(Reporter's Notebook by Steven Allen Adams - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Today is the deadline for bills to be introduced in the West Virginia Senate. As of Sunday, we are now two-thirds of the way through the 60-day legislative session with less than three full weeks left.

We’re also just over a week until Crossover Day, when bills must be passed by the body they started in and be sent to the opposite body in order to have any chance of completing the legislative process before the clock strikes midnight on Saturday, April 12, when the Legislature adjourns sine die.

While things have been slow up to this point, expect things to start speeding up. The House and Senate are likely to start meeting twice per day in order to keep the calendar moving to ensure bills make it to Crossover Day. Also expect those pesky originating bills – bills that come directly from the committees themselves – to begin popping up like annoying weeds.

As of Friday, 2,376 bills have been introduced in the Legislature (1,497 bills in the House and 879 bills introduced in the Senate). Of the 879 Senate bills, 101 have crossed over to the House at this point, or 11%. In the House, 102 bills have crossed over to the Senate, or nearly 7% of the 1,497 House bills passed to date.

Only 17 bills have completed the legislative process and of those, only five have been signed into law by Gov. Patrick Morrisey.

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It had been rumored that Senate Bill 460, Morrisey’s bill to codify his executive order allowing for religious and philosophical exemptions to the state’s compulsory school-age immunization schedule, was in trouble.

After a hearing on the bill in the House Health and Human Resources back in February, the bill sat in the committee for nearly two-and-a-half weeks. But when it emerged last Tuesday, the religious and philosophical exemptions were removed. Instead, the committee eased the ability to receive a medical exemption to school-age vaccines – still concerning for some but arguably better for some lawmakers than the full-on religious and philosophical exemptions.

But the good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away. On Friday, after more than two-and-a-half hours of debate after 10 amendments had been introduced, the House adopted a secondary amendment to the committee’s strike-and-insert amendment that put back in the religious exemption, though it also allowed private and parochial schools to set their own vaccine policies.

Expect much of today’s House floor session to be taken up with debate on SB 460 itself, which is on third reading. If it passes, the Senate will still need to concur with the changes the House made, reject those changes, or make further amendments. Then the ping-pong game begins.

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State Sen. Rupie Phillips, R-Logan, criticized Morrisey on the floor of the Senate last week, upset that either the governor or a representative of the Governor’s Office didn’t participate in a meeting Phillips was trying to organize with representatives of the Public Service Commission and electric utilities to discuss ways to reduce rates and the burdens on customers.

“The gentleman from New Jersey chose to not meet with the group of people I wanted to meet with; he said only one-on-one, so I said no,” Phillips said. “I think we’re stronger if we come in together and look at this as a whole so everybody’s on the same message.”

“The gentleman from New Jersey” is a reference to Morrisey himself, who grew up in the Garden State. This is the second time a lawmaker has used this term to refer to Morrisey. The first was House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, though Del. Scot Heckert, R-Wood, has used the term “the man from New Jersey” on the House floor.

Alex Lanfranconi, Morrisey’s communications director, took to X (formerly Twitter) to clap back at Phillips.

“The gentleman from Logan was a Democrat through the entire Obama Administration,” Lanfranconi said. “If anyone is out of place in the conservative state of West Virginia, it sure as hell isn’t the Governor.”

The next day, Phillips took to the Senate floor again, referring to Lanfranconi as “Florida pool boy,” a reference to Lanfranconi being a native Floridian who was previously an assistant communications director for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before taking the communications director job with Morrisey.

It’s probably worth pointing out that until January 2021, the voter registration in this state was majority Democratic and many Democratic voters in this state a decade ago are now Republicans. In fact, many voters who remain registered with the Democratic Party often vote Republican, especially in Southern West Virginia.

Even our former governor won as a Democrat in 2016 before switching parties in 2017. So, pointing out that a Republican lawmaker was once a Democrat is not quite the slam in this state as one might think. Many voters are former Democrats here.

Also, during the 2024 Republican primary for governor, Logan County went to Huntington businessman Chris Miller, with former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Moore Capito coming in second and Morrisey coming in third with just 25% of the primary vote. Morrisey also came in third in Lincoln County, a slight second in Boone County, and third in Kanawha County (a slither of southern Kanawha County is in the 7th Senatorial District that Phillips represents).

Phillips fries bologna every Wednesday from his Capitol office. If he knows how to dish it, he probably also knows how to take it.

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com