A Chaotic Conclusion to the 2026 Legislative Session
“Beware the Ides of March.” That famous line from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” was apropos as the West Virginia Legislature’s 2026 Regular Session came to a screeching halt at midnight on March 14.
The chaos that permeated the last hours stands out in my mind as the most intense final hours of any session I’ve seen. For my bona-fides on this, I offer that I’ve been present, in one way or another, for the entirety of each of 36 annual Regular Sessions.
The anvil upon which the late-session bitterness was hammered out was a bill called “Raylee’s Law,” supported by Democrats and a chunk of Republicans. It would trigger an investigation if someone suspected of child abuse pulled a child out of public school. Senator Amy Grady (R-Putnam and Chair of the Education Committee) teamed with Senator Joey Garcia (D-Marion) to get the bill through the Senate (in creative fashion) on the session’s next-to-last day. The House leadership kept the bill from the House floor until 11pm on the last day (one hour before constitutional quitting time).
All the House Democrats (led by Delegate Sean Fluharty, Ohio) and a sizable collection of Republicans (led by Delegate Elliot Pritt, Fayette) tried mightily to get the bill passed on time. But debate on numerous amendments (offered with apparent intent to delay) consumed all the remaining time.
Not much productive happened during this year’s session, to my mind. The shining light was the passage of HB 4191, which made major improvements to child care in our state. We needed that bill, as neighboring states have been kicking our butt on child care, which many businesses say is critical to hiring and keeping employees.
The most dangerous bill that passed, in my view, was HB 4025. It reduces civil service protections for additional state employees, beyond those deprived of such rights in last year’s Regular Session. Thus we continue Governor Patrick Morrisey’s drive to transform, over time, our state’s workforce from a group of dedicated professionals into a collection of political hacks.
The Eastern Panhandle was doubly failed by the defeat (once again) of locality pay for state and public school employees and the demise of any bill to undo the damage created last year by the passage of the data centers bill.
From the passage of that bill (HB 2014) in 2025 until the 2026 session convened, many complaints about it had come from folks of differing philosophical stripes all over the state. The objections were primarily about lack of local control, the state pilfering local tax revenue and lack of controls over water use. Many legislators promised changes in all these areas of policy, but none of substance were made this year. The public is angry.
Locality pay has come close in recent years, but no cigar. I’ve concluded that no plan for locality pay can succeed unless it’s offered in a year during which all state and school employees in the state are given major raises. State and school employees around the state oppose locality pay as unnecessary, because they don’t comprehend how seriously high housing costs are in the Eastern Panhandle.
In a year state and school workers were given a 10% raise, I think they might be persuaded to grudgingly accept a significant additional raise for folks living in counties with exceptionally high housing costs. This year’s 3% raise was a pittance.
Another major failure involved clean drinking water. Many communities around the state have failed water systems. The estimated cost for fixing them is $250 million. The Legislature appropriated $5 million. I think that’s appalling.
Finally, our municipal annexation laws almost saw a major upheaval, which I believe would have been a disaster. It started out innocently enough. Senator Brian Helton (R-Fayette) authored a bill (SB 182) that made a minor change in “annexation by minor boundary adjustment.” There are three ways municipalities can annex unincorporated areas. They are “minor boundary adjustment,” “petition” and “election.”
But the House, on the last day, turned that bill on its head. The House amendment removed the change the Senate bill made and substituted a complete rewrite of all three methods of annexation. None of those changes had been vetted in public.
The bill was passed about an hour before midnight (right before the ruckus regarding Raylee’s Law had begun) and fortunately didn’t make it back to the Senate for final action before midnight. Whatever one’s views of the particular proposed changes, I think it’s bad process to spring radical changes very late with little input.
This article first appeared in the Martinsburg Journal, April 8, 2026
