Senate tensions boil over

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Simmering tensions between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate finally boiled over this week at the State Capitol in a flurry of harsh words and arcane parliamentary maneuvers.

The trouble began Monday when the Senate Finance Committee took up legislation creating charter schools in West Virginia. Three GOP committee members were absent, giving the Democrats a numeric advantage.

Democratic Senators John Unger (D-Berkeley) and Jeff Kessler (D-Marshall) seized the opportunity. Kessler’s motion to postpone the bill indefinitely passed along party lines, essentially killing the bill for the remainder of the session.

Republicans were embarrassed that they had three members absent, but also angry that Kessler utilized a rarely-invoked parliamentary move. “I had a chance to kill it and I did,” Kessler told the Charleston Daily Mail.

Republicans regrouped, putting the Senate parliamentarian to work until the wee hours of Tuesday morning, trying to find a way to revive the bill. The Senate leadership determined it could discharge the bill from committee and bring it directly to the floor.

Senate Democrats erupted. “Mr. President we operate under Jeffersonian rules… and once that bill has been postponed indefinitely it is done for the session,” said Kessler, his voice rising.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael (R-Jackson), after the floor session ended abruptly, disagreed. “We asked the parliamentarian to provide the exact guidance on it. His ruling on it was we did it the exact right way,” said Carmichael.

Carmichael and Kessler held dueling impromptu press conferences on the floor on the Senate, with reporters shifting back and forth between the two.

Democrats, however, had another maneuver. They invoked a provision of the state Constitution (that is normally always waived) calling each bill to be read on the floor “fully and distinctly.” So Senate action devolved into the painfully laborious process of having each bill on third reading read aloud.

This meltdown had been building.

Kessler, Unger and some other Democratic leaders believe the new Republican majority is running roughshod over them. However, Republican leaders say they have been more than accommodating, citing the three-week long process in the Senate Education Committee to craft the charter schools bill.

Additionally, Republicans have been driving a busy agenda, one that includes longer sessions and committee meetings. People start to get a little frazzled and testy after six weeks of that.

Whatever the reasons, any spirit of cooperation that existed between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate side has expired. Each side believes the other is behaving like a bully.

The challenge for the three weeks remaining in the regular session will be for the Senate to find a way forward to do the people’s business. Republicans hold the narrow 18-16 majority, and unless some fences are mended, there will be a lot of key votes between now and the end of the session that follow party lines.

Now might be a good time for a beer summit, but it would come with a risk.  At this point, that could result in either a boozy bipartisan rendition of Country Roads… or a barroom brawl.





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