Business, Government Legal News from throughout WVArmstead takes issue with Component of WV OPEB bill

The West Virginia House of Delegates engaged in a lively debate concerning the Senate-passed OPEB bill during the Feb. 8 floor session.

The Senate passed Senate Bill 469 Feb. 1 to pay off the state's other post employment benefit liability. House Republicans offered several amendments Feb. 8 to remove language they say "doesn't solve the problem." Minority Leader Tim Armstead, R-Kanawha," said he had three concerns with the bill and proposed what's known as a "strike and insert" amendment to address those issues

"The reason I'm approaching it as a strike and insert amend is because there are provisions of this bill that are very much ones that all of us — Republicans and Democrats — can agree on and believe we should move forward with," he told the House. "But I believe that as this bill has moved through the various groups and various interests that it has in fact become a Christmas tree. It has gathered different provisions that I believe have little to do with the goal we're trying to accomplish in relation to our OPEB issues."

One of Armstead's biggest issues with the bill is Section D, which gives 12 guidelines as to how the director of the Public Employees Insurance Agency should administer and evaluate programs and "adopt effective industry programs that can manage the long-term effectiveness and costs for the programs at the Public Employees Insurance Agency." But Armstead said that provision does not address the real issue.

"Section D has nothing to do with the funding source for OPEB," he said. "It is a long list — a laundry list — of issues that have been portrayed as cost containment issues. If you read down that list, you would find within that list there are tremendous, significant public policy statements that we are saying the Legislature is adopting and directing, in many cases, the PEIA board to take. These are not just recommendations. If you look at the language of this provision, you are making public policy decisions in this section I don't think have any place in this OPEB bill."

Armstead, an opponent of President Barack Obama's health care reform, said the bill is an attempt to implement reform at the state level.

"Make no mistake about it, the federal health care bill is implicated in these provisions," Armstead said. "Many of these provisions are similar, and I believe are a step in implementing those provisions at the state level."

But Armstead also takes issue with the constitutionality of the bill, which aims to allow the state to take over county liabilities. According to language in the bill, the state can't create new liabilities.

"We're basically trying to say, in this bill, that we're not creating a new liability in the state, yet the constitution says we can't take over other liabilities, and that if we take over it has to be a pre-existing liability of the state," he said. "We can't have it both ways. We can't say its not a state liability in one area and yet say the state constitution allows us to do it."

"We have a constitutional question created by this bill," he added.

Armstead's amendment was rejected 32-67, mostly along party lines.