David Walker (D-Clay)
House of Delegates
WV Legislature-District 33
This past week officially ended the first session of the 81st
legislature. My fellow colleagues and staff have all worked diligently
to pass legislation to improve the lives and well being of all West
Virginians. As mentioned in past columns, Governor Tomblin set out three
main issues we all needed to put at the top of our lists, these issues
were education reform, prison overcrowding and continuing to keep our
finances in order. In addition to those issues, we also took a big issue
pertaining to child poverty head on with the passing of Senate Bill 663,
The Feed to Achieve Act. I am happy to report that we were successful in
improving all those endeavors.
As the Education Audit found earlier this session, public education in
West Virginia needs to improve significantly. A poor education creates
major problems for both current and future generations of our state and
was an issue the entire Legislature put at the top of their list. As
many are aware, the Legislature came up with what we felt was the best
way to help fix this problem through the creation of Senate Bill 359.
Although a lengthy bill, it focuses on issues like more flexibility
given to counties and reconsiders the elements for hiring teachers. The
bill is expected to iron out some of the major issues the education
audit outlined and generally improve West Virginia public education.
After much compromise the final version was negotiated and agreed upon
by the West Virginia Education Association, West Virginia American
Federation of Teacher’s Association, and the West Virginia School
Service Personnel Association. The bill is expected to iron out some
of the major issues the education audit outlined and generally improve
West Virginia public education.
Prison overcrowding is an issue that has been continually plaguing our
state for many years. This problem is deeply rooted with our state’s
drug abuse problem. Many of our inmates are non- violent offenders that
have been arrested and jailed for the continual abuse of illegal and
prescription drugs. In response to these problems, the Legislature
passed Senate Bill 371, which will focus on both reducing recividism and
the rehabilitation of drug addicted inmates. The intention of this bill
is to reduce the number of inmates that are repeatedly incarcerated,
freeing up space in jails for serious violent offenders.
It is of my opinion that one of the prized bills we passed was Senate
Bill 663, the Feed To Achieve Act. This bill will require schools in the
state to provide free breakfast and lunch to elementary school students.
For many of the students around the state, a school meal is the only
meal they get in a day and it is my opinion that it is unacceptable to
expect students to learn on an empty stomach. When reforming education,
we need to get down to the basics, and hungry students will simply not
have energy or capacity to learn when they are hungry. We are optimistic
that with the implementation of the Feed to Achieve Act, students will
be more focused on learning. This is the first of many steps we plan to
take to end the cycle of child poverty in West Virginia.
As mandated by the West Virginia constitution, this week we passed the
Budget Bill, House Bill 2014 in response to the Governor’s proclamation
given earlier this week. The session was permitted to be extended a week
to give time to solely consider this bill. In addition, a special
session was called by the Governor to solely consider Senate Bill 125,
which would create a special tax district to help finance a shopping
complex along I-79 and new baseball field in Morgantown along with
Senate Bill 210, equalizing the pay of all magistrates, magistrate
assistants, magistrate court clerks and deputy clerks. House Bill 2945
would require a comprehensive review and report of the needs of each
volunteer fire department or company in the state along with the steps
necessary to meet the needs and sustain the volunteer fire departments
or companies as well as Senate Bill 665 relating to funding for the
Attorney General’s office and the Department of Health and Human Resources.
If you should have any questions or comments regarding any issues or
bills before the legislature please feel free to contact me. To write
me, my address is Delegate David Walker, State Capitol, Building 1, Room
203-E, Charleston, WV 25305. Or you may call me at (304) 340-3135. I
encourage all my constituents to remain active and become part of the
legislative process.
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