Published: August 03, 2008 12:33 am      

Road, bridge focus shifts to maintenance

CHARLESTON — State Transportation Secretary Paul Maddox confirmed for state legislators here last week what has been apparent to most West Virginians for months — shrinking federal highway funding has forced the Division of Highways to shift from construction of new roads and bridges to maintenance of those already in use.

He said federal money for highway construction in the state could be cut by as much as 30 percent in the next budget year while the Appalachian Regional Commission funds for new Appalachian Developmental Highway corridors is expected to drop from $85 million to $32 million this fall.

“We’re transforming the DOH into more of a maintenance organization to maintain our bridges and highways,” he told a joint House-Senate interim finance committee last Tuesday.

Attracting new firefighters to the ranks of West Virginia’s 400-plus volunteer fire departments along with adequate funding of their activities was another major issue on the agenda for lawmakers at the three days of monthly interim committee meetings that concluded here last Wednesday.

“The biggest problem the volunteer fire departments have right now is volunteers,” said Patti Hamilton, director of the West Virginia Association of Counties.

According to Doug Mongold of Moorefield, who is president of the state Firefighters Association, compensation is also now an issue.

“We want to look at a length-of-service plan,” he told legislators during a hearing here July 28. He said it would compensate volunteer firefighters with 20 years or more of service at some amount, perhaps $200 a month.

West Virginia currently has 424 volunteer fire departments compared to only 11 fulltime paid municipal fire departments in the larger towns like Charleston and Huntington.

Another legislative study group last week discussed the “dead zones” for cell phone service, particularly along portions of Interstate 79 between Charleston and Clarksburg. Delegate Brent Boggs, D-Braxton, said there is a significant gap in cell phone service in his county.

Byron Harris, who heads the consumer advocate division in the Public Service Commission, suggested several new tax possibilities to increase state funds for construction of additional cell phone towers to eliminate these “dead zones.” He said only $1 million a year is currently available and the cost of a single cell phone tower is about $500,000.

But most legislators objected to additional taxes. Sen. Karen Facemyer, R-Jackson, predicted a larger share of the $31 million realized from the $3-per-month state tax for cell phone users could be allocated to these towers after all the county emergency call centers are constructed. Right now those centers get $27 million annual compared to $1 million for the towers.

At another interim meeting, Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein said one of the reasons the state’s prisons are so crowded is that 127 current inmates have already been approved for parole but can’t be released because they have no acceptable “home plan” that indicates they have a place to live and some hope of a job.

He said eleven of these so-called “pocket parolees” have been eligible for release for more than a year.

In other legislative interim committee discussions last week:

• Industry and medical officials debated the merits of prescription data mining, described as a multibillion-dollar-a year industry, that enables drug companies to target individual physicians as prospective customers based on how much medicine they prescribe for patients.

An official of the American Medical Association told members of a joint Judiciary subcommittee that the AMA makes about $45 million a year selling its data base of all licensed doctors in the USA which is about 16 percent of that group’s total income. And a representative of the nation’s largest so-called “data mining” companies in the country, admitted under questioning by Sen. Dan Foster, D-Kanawha, that pharmaceutical companies make up the “vast majority” of his company’s $2.2 billion in annual revenue.

• Another legislative committee exploring the need for additional beds at the state’s two mental hospitals learned that West Virginia has an estimated 182,000 people who suffer from some kind of mental illness and another 152,000 with substance abuse problems.

Committee members also heard that 90 of the 240 beds at the two existing state mental hospitals in Huntington and Weston are reserved for “forensic patients” — those who face criminal charges but cannot go to trial for mental health reasons.

• Sonia Chambers, chairwoman of the state’s Health Care Authority, told legislators that states that require hospitals and other health-care facilities to get approval for major construction or medical equipment purchases enjoy lower health care costs and better patient outcomes than states without this regulatory agency.

The next round of interim committee meetings here at the State Capitol will begin on Sunday, Aug. 24 and continue through Tuesday, Aug. 26.