SETTING PRIORITIES – House Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle said the Democratic caucus in the Legislature is willing to work with Republican lawmakers while also standing up against extremism. -- Steven Allen Adams

CHARLESTON – The 2025 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature is right around the corner, with lawmakers preparing for new processes to solve some of the state’s systemic issues.

Representatives of the state Senate and House of Delegates provided updates to reporters, editors, and publishers Friday morning during the annual West Virginia Press Association’s Legislative Lookahead at the Culture Center across from the State Capitol Building.

Media heard from House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay; House Standing Finance Committee Vice Chairman Riley Clay, R-Harrison; House Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell; and Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Amy Grady, R-Mason.

Hanshaw said 2025 is the first year where West Virginia’s general revenue budget will not be buoyed by federal COVID-19 funding. Lawmakers will need to keep that in mind as they craft a budget for fiscal year 2026 with Gov. Patrick Morrisey. The state will need to navigate an ever-changing economic environment, as President Donald Trump threatens tariffs and as the White House reviews federal funding which goes into the state’s total budget.

“At large across West Virginia, that infusion of federal dollars…positioned us well to do some important things for the State of West Virginia,” Hanshaw said. “But where will we be in 2025? Where are we headed now? We know that circumstances are different today than they were even as recently as a month ago, because as we sit here today in the first week of February, we see that things in Washington, D.C., are uncertain.”

According to Hanshaw, workforce training and public education will be a focus of the session, as well as how to continue to make West Virginia an attractive place for economic development and investment.

“We have much more to do in terms of training and workforce, preparing young people to enter the careers of the 21st century economy, because we know that’s where we’re headed,” Hanshaw said. “We can no longer continue to just train workers for the jobs of the past. We have to be training workers for the jobs of the future. And in order to do that, the State of West Virginia has to address some serious liabilities that remain.”

Some of those liabilities include increased costs for state worker health care through the Public Employees Insurance Agency and how to restructure PEIA so that changes to premiums are more stable for public workers; and addressing financial strains on the state Board of Risk and Insurance Management, which maintains liability insurance for state departments and agencies.

Both Hanshaw and Grady expect the Legislature to focus on reforming the complicated state school aid formula that determines how much state funding goes to individual county school systems.

Decreases in enrollment over decades have caused county school systems to consolidate and lay off teachers. Other counties face additional stresses caused by some students leaving public schools for the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program

“As you know in West Virginia, K-12 education is funded largely by a mathematical formula,” Hanshaw said. “Sadly, that formula hasn’t perhaps evolved with time to reflect the current state of circumstances in West Virginia. As the contours of public education have evolved over the past number of decades…perhaps we haven’t evolved our school funding formula to reflect the kind of needs that students and parents and their county school systems have to provide the needs that they experience.”

“That is an antiquated formula that we are seeing is probably not working the best that it can,” Grady said. “It hasn’t been changed a lot since the early 1990s. Now, that’s a long time ago, and the needs of our schools are so different now than they were then.”

Grady said the school aid formula needs retooled to allow state funding to flow towards mental health services, students on individualized education plans, and students with low socioeconomic status.

“Those aren’t addressed in our state aid formula right now,” Grady said. “We also have some positions within our school systems that are required by law, but they also are not included in our state aid formula. So, we’ve really got to take a look at that.”

Lawmakers could review requirements for issuing high school diplomas this year. Grady also will reintroduce a bill she sponsored last year dealing with student discipline in kindergarten through sixth grade. The bill was considered during the 2024 legislative session, but it never passed due to disagreements between the House of Delegates and Senate.

“That’s still a priority of mine,” Grady said “I’m not going to sit up here in line and say I wasn’t disappointed when that bill didn’t pass last year. It wasn’t perfect by no means, but I was disappointed that it didn’t pass…If we can get some sort of support for our kids in schools to where we can keep them in schools but also focus on the majority of the kids…I think that’s the best thing we can do.”

The House changed its committee structure, creating six standing committees with multiple subcommittees, with a new three-day process for reviewing introduced bills, including agency reviews and comments on day one, changes to the bill on day two, and a vote on the bill by the committee on day three. While doing away with the traditional public hearings, Clay said the new process allows for the public to submit written comments, committees to invite members of the public to testify, and bill sponsors to explain their proposed bills.

“Every citizen of the State of West Virginia can submit written comments if they are interested,” Clay said. “When a bill comes on an agenda, they can look at it, they can read it, they can understand it, and they can put their opinion in. So, the process was really modified because we have to do things differently to get to the root causes and allow for more input.”

Clay said to expect bills dealing with improving foster care, workforce development, reducing regulatory red tape, improving the state’s tax structure, and continuing improvements in the correctional system.

Hornbuckle leads the nine-member House Democratic caucus. With nine Democratic members in the House and two Democratic members in the state Senate, Hornbuckle knows he is outnumbered. While expressing a willingness to work in a bipartisan manner across the aisle, Hornbuckle said Democratic lawmakers will continue to fight for workers and the marginalized, while standing up against Republican overreach.

“Mark Twain once said, ‘it is not about the size of the dog in the fight. It’s about the size of the fight in the dog,'” Hornbuckle said. “What we’re going to do is we’re going to stand up for West Virginia. That’s what we’re going to do time and time again…We want to make sure that we are always working in a bipartisan manner. But when it comes time to be the adult in the room and to stand up to extremism, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Democratic lawmakers plan to offer bills addressing affordable housing, access and costs for child care, and broadband expansion, increasing teacher salaries and education spending to be competitive with neighboring states, putting up guardrails for the Hope Scholarship educational savings account program to ensure tax dollars are spent in West Virginia, and tax cuts aimed at the middle class and low-income families.

“What we’re missing right now in American government in West Virginia is civility, it’s a statesmanship,” Hornbuckle said. “We’re living in the era of a zero-sum mentality where there’s one point if it’s on your side or your side who wins. That’s dangerous for all of us…that’s what we have to stand up against.”