Mountain State Spotlight, Beckley Register-Herald – West Virginia’s historic Republican supermajority came into the 2023 session with the power to pass any bill they wanted, and bold plans to tackle some of the state’s most ambitious issues.
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“Everybody’s always excited and optimistic about everything that goes on on day one,” Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, told MetroNews on that first day of the session. “There’s 31 out of 34 [Republicans] right now. A mega-majority, a super-duper majority is what you would call them, so a lot of this work can be done in advance and be able to be managed.”
While parts of that agenda were accomplished — like tax cuts, creating 2,500 teachers’ aide positions and dividing the Department of Health and Human Resources — many of the state’s most pressing issues fell to the wayside as divisions emerged and threatened some of their most ambitious plans (to illustrate, only eight of those 25 bills passed out of the Senate on the first day will become law).
