I still find it remarkable that some politicians believe one of the most critical issues facing the state is to pass legislation regulating who may use which restrooms - a "controversy" that has seemingly emerged out of thin air.
A search of "transgender" and "restrooms" in the Gazette archives from 1985 through 2014 came up with exactly two "hits," the earliest being a 2009 AP article about conservatives vowing to fight a Gainesville, Florida, ordinance adding gender identity to the city's anti-discrimination law.
Meanwhile, going through the entire electronic archives of the Gazette and Daily Mail dating back to January 1985 yielded not a single news article from anywhere in the country of any incident where a pedophile had posed as transgender in order to gain access to women's or girls' restrooms - the threat that supposedly must be dealt with.
When I first got to the Statehouse in 1990, the main issue that conservatives saw as the scourge to the moral fabric of society and a threat to destroy the morality of the country was pornography. Of course, the battle to ban pornography had been ongoing for many years before 1990, but when I arrived on the scene the focus was on the relatively new technology of videotape machines.
The VCR allowed pornography to move from sketchy movie theaters and storefront adult novelty stores to America's living rooms, and politicians, state and local, took it upon themselves to eradicate this threat to society.
It was not uncommon to read about local law enforcement around the state using the auspices of a state anti-pornography law to raid video rental stores for offering X-rated and sometimes even R-rated movies.
The Legislature spent copious amounts of time on issues such as requiring strippers in nightclubs to wear G-strings and pasties to mandating warning stickers on videos that did not have motion picture ratings - never mind that the bulk of those direct-to-video offerings are children's programming.
(In the 1996 governor's race, Republican PACs used then-Sen. Charlotte Pritt's no vote on the latter bill in smear campaign ads claiming she supported giving X-rated videos to children.)
Over time, though, efforts to ban pornography seemingly faded away in the Legislature.
The last great stand against pornography was probably then-Gov. Cecil Underwood's Child Protection and Family Act bill of 1999, which among other things, would have made "nude dancing in public places" a criminal offense. Presumably intended to sway the religious right in Underwood's 2000 reelection bid, it died on the last night of the session as many legislators questioned its constitutionality.
Obviously, pornography didn't disappear. Just the opposite - it proliferated to the point where any attempt to restrict it on a state level became absurd: First, with adult pay-per-view channels on satellite TV, then on cable systems; then came the Internet, and the floodgates were opened with thousands of porn and adult entertainment sites on-line.
Over time, once it became clear any attempt to ban or regulate pornography was futile, politicians simply dropped it as an issue.
Looking back, we can wonder whether those politicians were sanctimoniously exploiting voters' fears or biases to get votes. I suspect, 20 years from now, we'll be saying the same about the transgender restroom bills.
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One of the all-time lowlights of wasteful state spending came in 2007, when the state paid to send 29 officials - including then-Gov. Joe Manchin, chief of staff Larry Puccio, Insurance Commissioner Jane Cline, and 26 legislators - to the Council of State Governments' spring meeting at the El Conquistador resort in Puerto Rico, giving West Virginia the largest delegation at the conference, larger even than the host, which had 23 representatives.
In that light, kudos are in order to House and Senate leadership, who advised legislators prior to the Southern Legislative Conference annual meeting earlier this month in Lexington, Kentucky, that the Legislature will not be reimbursing conference expenses this year.
Four legislators - Sens. Mark Maynard, R-Wayne, and Dave Sypolt, R-Preston; and Delegates Gary Howell, R-Mineral, and Woody Ireland, R-Ritchie - attended at their own expense.
Also, Hank Hager, longtime Senate Education Committee counsel, presented the annual comparative data report on education, with his expenses paid by the SLC.
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Among the comments regarding last week's column comparing our budget with sister state Nebraska, including pointing out that the difference in population between the two states is about 20,000, not 200,000 as I wrote, Kirk Brandfass asked why there was no breakdown by percentage of salary levels for West Virginia state employees.
In fact, I'm advised that West Virginia does not provide a comparable percentage breakdown, although one could conceivably compile those figures from the auditor's annual Total Compensation Report. Safe to say, however, that more than 4 percent of West Virginia state employees have salaries of $25,000 or less.
Brandfass also questioned why Nebraska does not count employees of the University of Nebraska and it's state colleges as state employees.
I surmised that's probably so the list of highest paid state employees is not cluttered up with football and basketball coaches, assistant coaches and athletic directors.
(Given space limitations, I'll have more reaction to the Nebraska comparison next week.)
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Finally, I don't want to waste much ink on the latest in a series of embarrassing debacles by Delegate Mike Folk, R-Berkeley, except to remind legislators of Article 6, Section 25 of the state Constitution: "Each house may punish its own members for disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two thirds of the members elected thereto, expel a member."
Reach Phil Kabler at philk@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1220, or follow @PhilKabler on Twitter.