Delegate Isaac Sponaugle, D-Pendleton, is normally a level-headed guy, but he went medieval on Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin for the governor's decision not to accept ownership of the 122-acre Sugar Grove Naval Base in Sponaugle's home county when it is decommissioned this fall.
Sponaugle said the decision was "pure incompetence," "disgraceful," and that the citizens of his county had been "hoodwinked" by Tomblin.
On the surface, getting a $200 million facility, with offices, recreational facilities, housing, cafeterias, shop buildings, etc., for free seemed like a great present from Uncle Sam.
Pendleton Countians hoped Tomblin would give the go-ahead to convert part of the complex into a women's prison, replacing some of the 300 jobs that will be lost when the Naval Base closes.
However, Tomblin being the fiscal conservative he is, looked at the $19 million cost of converting the base into a prison, as well as the comparatively high costs to operate a prison in such a remote area.
(The Division of Corrections has plenty of experience having to temporarily reassign corrections officers to fill staffing shortages at Huttonsville and Mount Olive, including costs of picking up housing expenses, and those prisons are practically in urban locations compared to Sugar Grove.)
Tomblin was probably prudent to decide that after two years going on three of having to scrape and pinch, slash funding, sweep money out of accounts, and borrow from the Rainy Day Fund to get the state budget to balance, this was not the time for the state to take on a new multimillion-dollar expense.
(A good analogy would be if you won a giveaway for a $5 million, 20,000-square-foot mansion on a 50-acre estate. Your joy in receiving such a wonderful gift would quickly fade as you tried to keep up with enormous costs for utilities and maintenance, not to mention property taxes...)
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It was certainly timely that, after Tomblin turned down the offer to take possession of Sugar Grove, with its inventory of more than 100 buildings, a legislative audit released Sunday concluded that the Department of Administration has "an overextended stock of real property that it cannot properly maintain or operate."
The audit found the state has a number of properties in poor condition and in need of expensive (but unfunded) repairs, locally including the Greenbrooke Building (roof replacement), and One Davis Square (HVAC system).
Under the circumstances, probably not the best time to add the equivalent of a college campus to that inventory.
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A reader recently complained that during a visit to Mercer County, it seemed that all the highways in Senate President Bill Cole's home county had been repaved.
While the Division of Highways did not have a county-by-county breakdown of the $318 million of repaving projects approved this year, District 10 (including Mercer, Raleigh, McDowell and Wyoming counties) ranked sixth with 174.29 miles of roads slated for repaving, and was eighth in total cost, at $22.45 million.
District 4 in north-central West Virginia, including Monongalia, Harrison and Marion counties, has the most mileage slated for repaving, at 239.49 miles, while District 1 (Kanawha, Putnam, Boone, Clay and Mason counties) has the highest total budgeted cost at $50.23 million.
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Speaking of Highways, our not-too-overworked Legislature has returned from a three-month summer hiatus and is hosting its first legislative interim meetings since June.
Given the sharply truncated schedule of interim meetings, lawmakers today will be having their first public discussion of the recommendations of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Highways - nearly four months after the report was released.
Even then, the report is part of a Joint Committee on Finance agenda that also includes a Department of Revenue presentation to wrap up the 2014-15 state budget year. (The budget year actually ended 76 days ago, but without July or August meetings, this is the Legislature's first opportunity to review those figures.)
Legislative leaders sharply cut back interim meetings this year as a way to cut costs, but the question is whether the schedule has been compressed to the point of ineffectiveness.
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Finally, as I walked to the Capitol Friday (I try to walk to work on Fridays, weather permitting), I ran into longtime Charleston lawyer David Higgins, who was on his way to file his pre-candidacy papers for attorney general.
When I commented that I was surprised it took so long for a Democratic candidate to enter the race, Higgins pointed out there's actually a fairly small pool of potential candidates: The attorney general has to be a lawyer, of which there are about 7,000 in the state. Then, one has to be willing to accept a salary of $95,000, which Higgins said eliminates at least two-thirds of the field.
Beyond that, he said, one has to have a stomach for politics, and must also be prepared to relocate to Charleston if elected.
With those restrictions, Higgins surmised that there are probably no more than 250 lawyers in the entire state who would even consider running for the office.
Reach Phil Kabler at philk@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1220, or follow @PhilKabler on Twitter.