Focus on coal, drugs, jobs

SOUTH CHARLESTON — Protecting coal miners and the coal industry from EPA regulations are two of the major goals Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin will be asking the West Virginia Legislature to address during the 2012 legislative session.

During a meeting with media and lawmakers at the Associated Press Legislative Look-Ahead session Thursday, Rob Alsop, chief of staff for Tomblin, said the governor is focusing on coal during his State-of-the-State Address, which will be delivered to the Legislature on Wednesday.

“Our real focus has been on protecting coal and legislation,” Alsop said. “The biggest issue we are focusing on is regulation issues with the EPA. No matter what anyone says, coal is here to stay. Nothing else will ever prevent skyrocketing electric and power prices better than coal.”

Recently, Alsop said the governor’s office has seen two major victories for the coal industry on the federal level.

“Gov. Tomblin has continued Sen. Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) lawsuit against the EPA going outside the rule-making process and using guidelines to regulate coal permits,” Alsop said. “A judge in Washington said he believed the EPA was outside their jurisdiction. Now we can go forward with this partial victory. On New Year’s Eve, the U.S. Circuit Court also stayed an EPA ruling on the emission of coal-fire plants. The court said they needed a closer look at it. We are thankful to have seen victories in federal court, and we are going to continue to fight these regulations and fight for coal.”

Alsop said Tomblin is also asking legislators to focus on the safety of miners in light of new findings as to the cause of the Upper Big Branch mining disaster.

“Rock dusting and regulating rock dusting was one issue that came out of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster as well as training for mining inspectors and mine foremen,” Alsop said. “A lot of these considerations came out of UBB. I think Alpha’s settlement showed there was a lot that employees should be doing, a lot MSHA should have done more on, and a lot the state Department Miner’s Health and Safety and should have done. We now have a state rock dusting lab and have inspectors going in to do rock dusting. Gov. Tomblin is working with MSHA and the UMWA to ensure brass fittings on our mine shelters are safe and up to code.”

Despite a boom in the coal industry, Alsop said the state isn’t expecting an increase in revenues.

“The coal market has been very robust lately,” Alsop said. “While we have done a lot to improve the state’s economy, the economy nationally has taken a downturn. No state is looking at an increase in revenue this year. We haven’t talked about raising any taxes. We have talked about dedicating funds to roads and infrastructure. We haven’t had any serious discussion about additional severance taxes.”

Additionally, the cost of Medicaid will impact the state budget.

“The budget is very tight,” Alsop said. “We have a balanced budget, but there is no major surplus this year. Once you see the six-year plan, you will see there won’t be many major increases on the horizon. We don’t plan to dip in to the rainy day fund. The amount of money we will have to submit to Medicaid will be very significant. We are going to have to look at streamlining Medicaid because of this.”

According to Alsop, the governor is waiting on more federal feedback before legislators move on building more roads in the state.

“We have been looking at what we can do on roads, especially with the current federal plan cutting millions out of our budget,” he said. “Funding for roads continues to be an issue as well as the safety of roads and bridges. A lot of what we can do is dependent on what the federal government will do. To be honest, until we know how much the federal government is going to do, there isn’t much we can do. We really need Washington to get its act together so we can move forward.”

Alsop said the creation of jobs in West Virginia should not only help the state’s economy but drug-abuse issues as well.

“Though the coal and natural gas industries are going gangbusters, we still have 8 percent unemployment,” Alsop said. “There are a lot of places employers have a hard time with drug-free work places. The best thing we can do is create more jobs so we don’t have as many drug problems.”

Alsop admitted there have been lapses in the state’s use of technology to prevent doctor shopping and other drug-related crimes.

“We need to look at technology to help enforce drug offenses,” he said. “We believe one of the first ways to cut down on prescription drug abuse is to talk with doctors and hospitals for real-time reporting of these issues. We certainly want to cut down the seven-day reporting period to hours.”

The state is also calling on medical professionals to help curb drug abuse, Alsop said.

“We also want to educate our doctors on best practice,” he said. “We may need to look at training doctors who regularly prescribe controlled substances. We need folks from the medical community to come in and ask what they need to do. We need better technology to address this issue but we also need officials to come together as well. Anyone prescribing controlled substances needs to work with us to be a part of the solution.”

Though prison overcrowding is an issue across the state, Alsop said the governor does not feel building new prisons is the answer.

“If we build a new prison, all it is going to do is fill up in the three or four years it takes to build it,” he said. “We need to look into some other considerations such as additional staffing or training. We can take a crack at overcrowding by doing things like work-release centers. We have to look at alternatives because by the time we build prisons, they are already overcrowded.”

Alsop said one of the challenges the Legislature will face is finding funding sources for Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB), though teachers unions in the state are working to make their pension funds solvent.

“The Legislature will come up with additional funding sources for OPEB,” he said. “We are going to push OPEB legislation early in the session and get to talking about that early. You will hear a lot about OPEB in the state-of-the-state. PEIA has capped what it pays out. The teachers union, as I understand it, realized until the state could be responsible they needed a funding recourses to prevent that fund from becoming insolvent. It took a lot for the teacher’s union to step up to the plate and say they wanted to be part of the solution. We have actually had a good dialogue with the teachers union and the Legislature. If we don’t deal with this everything else becomes tough to address.”

With a new audit on the state’s education system to be released, Alsop said there may be an overhaul of the education system in the coming months.

“It will take time to get all of the stakeholders together to make sure they have input on any overhaul of education,” Alsop said. “We aren’t suggesting cuts to our education budget at all, but to use the taxpayers money as best we can. We also want to look across the board at what education in West Virginia lacks and what we can do to improve the quality of education.”

— Contact Kate Coil at

kcoil@bdtonline.com

Local News

Search Results

Discussion

West Virginia Legislators Look-Ahead to 2012 session:

Site Map

Contact Us