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Craig Howell: Weirton zoning case establishing a precedent

When my email pinged Wednesday afternoon, and I saw something from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals pop up in my inbox, I didn't think much of it initially. I regularly receive notifications from the courts with a list of a handful of rulings. Most of the time, they involve cases in the southern areas of our state. Occasionally, there will be something from Wheeling. So, it was a surprise to see not only that the email contained an announcement on only one case for that day, but also that it involved Weirton. In its ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the City of Weirton ...

Get out and enjoy some local live entertainment

The summer season is unofficially here, as far as most people are concerned, following Memorial Day weekend. The public swimming pools are open, warmer temperatures are (mostly) here, and a variety of seasonal activities and events are being announced, or already underway. That includes some of our local summer concert series. Weirton's series of Friday night concerts was supposed to have kicked off last weekend with a performance by the Fantasy's, but had to be postponed because of consistent rainfall that afternoon. So, the series launched this week instead with Lights Out Presents ...

The 2026 primary election, by the numbers

The primary election is all but finished in West Virginia as we head into the weekend. All that's left is for the counties to canvass their results and send them to Charleston for their official certification next week. Let's start out by looking at some of the numbers from Tuesday night. According to the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office, 21 percent of West Virginia's registered voters took part in our state's primary election. It was the state's first election where voters were required to present a photo ID in order to cast their ballot. I would debate officials who say 21 ...

Reporter’s Notebook: To The Moon

If you're reading this today, I am in George Town, the capital city of the Cayman Islands in the middle of my third Royal Caribbean cruise. I'm writing this column before shipping off from Port Canaveral in Florida along the Space Coast, a short drive away from the launchpad where the Artemis 2 mission to orbit the moon took off. It seems every time I leave for my annual vacation, which sometimes is a cruise but usually is a week’s stay at my mother-in-law's timeshare in Kissimmee, I miss witnessing a rocket launch of some sort. These days, it's usually a SpaceX launch. In fact, ...

Reporter’s Notebook: The action of inaction

We can now put a bow on the now-completed 2026 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature now that Gov. Patrick Morrisey has acted on most of the 306 bills passed during the 60-day time period between Jan. 14 and March 14. Morrisey had 15 days, not counting Sundays, following the sine die adjournment of the Legislature at midnight March 14 to decide to sign bills, veto bills or let bills go into law without his signature. And that is exactly what he did with 10 bills, choosing not to sign or veto those bills. The question some have is why? You can make some assumptions about some ...

Hope floats in the West Virginia Legislature

Much as I predicted last week, the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program remains intact for the next fiscal year. Instead of recommending its first originating bill to reform the Hope program, the House Finance Committee recommended a new originating bill that only changed the payment frequency to Hope families from two times per year to four times. Some are saying the committee buckled under pressure from current home school and private school families. That’s a complete misunderstanding of what happened. The reason the first originating bill was drafted was to deal with ...