric Tarr (Putnam-R) said there had not been a Republican caucus meeting to discuss priorities.
“I’ll tell you that the Senate Republican majority has no consensus on an agenda at all,” Tarr said. “I expect a bit of a free-for-all, because that’s extremely odd, and I’m frustrated by that.”
Senate President Randy Smith has the unenviable task of attempting to manage three distinct factions within his own party in the Senate that do not necessarily agree on legislative priorities. Tarr elaborated on Talkline.
“I would say that we have three factions in the Senate, you would have a group that I would say that you might describe as ultra right, and that ultra right side of things is where the ideology is the first and foremost of the thought process. A lot of times, that thought process is outsourced to think tanks that are national conservative groups.”
“And then you have the left side of the caucus, which really has a less social leaning; really, the rest of the caucus wants to tolerate the left side of the social politics there. Then you have a middle faction where the focus is really on business. And that’s the first and foremost reason that middle factions up here are for business.
But they’ll always be right on the social issues.”
Getting those three factions in a room to agree on two dozen bills to push the legislature in 60 days may be nearly impossible, and likely why there has not been a legislative agenda produced in the state Senate.
The implications for the session could be that the House of Delegates’ priorities drive the session. With the House coming to the Capitol with a well-defined platform, it puts pressure on the Senate to concur with the bills coming from the opposite chamber. That fact is magnified if the House and Governor Morrisey agree on those legislative priorities.
What will happen over the next 60 days?
It’s impossible to say. But we are going to find out whether or not Republicans can build some sort of consensus, or if chaos will rule the session.