Special session agenda takes on bills dealing with road bond passage

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Three bills relating to Gov. Jim Justice’s highways push have been added to the agenda of a legislative special session on Monday, the governor’s office announced Friday.

One bill allows the state Tax Department to share payment data with the Division of Highways. Justice has talked about the necessity of making sure contractors who win bids for the influx of highways work to be up on their taxes.

Another allows for streamlined hiring process of additional staff for the Department of Transportation and tax auditors. In that case, the governor and Transportation Secretary Tom Smith have previously discussed immediate hiring needs.

And the third would amend the West Virginia Jobs Act. Companies that win state public improvement construction project bids have to have at least 75 percent of their workers from the local labor market under the act.

“As I traveled across the state of West Virginia over the last few months talking with fellow Mountaineers about our Road Bond, the number one question I was asked was how do we know that West Virginians will really get the jobs? Today I have placed on the agenda for our legislators during next week’s special session a bill that requires contractors to hire West Virginia workers,” Justice stated in an announcement about the amended special session call.

“I have also asked our legislature to pass bills that will allow the Department of Highways to streamline their hiring process by reducing the bureaucratic red tape. This bill will immediately allow the Division of Highways to fill some 500 jobs.

“In an effort to enforce the hiring of West Virginians and making sure that all our contracts are following the rules and are in compliance with all regulations, I am seeking legislation to allow our tax enforcement division to use the same streamlined rules for hiring, as the Division of Highways. It is time that we start allowing the people of West Virginia to win and bring prosperity to their families.”

Justice confirmed this past Monday that he intended to call a special session. He said voter approval of a statewide road bond was one instigator for the session.

But when the initial call came out, it did not include any items related to highways construction. The two bills on the call related to the historic tax credit and an exemption on personal income taxes on military pensions.

Union contractors have been pushing the governor to emphasize the need for winning bidders to comply with the West Virginia Jobs Act.

On Monday, the governor himself stressed the act. It wasn’t immediately clear today what the amendment might be.

“To ensure that as many West Virginians as we possibly can get these jobs, we’re going to enforce the jobs work act,” Justice said then.

“The next thing is, we’re going to talk with legislative leaders and see if there’s anything beyond that that we can legally do to ensure that as many West Virginians as possible get these jobs.”

Justice, during Monday’s press conference, also said one bill to be introduced would focus on hiring procedures for state employees.

“To hire an employee in this state may take 6 to 9 months. We don’t want to eliminate anything of any kind of consequence,” Justice said. “When you have to make sure somebody has a dog named Chester to be able to hire them, it just takes too long.”

Tom Smith

State Transportation Secretary Tom Smith said his agency has a backlog of job openings but has needed the means to fill them.

“We’re 500 under quota,” Smith said. “We’ve had chronic understaffing, so besides inspectors and students from WVU and Marshall to help us design projects we need a whole range of folks — people in the human resource functions, people in the audit functions.

“There’s a whole lot of different areas where we just need to get back to where we’ve had people able to do the work where we’ve been chronically understaffed for years.”

The audit functions appear to be the ones receiving legislative attention during the special session.

Steve White

That hiring should enhance the ability of the highways department to assure that contractors are abiding by West Virginia law and paying the proper taxes, said Steve White, director of the Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation.

“I’ve got contractors who we believe haven’t paid their state income taxes,” White said this past week on MetroNews’ “Talkline.” “You’ve cut government to the bone. There’s not the people there to do the oversight, to do these audits that need to be done.”

Justice said he’s also establishing a task force to make sure contractors are abiding by West Virginia law.

“We’re going to monitor like crazy,” the governor said.”We’re going to put a task force in place immediately — a true task force — to monitor that contractors are paying their rightful share of exactly what they owe in taxes.”

Smith said that group consists of himself, Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher and Revenue Secretary Dave Hardy.

“What I can say is we’re coordinating at unprecedented levels already, regarding different contracts that are being considered with different contractors,” Smith said.

The legislature will gavel into session at noon Monday.

 





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