Over the weekend, there was some movement in the Senate, along with some hysterical shenanigans. Basically, WV Senate Republicans are as incompetent as national Republicans, and after an amendment came out of the Finance committee for a 4% raise, lower than the 5% the governor and teachers agreed to, and lower than the 5% the House voted 98-1 for (comically, the one no vote was Saira Blair, the young Republican college student and daughter of Senator Craig Blair, and she claims she pushed the wrong button).
Quick interlude- Craig Blair is one of those “special” Republicans, who this weekend infuriated basically everyone by reacting to this CNN story about WV teachers packing lunches for their students who go hungry without school lunch programs before going on strike by stating something to the effect of “If they can afford to feed their kids, how desperate are they for a raise.” Yeah, he’s one of THEM.
At any rate, the Senate voted on a 4% raise, which was dead in the water in the House of Delegates, and immediately after the vote Senate leadership went through a bunch of procedures to have the vote removed. Apparently the clown caucus had filed the wrong amendment, and they had all voted for a 5% increase, not the 4% they intended. Normally parliamentary procedures would dictate a 2/3 vote to remove that previous vote, but being Republicans they said to hell with it and just did party line votes and then advanced the 4% bill instead. Democracy, fuck yeah.
So where we are now is there is a legislative conference committee set to meet at 4pm to resolved the differences. The committee includes 3 members from the House of Delegates (2R, 1D) and 3 members (2R, 1D). Notably, the House delegation has all been told to stand strong and presumably will lobby for the 5% they voted for (part sticking to their initial bill, part being told by membership what to do, and part dick-measuring contest between the House and Senate. The Senate Democrat will presumably go for the 5% increase.
This would lead one to presume that the 5% increase would carry the day. They would meet, majority would vote 4-2 for the 5%, and then the bill would be advanced to the Governor. You would be wrong. The majority members of the Senate are going to be Sen. Ryan Ferns, the Senate Majority Leader, and Mitch Carmichael, the President of the Senate, the aforementioned senator Blair and they too are special kinds of Republicans. What they may do is simply refuse to sign the conference committee report. So even though the vote would be 4-2, simply refusing to sign it would basically kill it. They’re the special kind of assholes who would do something like that, and the Senate Republicans done it before, just not with this much attention focused on them.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they do this to try and drag this strike out and have AG Morrisey cook up some sort of legal action against the teachers or to try and swing popular opinion against the teachers. The problem for them is everyone knows a teacher and likes them. The same can not be said for the Senate, Justice, or AG Morrisey.
In other news, the Senate Republicans refuse to meet with Governor Justice, who is now officially hated by Republicans as much as by Democrats, and the PEIA commission is set to meet on the 13th and has 24 members, 23 of whom need to be appointed.
In other words, there probably isn’t going to be school this week. The teachers and service personnel have their blood up and are sick of the bullshit.
*** update ***
The House Democrats send this notice:
“It has been brought to our attention that Senator Blair scheduled a Finance Committee meeting for 3:00 today. In his speech on the floor earlier today, Senator Blair stated that the Finance Committee will take up the budget bill and they will not adjourn until they are finished, even if it takes them until MIDNIGHT! Senator Blair is on the conference committee for HB 4145, the pay raise bill, and the conference committee scheduled for 4:00 today cannot meet until Senator Blair and Senator Ferns adjourn from the 3:00 Senate Finance meeting. This is political gamesmanship at its worst. They clearly have no intention of holding the conference committee for the pay raise bill today.”