Byrd Remembers Ted Kennedy

Looking "frail," but with "a strong voice that hasn't been heard on the Senate floor since February," U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., paid tribute Thursday to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., The Associated Press reports.

"Byrd was steady as he bade a wistful goodbye to Kennedy, who died last month," the article said. "He remembered how Kennedy gave him dozens of roses on his wedding anniversary and would bring his dogs to Byrd's office for visits."

Footage from C-Span has been posted on YouTube.

W.Va. Judge on Capitol Hill as Obama Nominee

Kanawha Circuit Judge Irene Berger is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee today as President Obama's nominee to the bench of southern West Virginia's Federal Court district.

Live video showed Berger at the hearing's start sitting just behind U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

Statue Honoring W.Va. Women Veterans Finds Home

Perhaps in time for Veterans Day, a new statue representing West Virginia women who have served in the military will stand near the Veterans Memorial on the state Capitol grounds, The Associated Press reports.

The state Capitol Building Commission voted Wednesday to place the statue east-southeast of the popular visitor draw. It will be the same height as the memorial's four figures depicting fighting men.

"Award-winning Charleston sculptor Joe Mullins created all five statues," AP explains. "He was commissioned to sculpt the monument to women veterans more than a decade ago. The project was held up after complaints that the statue was too masculine and should be wearing a skirt. A panel of women veterans approved Mullins' design last year."

W.Va. Supreme Court Rehears Massey Appeal, Again

For the third time in nearly two years, West Virginia's Supreme Court heard arguments in a 2002 Boone County case that resulted in a $50 million verdict against Massey Energy Co.

As The Associated Press reports, while the two previous hearing yielded decisions overturning that judgment, "an almost entirely different court heard Tuesday's arguments."

This summer's U.S. Supreme Court ruling set the stage for the latest round. And while it forced the recusal of Chief Justice Brent Benjamin, "three of the four remaining justices are also new to the case: Menis Ketchum and Margaret Workman were elected in November, while Thomas McHugh was appointed following the March death of Justice Joseph Albright," AP reports.

Others on hand for the latest hearing include The Charleston Gazette, WCHS-TV (with video), Public Broadcasting (with audio) and MetroNews (ditto).

Labor Day's Competing Rallies

The hoped-for turnout, headliners, corporate sponsorship and political themes at Monday's Logan County rally drew coverage from The Associated Press, The Charleston Gazette, the Charleston Daily Mail, MetroNews (with audio here, here and here), Public Broadcasting, WSAZ-TV (with video), and WOWK-TV (ditto).

The traditional and more sedate event at Boone County prompted reports from The Gazette, the Daily Mail, WSAZ-TV (with video), WCHS-TV, and WOWK-TV (with video).

Lawsuit Threatened over Judicial "Double-Dipping"

Former longtime South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb has vowed to sue the state over the awarding of pension benefits to a pair of circuit judges and a county magistrate, The Associated Press reports.

The two judges "made headlines last year by filing for re-election, resigning and then obtaining retirement benefits," AP explains. "Running unopposed, Judges Charles King of Kanawha County and Alfred Ferguson of Cabell County later regained their benches."

Robb also faults a Summers County magistrate, J. William Jeffries, for similarly cashing in on his pension. "Robb now plans to sue the state auditor, the Consolidated Public Retirement Board or both to challenge the benefit awards," the article said.

Robb was also the lawyer in last year's unsuccessful court challenge of the recent legislative pay raises.

AP notes that legislation passed this year, as part of Manchin's 2009 agenda, "aims to deter future such instances" of "double-dipping."

Byrd Seeks Naming Honor for Kennedy (Updated)

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., is among those marking the death of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

"In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American," a statement from Byrd reads in part.

The Hill has an item on Byrd's "wistful statement" and request.

The Associated Press has video of Byrd's sorrowful remarks on the Senate floor back in May 2008 when Kennedy revealed the brain cancer diagnosis.

Update: AP reports on Byrd's friendship with Kennedy, as does The Charleston Gazette.

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has also issued a statement mourning Kennedy's death, and spoke to MetroNews about his late colleague and friend.

