RIPLEY, W.Va. — Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed the bill Friday that would have transferred Cedar Lakes Conference Center in Jackson County from the state Department of Education to the private Cedar Lakes Foundation.
Tomblin’s veto of Senate Bill 584 was based on the cost of transferring the current state workers at Cedar Lakes to the private sector. The bill guaranteed the buyout of unused sick leave days which wold have cost the state approximately $290,000.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael (R-Jackson) said the veto was disappointing but supporters of the bill thought it was only right to provide payment for sick days the workers had saved.
“Some of these employees have been there 20 some years and some have taken very few sick days,” Carmichael said. “We felt it was incumbent on us, as a moral obligation of the state, to provide the payment they had based their long-term career path on.”
The governor’s veto message said the buyout would have been “a substantial taxpayer expense.”
Carmichael said there’s time to work out the differences. The bill called for the transfer to take place July 1, 2017. The governor’s message also encourages the state School Board and legislature to “remedy the issue.”
The state Department of Education began to review its operation of Cedar Lakes a few years ago when an education audit recommended it was an expense the state could live without.
The Cedar Lakes Foundation has said keeping Cedar Lakes open would provide $6.1 million economic impact annually to the state along with $700,000 in tax revenues and the creation of 100 jobs.