By Matthew Young
For the Charleston Gazette-Mail
The second half of the two-year 87th West Virginia legislative session got underway Wednesday, with 565 bills introduced in the House and Senate.
Also on the first day, House of Delegates members adopted resolutions to govern the proceedings of the upcoming 60-day session.
Introduced and briefly debated by Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, House Resolution 1, addresses the manner in which a bill is discharged from committee. Under the terms of HR 1, when a legislative proposal has been in the possession of its assigned committee for five days after referral, the proposal may be summarily discharged by a majority vote of that committee.
An amendment to the resolution, proposed by Delegate Chris Anders, R-Berkeley, sought to require any discharge motion- vote to record the “yeas and nays,” ensuring “transparency” in the voting process.
House Majority Leader Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, rose in opposition of the amendment, saying, “Suck it up, and do what I did, man,” referring to the “hard work” he put into lobbying fellow lawmakers to vote as he did.
The amendment was ultimately defeated.
Request for video recording of House proceedings voted down
In what has become opening-day tradition in the House of Delegates, Delegate Kayla Young , D-Kanawha, proposed an amendment requiring all House floor sessions and committee meetings be video recorded and archived for the duration of the current session. Young has introduced this proposal as an amendment to the House Rules Resolution on the first day of each session during her tenure in office.
McGeehan once again rose in opposition, saying, “This has nothing to do with transparency. It’s what people [who] have a competitive soul — because they’re chasing their appetites — really like. Get that video of yourself, and you might watch it 800 times,” McGeehan added. “In my opinion, it has nothing to do with transparency. We already cover transparency through all the audio recordings.”
As with previous years, Young’s amendment was defeated. HR 1 as a whole, however, was unanimously adopted.
The 2026 Legislative Session will run through March 14. Gov. Patrick Morrisey delivered his second State of the State address Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. to a joint session in the House of Delegates chamber.
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