MetroNews also has audio, and a photo of Kennedy stumping in Logan County with Rockefeller, Byrd and U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-3rd, in the audience.

The Charleston Daily Mail reports on Kennedy's visits to the Mountain State, and offers photos as well.

Gov. Joe Manchin has ordered all U.S. and state flags to be lowered at state facilities until Kennedy's funeral Mass.

The News and Sentinel of Parkersburg and WBOY-TV are also among those relaying statements from West Virginia officials on Kennedy's death.

Quote of the Day

"If it's one-size-fits-all, then we've created an incentive not to be productive, not to contribute to society."

-- Gov. Joe Manchin, expressing concerns at a Southern Governors Association meeting about any future changes to Medicaid eligibility rules, as quoted by The Associated Press.

Manchin spoke earlier to The Intelligencer of Wheeling on the health care topic.

W.Va. Bonus, Revisited

The Associated Press crunches the numbers and finds that full time state workers eligible for Gov. Joe Manchin's proposed $500 "bonus" would pocket around $375 of that after taxes, pension contributions and other deductions.

The retirees earmarked for $266 in the House amendment to the governor's bill would likely have gotten that entire amount, for wont of withholding, the article said.

AP also notes the full-time state employees _ 10,500 paid through special revenue accounts and 4,000 in federally-funded positions _ who would not have been covered by the funding provided in Manchin's special session legislation.

"The administration's proposal is no different than how other raises have been handled in the past," the article said. "When general revenue-based increases have been paid, agencies that rely on other sources of funding -- like fee-generated special revenues -- must tap their own accounts for the money."

But the article also notes that Manchin's bonus bill made one exception to this tradition, for the 5,000 or so Division of Highways workers who rely on the chronically-strapped State Road Fund.

Manchin Weighs in on Cap and Trade

Gov. Joe Manchin assessed the U.S. House-passed cap-and-trade bill while attending a Southern Governors Association panel on energy issues, The Associated Press reports.

Manchin "Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky, both Democrats, said the bill their own party is pushing ignores support for the carbon-capture technology necessary to make their states' rich coal reserves viable," the article said.

"We embrace the change," Manchin was quoted as saying. "Do I agree exactly with the way the bills have come out? No, I don't. They've identified and villainized (coal), but they haven't fixed anything."

The article explains that "the cap-and-trade energy bill now before Congress establishes incentives for new technologies such as wind and solar power and new fuels such as diesel from algae. But it holds little appeal to Gulf Coast and Appalachian states that provide most of America's domestic energy, governors from those regions said."

W.Va. GOP Hires New Executive Director

As its fundraising labors continue, West Virginia's Republican Party has hired a new executive director.

The Associated Press interviewed Troy Berman, a 30-year-old Baltimore native who took the job after working on GOP campaigns in his home state as well as Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Texas.

Berman "comes to the post with Republicans at low tide, even by West Virginia standards," the article said. Besides Democratic dominance of the congressional delegation and across state government, "feuding within the Republican Party has spilled out onto blogs, newspapers and talk radio as members clash over how to reverse their sagging fortunes."

Berman tells AP that the upcoming, off-year election will allow the GOP to focus on legislative races. "We expect 2010 to be a good year for Republicans nationwide, and I have no reason to believe that will be different for West Virginia,” Berman said.

Judge Yanked from Massey Case

The state Supreme Court has disqualified a Mingo County circuit judge "from presiding over a water pollution lawsuit against Virginia-based Massey Energy because of his past attorney-client relationship with the defendant," The Associated Press reports.

Judge Michael Thornsbury's recusal had been sought last month by 550 current and former area residents who are suing Massey and a subsidiary "for injecting 1.4 billion gallons of coal slurry into worked-out underground mines between 1978 and 1987," the article said, adding that the lawsuit alleges "slurry seeped through cracks in the earth into the groundwater, poisoning drinking wells, and that decades of exposure put the plaintiffs at risk of cancers and other health problems."

