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Dr. Rezai and RNI are leading the way

There’s a common malapropism: “It’s not rocket surgery” — an often unintentional mashing of the idioms “It’s not rocket science” and “It’s not brain surgery.” What Dr. Ali Rezai and his team at WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute are doing looks a lot like rocket surgery: It combines cutting-edge technology with medical practices to treat brain disorders in ways that seemed only possible in science fiction. We’ve had stories about Rezai’s accomplishments previously, and you may have even seen WVU Medicine commercials touting his success. But Rezai and ...

Enforcing contracts can cut both ways

Here’s the thing about contract enforcement: It can be a double-edged sword. Republic Services will be enforcing the clause in the contract it negotiated with the City of Morgantown that allows it to raise rates this year. The $1.59 per month increase will hit residential customers starting Feb. 28. This is on top of a Public Service Commission-approved increase of $2.43, so customers will actually see a nearly $4 jump on their bill. Morgantown City Council wasn’t happy to hear that, and we’re sure Morgantown residents weren’t pleased, either, considering Republic has been ...

Even without full grant, electric bus a great deal

School boards across the state have been on an emotional rollercoaster this week as the federal government plays yo-yo with grant money for electric school buses. Multiple West Virginia counties thought they were going to get new zero-emission electric buses essentially for free, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency. And then the EPA re-evaluated its standards and decided nine West Virginia counties — including Monongalia County — weren’t rural enough to qualify for the grant program to buy the buses. And then three counties — Mon, Harrison and Mineral — had ...

The 2 best road bills

And 1 bad resolution Every West Virginia politician campaigns on fixing the roads, and yet every year, our Legislators fail to take any substantive action that would actually improve them. The problem is always complicated by the fact that there are four types of roads: city, county routes, state routes and U.S. routes — and you can have all four types running through any given municipality. Cities are in charge of maintaining city-owned roads; the state is responsible for maintaining all the rest. And the state has fallen far behind on its maintenance duties. There are two ...

W.Va. killed the death penalty 60 years ago — leave it dead

West Virginia Senate President Craig Blair is among the lawmakers clamoring to bring back the death penalty in the Mountain State, but doing so would be a bad idea. West Virginia abolished capital punishment in 1965, but the last execution was in 1959. According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, 94 men were put to death between 1899 and 1959 — in the early years by hanging and later by electric chair. Unsurprisingly, just under half of the men executed were Black, even though people of color made up less than 6% of the state’s population at the time. We’re not going to ...

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid 3

Good: SB 175 — updates offenses of extortion and attempted extortion. It specifically adds “or other thing of value” (understood to include sexual acts) to the list of things that, if threatened, would qualify as extortion. It also adds that “threaten[ing] to publish in any manner images of another person’s intimate body parts” to the list of acts that qualify as extortion. This bill passed the Senate and currently sits in House Judiciary. Based upon the discussion surrounding the bill, it sounds like lawmakers are targeting a specific phenomenon known as “sextortion” ...