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WV SORO
February 26, 2009
Will SORO Bills Be Taken Up in Time?
by Norm Steenstra III, norm@wvsoro.org
It’s that time of the Legislative Session when House and/or Senate leadership decide which bills live and which bills die. Bills are due out of House and Senate major committees Monday. Minor committees had to have their bills into major committees or reported to the floor by today.
Mike Green (D-Raleigh), chairman of the Senate Energy, Industry, and Mining Committee, did not put the Surface Owners’ Recognition Act (SB 529) back on the agenda this week. This is no surprise, since, after killing our bill last year, the Senator told Beckley news media that he was working with us. He did not put our legislation on the agenda last year and never had any talks with us. However, there is still a chance that the House Judiciary Committee could take up its version of the bill, HB 4408, in time. We believe we have the votes. The key is to get the chairman to take up the bill.
Please contact Chairman Miley at home this weekend at (304)-848-0102 and ask him to put HB 4408 on the agenda for Monday morning.
We’ve had some good news this week as HB 4513, which would establish reporting requirements for water used in the Marcellus gas well drilling operations, passed the Judiciary Committee with strong support. However, House Judiciary Chairman Tim Miley (D-Harrison) has still failed to put the Surface Owners’ Recognition Act (HB 4408) on the agenda.
Maybe Delegate Miley is not paying attention to the heavy drilling going on in Harrison County?
Please contact Chairman Miley at home this weekend at (304)-848-0102 and ask him to put HB 4408 on the agenda for Monday morning.
Yesterday the committee spent 45 minutes on a poorly written bill involving beekeepers (HB 4527) rather than taking up something that could help West Virginians. Had the bill been properly written it might have been good legislation, but after all was said and done the bill failed amidst heavy legislative laughter.
Keeping with the theme of bad bills, Chairman Miley added Delegate Mike Ross’s (D-Randolph) awful bill to change the awful definition of “shallow wells” (HB 2982) to the agenda. The committee did not get to the bill this morning but it was still on the agenda when the committee met this afternoon. And unfortunately, SB 369, the Senate’s version of the "shallow well" definition bill, was passed out of the EIM Committee as it met on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon. The bill was then read a first time today and its second committee reference to Senate Finance was dispensed with. This is a very sneaky way to move a bill! We'll have more on this soon.
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