Thornsbury declined to step aside in the case. Acting Chief Justice Robin Davis then rejected most of the allegations raised by lawyers for the plaintiffs, but later agreed to consider "a 1985 case in which Thornsbury — then an attorney, but not a judge — represented Rawl Sales," AP reported.

One of the plaintiffs in that case is also suing in the pending one. Davis concluded this week that the "past relationship could create the appearance of impropriety and lead to questions about his impartiality," the article said.

Both AP and The Charleston Gazette report that Davis cited the role of blasting damages claims in the 1985 lawsuit.

"Davis noted that an expert witness for the residents has reported that blasting activities by Massey may be one cause of fractured underground strata that allowed slurry injected by the company to contaminate local drinking water," the latter's article said.

They Voted for You: "Death Panels" (Updated)

As Political Wire recently observed, Time magazine's Swampland noted similarities between language in the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill and provisions in some of the pending health care measures described as promoting euthanasia and creating mandatory "death panels."

The Associated Press, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com are among those who have debunked the "death panel" claims as "wrong," "nonsense" and "pants-on-fire" false.

"The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes," AP reported.

The 2003 legislation provides coverage to terminally ill patients that includes "counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options," according to its conference report (page 663).

U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-2nd, helped pass the 2003 measure. Reps. Alan Mollohan, D-1st, and Nick Rahall, D-3rd, voted against it in the 220-215 roll call.

U.S. Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, both D-W.Va., voted against the bill when it passed their chamber 54-44.

Update: Politifact.com weighs in, and finds the comparison half-true: "(I)t's clear to us from our interviews with experts that there's a distinct difference between the 2003 law and the 2009 bill," its analysis found. "Yes, there's the appearance of inconsistency given the similar purpose for both bills, but the 2009 bill is more far-reaching than the 2003 law, which was focused narrowly on hospice patients."

For a Few Dollars More

A Legislative audit estimates that state government has reaped more than $1 million from interest in the last decade by holding back scheduled annual pay increases for its workers by one month, The Associated Press reports.

"Every year, state employees get paid $60 for every year they’ve worked for West Virginia. By law, that lump sum is to be paid on July 1," AP's Tom Breen explains. "Going back more than 20 years, though, the state has made the so-called 'annual increment' payment on July 30."

Quote of the Day

"I don't have a question. I have the answers."

An unidentified woman who "spoke for a long stretch" during last week's Town Hall-style meeting on health care held by U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-1st, as reported by The Intelligencer of Wheeling.

Protests A-Go-Go (Updated)

West Virginia's congressional delegation has attracted protesters of one stripe of another during their August break, The Associated Press and others report.

Last week's forum on health care co-hosted by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., got the ball rolling, with AP, Public Broadcasting (with video and audio) and others noting demonstrators from various sides turning out for the event.

WSAZ-TV reported that "all the questions were pre-screened by the organizers of the event." AP reported that "Rockefeller did field a variety of challenging questions from the crowd, though, with some of the more pointed inquiries coming from audience members in an overflow room who couldn’t fit into the Erma Byrd Art Gallery with the main audience."

The handling of the forum helped spur a demonstration later in the week. "A dozen protesters lined up on a street corner next to AARP's Charleston office Friday angry over what they feel is the group's stance on health care reform," MetroNews reported.

(The item quotes Fred Joseph, a repeat GOP political candidate who has previously shown up in "Tea Party" coverage here and here.)

Then there was the Town Hall-style meeting held by U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-1st, in Wheeling on health care. Those with coverage of that include Public Broadcasting, The Intelligencer, MetroNews (with audio) and WTRF-TV.

And The Journal of Martinsburg, reports that U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-2nd, was at a Berkeley County ribbon-cutting ceremony when "a small crowd gathered to protest health care reform, but they quickly dispersed."

"One man, later identified as Russell Mokhiber, was walking along side of a group of people, including Capito, with a small video recorder," that article said. "Mokhiber said he asked to speak to her about health care and the congresswoman responded 'not now.'"

U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-3rd, told the Bluefield Daily-Telegraph that "he will kick-off a series of town-hall style meetings on health care reform Monday morning in Mercer County. The town hall meeting will begin at 10 a.m. at the Princeton Health and Fitness Center in Princeton."

