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Editorial

Warner’s ‘secret’ and ‘nefarious’ meeting

Secretary of State Mac Warner claims “there was nothing secret or nefarious about” the February meeting of select Republican top election officials hosted by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think tanks.  Then why did Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Heritage and one of the event’s moderators and presenters, tell a Texas official, “This is not a public event. It is a private, confidential meeting of the secretaries. I would rather you not send out a press release about it.”   “Confidential,” by the way, means “secret.” So ...

Sen. Capito is right: Emergency mental health care needs help

We may not always see eye-to-eye with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, but we wholly agree with her that emergency mental health care needs reform, and we applaud her bipartisan legislation, the Improving Mental Health Access from the Emergency Department Act.  The bill, which she cosponsors with Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), would create a grant program for emergency departments (EDs) to help acquire more resources or connect with local psychiatric services to help people who come to the emergency room while experiencing a mental health crisis.  As we reported earlier this ...

Are May primaries the perfect time for city elections?

Elections are still on our minds, with Morgantown’s council election just last week and Westover’s recent announcement it intends to move the town’s municipal election to coincide with May primaries. Star City recently voted to put its future elections on the county’s primary ballot as well. (Even though voters will be going to the polls in May, it will still be the towns’ “general” election.)  Westover and Star City seem to be moving in the right direction, and we hope Morgantown will follow suit.   The City of Morgantown made a huge push — and invested ...

Council and a manager or a mayor?

We would like to thank everyone who participated in our survey from last Sunday. We received 26 responses and eight comments. Only one person chose to have their response be considered for a letter to the editor, but we’ll share some of our other respondents’ thoughts.  (A quick disclaimer: This was not a scientifically sound survey, so it shouldn’t be taken as representative of all Morgantown city residents.)  A slight majority (15 of 26, or roughly 58%) of respondents favored a mayor-council structure of city government. One person said they used to live in ...

There shouldn’t be a special session for jail staffing crisis

There should not be a special session to address the jail staffing crisis.  We don’t say this because we don’t support our state’s corrections officers. We say this because legislators shouldn’t be rewarded for failing to do their jobs.  The West Virginia Division of Corrections has been in an official State of Emergency for almost nine months, but the state’s jails and prisons have been in crisis mode for much longer.  Last week, William Marshall, commissioner of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told members of the Oversight Committee on ...

If Mon Power buys Pleasants, only the shareholders win

“So when the company makes money the profit all goes to the stockholders and management, but when they lose money (by not investing in new tech) they want bailout cash from ‘the little people?’ I don’t think so.”   The anonymous comment above, submitted to the Public Service Commission in regard to Mon Power purchasing the Pleasants Power Station, sums it up nicely.  The story begins all the way back in August 2022, when Mon Power and sister company Potomac Edison (both subsidiaries of FirstEnergy) approached the Public Service Commission for an almost $184 ...