Published: February 08, 2008 08:28 pm         

Counties eye bills currently before state Legislature

The county commissioners of West Virginia’s 55 counties are active in reviewing and supporting or opposing some specific bills currently before the state Legislature.

There are two organizations to which commissioners belong, one is the West Virginia Association of Counties and the other is the County Commissioners Association of West Virginia and, as organizations, they are often not in agreement but sometimes, as in the case of the newly established state insurance pool, they are.

County commissioners in Grant, Hardy and Mineral counties recently attended a meeting of the County Commissioners Association at which legislative briefing notes were presented.

I’m not exactly sure which of these bills are being supported but I found them interesting in terms of how they might affect the general public.

The issues that most concern the county officials are those that are likely to mandate spending that is not covered by revenue, while others deal with jurisdictional issues.

In the latter category, municipal annexation has caused something of a stir. The Municipal League has a fair amount of clout with its lobbying efforts and counties are concerned that municipal annexation has become a little too easy to accomplish.

Two house bills would curtail that ability. One would establish a minimum of 150 feet of contiguity for annexation by minor boundary adjustment, a minimum of 40 people to petition for annexation without election and any freeholder who owns 25 acres or more could opt out of any annexation.

The other would require county commissions to review the record of proceedings to ensure that they were conducted pursuant to law and that the territory to be annexed is contiguous with current municipal boundaries.

One of the biggest concerns of county officials statewide is the increasing costs of maintaining inmates in the state’s regional jails. In an effort to reduce these costs to counties, there are a number of bills in both the house and senate that might address the problem.

One is cost sharing with arresting entities and another is a requirement that prisoners on work release be required to pay 50 percent of the per diem cost, currently at about $48 per day per inmate.

A bill that would allow county commissions to pay bail bonds, not to exceed $500, for people charged with crimes who do not have the means to pay their bond is a bit over the top for me. At $500, that would amount to about 10 days in jail the county would have still have to pay. Don’t think I like that one.

Another bill calls for a uniform bail schedule by magistrates. I’m not sure what that entails or how it would impact the costs.

One that does make sense is a bill that would allow the proration of the per diem charges for less than 24 hours. Under the current system, regardless of whether the inmate is in the regional jail for two hours during a 24 hour period or the full 24, the county is charged for the full day.

Two other bills address taxes on alcohol, 35 percent on the sale consumed in private clubs and an excise on beer, wine and liquor dedicated to regional jail costs. The theory behind these, of course, is that many of the crimes for which people are incarcerated are alcohol-related.

The legislature is also looking at tax-related bills that could increase homestead exemptions, cap property tax rates and/or increases, increase the assessment of managed timberland while providing for a tax on the sale or transfer of such land. A separate senate bill would study managed timberland.

Other bills call for the merging of emergency services and fire service boards, constitutional amendments to increase the sheriffs’ term limits and increase legislators terms of office, address issues relating to zoning, changing the closing hours of private clubs to 2 a.m.

While some of these bills may save the county officials money in their budgets, which are intended to serve the public good, there probably should be a closer look at them by taxpayers whose budgets would also likely see an impact.

Contact Mona Ridder at mridder@times-news.com.