Jefferson County lost a truly fine citizen with the death of Dale Manuel a couple of weeks ago.
I served with Dale for 12 years in the House of Delegates, from 1992 until 2004. We worked together on many ideas to make West Virginia and Jefferson County better, and brought some of them to ...
This election year might prove to be an unusual one, at least for Jefferson County offices. We might have elections for four of our five county commissioners.
County commissioners in West Virginia serve six-year terms. Most counties in our state have three commissioners, but Jefferson and ...
On Dec. 12, I filed pre-candidacy papers to run for the West Virginia State Senate. The Shepherdstown Chronicle is graciously permitting me to continue this column.
The 16th Senatorial District covers all of Jefferson County and a bit less than half of Berkeley County. Senator Patricia Rucker ...
Fifteen years ago, many citizens of Jefferson County rallied together against a proposal to construct a high-tension electric line through the county.
The Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) was advocated for by power companies, who said it would be needed for the nation’s ...
The West Virginia Division of Highways (DOH) announced two years ago that a portion of U.S. Route 340 would be closed for a three-month period, which finally began on September 12.
The now-closed part of Route 340 is along the southeast side of the Shenandoah River at Harpers Ferry (the part ...
Shepherd University will close its Martinsburg Center in December.
This saddens me. Full disclosure, I worked with Shepherd 10 years ago to establish the center, for three reasons.
Courses were to be taught in a “hybrid” manner (some in-person classwork, some online work), which would ...
The West Virginia Public Service Commission (PSC) recently permitted West Virginia American Water, Inc. (WVAW) to purchase several private water utilities in Jefferson County for $27 million.
This is an outrage. The PSC’s Consumer Advocate valued the utilities at a combined $14 million. The ...
“PILOT,” in governmentspeak, means “payment in lieu of taxes.” It’s a big financial giveaway by a state or local government to a company to persuade (some say bribe) that company to locate jobs within that government’s jurisdiction.
PILOTs usually mean the elimination or major ...
Our state is woefully short of corrections officers in our prisons and jails, due primarily to our parsimonious approach to paying them.
The Legislature considered a plan to increase the pay of correctional employees in its 2023 Regular Session, but punted. The plan wasn’t very good, but it ...
The West Virginia Legislature completed its 2023 Regular Session on March 11. I rate the session a disaster, but not as big of a disaster as I first feared.
Much of the session was spent on social issues. A lot of time was spent discussing bills penalizing women and LGBTQ+ people. While some ...