Statehouse Beat: Morrisey's consolidation plan assaults rights of state workers

Now that the bills (HB 2008, SB 452) are working their way through the legislative process, we can see that Morrisey’s intent is not just to eliminate two cabinet secretaries and their executive staffs, but to launch a wholesale assault on the rights of state employees.

The legislation would eliminate civil service protections and grievance procedures for employees of the many agencies under the two consolidated departments. There currently are 18 different divisions under Commerce alone, including the Office of Miners Health and Safety, DNR, Forestry and WorkForce West Virginia.

While the bill contains a grandfather clause allowing current employees to retain civil service protections unless they’re transferred or promoted, the employees of the consolidated departments would eventually become will-and-pleasure employees, subject to dismissal without cause, and with no procedure in place to address workplace grievances.

While Morrisey general counsel Sean Whelan told legislators the provisions are not intended to cause a DOGE-like chainsaw purging of state employees, he also said, “This bill is an essential first step in right-sizing state government.�

Ironically, while the Trump administration is talking meritocracy (while appointing some of history’s most manifestly unqualified individuals to high-ranking positions), the state Code creating the civil service system (29-6-1) makes clear that its purpose is to “attract to the service of this state personnel of the highest ability and integrity by the establishment of a system of personnel administration based on merit.�

It goes on to say: “All appointments and promotions to positions of the classified service shall be made solely on the basis of merit and fitness.�

Whelan contended that will-and-pleasure employment creates a merit system of sorts, presumably since the prospect of being fired at a moment’s notice without cause provides incentive to perform one’s best.

“A lot of this is similar to what happens to West Virginians every day, West Virginians in the private sector don’t have these protections,� he told the House Government Organization Committee.

The Morrisey administration claims the legislation is intended to promote meritocracy, while in the same breath, it eliminates educational and experience requirements for a number of division directors in the consolidated cabinet departments.

The director of the state library section, for instance, would no longer have to have a master’s degree in library science (or a college degree at all, for that matter), nor would they be required to have at least three years of library management experience. Being a loyal member of the majority party would be qualification enough, I suppose. Having read a book might also be a plus.

Of course, civil service was created to end appointments based on patronage and nepotism, and to hire based on qualifications, not political allegiance.

While the bill won’t necessarily lead to widespread firings of state employees, it would certainly make such firings much easier to carry out.

And folks who believe there are too many state employees might rethink that opinion when that 20-minute wait at the DMV turns into two hours, or that income tax refund check doesn’t show up for months after April 15.

Civil service, and particularly the grievance system, is not perfect. But it’s better than no employee rights at all.

n n n

I don’t know if it constitutes waste, but one facet of state government that has grown exponentially during my tenure at the Capitol has been communications officers, or what used to be known as press secretaries.

When I started as a statehouse reporter some years ago, the only state official who had a press secretary was the governor.

Gaston Caperton may have inadvertently kicked off the explosion of PR hirings when — in addition to a press secretary — he hired a communications director, which led to my most memorable Third House punchline: “What’s the difference between a press secretary and a communications director? About $50,000 a year.�

For all the other statewide elected officers, a ranking deputy would handle media inquiries. During Darrell McGraw’s long tenure as attorney general, for example, chief deputy Fran Hughes was the go-to person for the media.

The House and Senate had no communications staff, with the respective clerk’s offices handling media inquiries.

Now, each statewide elected official has not just a press secretary, but entire communications offices with multiple staffers, while the House and Senate have full-time communications directors.

Perhaps that exponential expansion would make sense if the state press corps had grown commensurately, but sadly, that has not been the case.

When I started here, there were in the neighborhood of a dozen print reporters who covered state government full-time, between the AP, UPI, Gazette, Daily Mail, and papers in Huntington, Beckley and Morgantown. Today, if you exclude the quality reporting done by the online news services Mountain State Spotlight and West Virginia Watch, that number has dwindled to a few. Granted, today’s technology enables reporters to cover the Legislature and gubernatorial media conferences remotely, something that was impossible when I was starting out.

No, in these days of shrinking newsrooms for both print and broadcast media but an insatiable demand for content, the communications offices function as taxpayer-funded promotional services for the elected officials.

Surely, if it makes sense to cut government spending, this would be a logical place to start.

n n n

Schadenfreude is a German word that essentially means the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

I must say I experience a bit of schadenfreude every time a West Virginia voter begins to realize he or she made a terrible mistake on Nov. 7, and:

• Every time they see a neighbor, friend, or family member lose their government jobs, or see their government benefits cut.
• As the prices they pay for drugs like insulin soar tenfold with the repeal of Biden price caps, and as the price of staples like eggs and beef hit record highs, with not a finger lifted to attempt to curb runaway costs. And economists tell us that if widespread tariffs are imposed, costs for groceries and consumer goods will skyrocket.
• As they see their neighbors in flood-ravaged southern West Virginia suffer through interminable delay and indifference at the federal level as they waited for days on end for federal relief to finally arrive.
• As they experience anger and embarrassment from having their nation side with dictatorships like Russia, North Korea and Iran, while turning its back on longtime European allies in the United Nations.
• As they watch much-heralded and much-needed state economic development projects put into limbo because funding authorized by Biden’s Infrastructure and Jobs Act has been illegally frozen, immediately putting jobs for thousands of construction workers in jeopardy.
• As their health, welfare and safety are compromised via draconian cuts to agencies like the FAA, NIH and CDC.

And with Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans pressing forward with nine-figure cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP, not only may they witness fellow West Virginians suffering and even dying unnecessary deaths, but when state hospitals and grocery stores that rely on that revenue are forced to close, even those who didn’t directly receive those benefits will feel the pain.

Yes, every time a Trump supporter says, “This is not what I voted for,� I have to smile, because if they had been paying even the slightest bit of attention, they would have known this is exactly what they voted for. It was all spelled out in Project 2025.

Trump, who is constantly projecting, often retells the story of a woman who saves a poisonous snake from freezing and takes it home, only to have the snake turn around and inflict a fatal bite, telling the woman, “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.�

n n n

Finally, many thanks to the reader who, despite being “wholly retired� and on a fixed income, offered to help pay the $250 application fee for me to reapply for a Capitol building access card, after the card I had from day one of the installation of the electronic door lock system was deactivated following publication of a column that evidently was too critical of then-Gov. Jim Justice.

Although I certainly appreciate the kind offer, for now I think I’ll stick with having to go through security checkpoints to enter the Capitol. If I were still coming to the Capitol five days a week, 48 weeks a year, I would not hesitate to apply for an access card.

Now that my schedule at the Capitol is less than full-time and closer to Big Jim-time, I question whether it would be worth my time and money. After all, $250 would cover the costs of a night at a nice hotel during one of my rail excursions, or a couple dozen eggs.