Several West Virginia efforts to pass ethics legislation failed, one that did pass was vetoed

By HENRY CULVYHOUSE/Mountain State Spotlight Mountain State Spotlight

One bill in West Virginia could’ve required lobbyists to reveal how much special interests and corporations pay them to convince lawmakers to vote their way.

Another bill would’ve stopped energy company executives from walking immediately from their industry posts to the Public Service Commission, the body that regulates those companies.

The “Say No to Good Old Boy Governance” amendment would’ve stopped elected state officials from appointing their relatives to positions of power.

But lawmakers during the 2025 Legislative session killed nearly a dozen ethics bills like these, part of a trend that a ProPublica investigation found in statehouses across the country.

One West Virginia bill did go places, only to be scuttled in the end.

SB 745 would have required the Ethics Commission to make it easier for the public to look up lobbyist information on its website, made lobbyists disclose how much they get paid advocating for companies and special interest groups and prohibited lobbyists from making campaign donations.

The bill would have also required lobbyists to file monthly reports during the 60-day regular legislative session. Currently, those reports, which detail when lobbyists wine and dine lawmakers, are filed a month after lawmakers have gone home.

Then-state Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, was the lead sponsor of the bill.

Stuart, who was confirmed recently as general counsel to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said when he became Senate judiciary chair, lobbying reform was one of his top priorities.

West Virginia has some of the least transparent lobbying laws in the country, according to a 2021 study by OpenSecrets. While 33 states require lobbyists working in state legislatures to disclose how much they make advocating for their clients, West Virginia is not one of them.

“I believe the public, who doesn’t have a lobbyist, deserves to know who’s being paid, how much are they being paid, and who’s paying for pieces of legislation to pass and to be presented in the legislature,” Stuart said.

But Stuart’s bill faced criticism, even in his own committee.

Sen. Scott Fuller, R-Wayne, said he was concerned changes could put limits on free speech. Sen. Anne Charnock, R-Kanawha, didn’t like lobbyists having to disclose their pay, stating lawyers don’t have to publish their rates.

And Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said he was concerned that the bill would make it harder for candidates to raise funds. He said the best way to ensure a level playing field for candidates — who have more restrictions on how much they can raise than some political action committees — is to allow unlimited money in elections.

But despite the misgivings, the bill made it to the Senate floor. But on April 1, without public debate or discussion, the Senate voted 22-11 to send the bill to the Rules Committee, where it stayed to die at midnight on the last day of session.

Stuart said while he tried to work with lobbyists to come up with a bill that was fair, not everyone was happy.

“They love killing this stuff in the dark,” he said.

But the vote to rules didn’t kill it there.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha and state Democratic chairperson, tried to amend most of Stuart’s proposals into a separate ethics bill. The move was ruled “not germane” — meaning, it was off-topic — by House Speaker Roger Hanshaw.

Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, tried to incorporate the website changes found in Stuart’s bill into yet another ethics bill.

“I tried to pull out the things that we could all agree on into the bill that I tried to do,” she said. “And those things are basically transparency.”

That bill, HB 2120, passed both chambers and landed on Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s desk. Morrisey vetoed it, citing concerns from the Ethics Commission that the bill would strain the agency budget.

“The intent of this bill is undoubtedly a noble one, but the inadvertent consequences are too great,” he wrote in his veto message.

In the upcoming year, Rucker said she hopes that lawmakers will put more money into the Ethics Commission to cover the cost of an updated website.

After being confirmed to the Trump administration, Stuart used his Senate resignation letter to make one last pitch for stronger lobbying rules.

“As I depart the state Senate, I caution you and my fellow state senators against the undue and often corruptive influence of the ‘lobbyist driven complex,’ an alliance of special interest, hired brokers and power elites that exhibit far too much influence under the ‘Golden Dome,'” Stuart wrote.

He added, “It does matter who is paying and who is getting paid to pass good and bad legislation.”

___

This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.