Update: Coverage of Rahall's meeting comes from The Register-Herald of Beckley and Public Broadcasting (with audio).

West Virginia: Moderate

...by a hair, according to a Gallup survey of 1,230 state residents conducted between January and June.

The poll found 40 percent identifying their political views as moderate, while 39 percent said conservative and 18 percent said liberal.

Gallup's overall finding from the national survey: "a significantly higher percentage of Americans in most states -- even some solidly Democratic ones -- call themselves conservative rather than liberal."

The Blame Game

The special session's failed "bonus" bill provides further evidence of differences between Gov. Joe Manchin and his fellow Democrats who control the House of Delegates, while also spurring a flurry of finger-pointing, The Associated Press and others observe.

"It showed divisions that had been hinted at during the regular session," the AP article said. "A number of education bills Manchin wanted, including changes to how the school calendar is set, were caught up in wrangling between the House and Senate and failed to pass."

But AP's Tom Breen also writes that "the apparent disorder, though, masks the fact that legislative leaders and Manchin all probably gained from the dispute in different ways. And not even the state employees caught in the middle will definitely lose out, since all sides agree the bonus could come back before the Legislature this fall."

The Charleston Gazette heard from groups who represent state workers, expressing "anger and dismay" that the measure didn't pass. They blame Manchin for concluding that the more generous House version of the "bonus" bill exceeded the scope of the special session call.

"It's a pretty universal perception that he's very arrogant and very haughty in how he deals with state employees, and this is more evidence of that," Gordon Simmons, an organizer with the state Public Employees Union UE Local 170, told the newspaper.

But both The Gazette and MetroNews note that one of these critical groups, the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia, had endorsed the governor's $500-per-full-timer proposal.

"There was not an opportunity to build consensus prior to the special session," AFT-WV President Judy Hale told the latter. "So when the House wanted to, rightly so, add all state employees then they got into a mess."

MetroNews also has dueling legislative perspectives (and audio) on the failed bill. The Charleston Daily Mail also has coverage, while The Register-Herald of Beckley has dueling articles (here and here).

Impasse Dooms "Bonus" for W.Va. Workers

Gov. Joe Manchin had initially proposed his $500 bonus-like payment to full-time state employees for the 2010 regular legislative session. He then decided to include it in this week's special session for extending jobless benefits.

The result: "a legislative tug-of-war over whether to give $500 payments to all state workers, some state workers or all state workers and retirees," The Associated Press reports.

"The version favored by Manchin and the Senate would have used surplus funds from the previous fiscal year to pay $500 one-time bonuses to active state employees at a total cost of roughly $34.7 million," AP's Tom Breen explains. "The House, though, amended the bill to include an additional $11.1 million for state employees in higher education and county jobs not covered under the state school aid formula," as well as "$13.3 million for one-time bonus payments of $266 for state retirees."

In the end, "Manchin and the Senate balked at these additions, saying they overstepped the bounds of the special session call, and therefore also violated the state constitution," AP reported. "After refusing to concur with the House amendments, the Senate adjourned instead of appointing a committee to try and reach a compromise."

AP also covered Manchin's response to the outcome, as did The Register-Herald of Beckley, MetroNews, Public Broadcasting (with audio), the Charleston Daily Mail and The Charleston Gazette.

Special Session Starts

Gov. Joe Manchin has launched his third special legislative session of the year, The Associated Press and others report.

The state Senate passed the two key measures from the governor's agenda: a bill qualifying the state's unemployed for 20 more weeks of federally funded benefits; and a $500 bonus-type payment to each full-time state worker.

While the jobless benefits measure passed unanimously, Sen. Clark Barnes called the other "an attempt to buy West Virginia's largest voting bloc for a mere $500," AP's Tom Breen reports. "Ultimately, Barnes and Preston County Republican Sen. Dave Sypolt cast their votes against the proposal, which passed 30-2."

AP's Breen sets the scene for the House's reception to the proposals. Others with coverage include The Charleston Gazette and MetroNews.