By Stephen Smoot
Pendleton County is nestled at the eastern edge of one of the largest and most challenging state legislative districts anywhere. The 11th Senate District covers all of Pendleton, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Randolph, Upshur, and Webster counties,as well as parts of Grant.
As of January, Robbie Morris will take his place alongside Bill Hamilton as one of two state senators from this district
Morris’s personal and professional roots in the district run deep. He worked with his father in a consulting firm, then in 2011 became the Randolph County Economic Development Authority executive director. He has also applied his efforts and expertise to service with the Hardwood Alliance Zone, the state broadband council, and as chair of the Corridor H Authority.
He must step down from the broadband council with it being a state executive branch position.
When it comes to the upcoming Legislative session, Morris states that “a lot of that is going to depend on what Governor-Elect Morrisey does.” Morrisey has shared ideas on reducing regulatory and tax burdens on businesses in West Virginia with the intention of directly competing with neighboring states.
A more unknown factor will be the next Senate president, who also serves as the Constitutional Lieutenant Governor. The hard-charging Craig Blair lost his race for re-election. The top three contenders for the leadership position are finance chairman Eric Tarr of Putnam County, Majority Leader Tom Takubo of Kanawha County, and energy chairman Randy Smith from neighboring Tucker County.
Senate leadership and Morrisey will undoubtedly bring some focus to the major shortfalls coming up in the budget of the Public Employee’s Insurance Agency. Premium hikes have offset salary increases, especially with state teachers. Morris says that “a lot of these different topics,” which include education, the HOPE Scholarship, homeschooling, and education “are going to come down to the budget.”
Many counties also face serious and mounting arrears in the bills they pay to send and keep prisoners in the state regional jail system. He states that a way needs to be found to help the counties facing the most serious problems.
Morris will keep a lot of focus on his field of expertise. He indicated he wants to keep “making sure that West Virginia can continue to be in the game” of attracting investment and developing economic growth.
And West Virginia has surged ahead of many states just in the past year. Morris explained that “the amount of investment in the last 12 months has equaled that of the previous four years.” This includes Nucor’s $3 billion steel production complex near Point Pleasant in Mason County. He said that level of success comes from “getting aggressive and getting serious” about selling the state as a superior business environment.
Part of that comes from the tremendous effort of state and local economic development officials and entities. Outside businesses appreciate officials “being helpful” and “not bogging down new programs in regulatory red tape.”
He added that economic development also requires more work to develop and increase the state’s active workforce. That includes skills training programs to help older adults qualify for better paying jobs and trades education for young people to get them ready to earn large salaries while some of their peers are still in college.
Challenges to bringing that economic development success to the entire state start first with those created by uneven infrastructure development and the related problems of topography.
Many communities struggle to maintain and upgrade basic services, such as water and sewer. Morris noted that Elkins still must rely in part on terra cotta pipes in its network. Other areas have “antiquated water plants and over capacity sewer plants.” The distinctions within the 11th Senate District can appear quite stark because some parts of it benefited from Chesapeake Bay funding to upgrade facilities.
He explained that many parts of the district lack access to public water and still rely on wells. This includes important facilities, such as the Pendleton County emergency management and state police building. Helping public service districts to maintain and expand service will be important to Morris.
A local concern that received a great deal of attention from local emergency management officials also has Morris’s attention. While the state had a winning idea to create suggested “routes” of travel for tourists, these routes also have heavy and growing truck traffic. Getting “the DoH [Department of Highways] to fix Allegheny Mountain is very important,” he said, referring to the dangerous curves on US 33’s eastern slope in Pendleton County.
Rick Gillespie, emergency services coordinator, has repeatedly blasted double sized guardrails on the worst of the curves as insufficient.
Morris also plans to support efforts to expand high speed broadband internet in the state. Obtaining the match for the BEDE federal funding plan for the state is another step toward more expansion. He shared that expansion of the service will boost the number of high tech jobs while opening opportunities for construction and use of data centers, such as the one being developed in Petersburg by Continent 8.
