West Virginia Senate President Randy Smith envisions era of legislative collaboration with Morrisey

• Senate President Smith will emphasize teamwork among the Senate, House and Gov.-elect Morrisey for effective governance.
• Smith plans to avoid fast-tracking bills, favoring thorough committee processes to ensure transparency.
• The Senate will not make any dramatic change to its committee structure as the House did, according to Smith

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WV News) — Recently elected West Virginia Senate President Randy Smith is looking forward to a new era of cooperation and collaboration between the Legislature and the governor’s office.

Smith, a former coal miner and a Republican who has represented Tucker County since 2017, said the Senate, West Virginia House of Delegates and Gov.-elect Patrick Morrisey plan to work as a united team.

“We’re going to make a good effort to work together and meet on a regular basis,” he said. “I believe going forward, we’re going to know what the governor is going to do and the governor is going to know what we’re going to be doing.”

Taking over the role of Senate president from Sen. Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, Smith inherits a chamber almost entirely comprised of Republicans. There are now just two Democrats in the 34-member Senate, and just nine Democrats in the 100-member House.

He hopes to have also a congenial working relationship with House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, Smith said.

“I won’t be throwing him any curveballs, he won’t be throwing me any curveballs and we won’t be throwing the governor any curveballs,” he said. “And he won’t be throwing us any curveballs.”

Morrisey, in one his first press conferences following November’s election, described a scenario in which his office and lawmakers would agree to package of bills that could swiftly be passed at the beginning of the 60-day lawmaking session.

“Could you imagine if we could get the first 20 bills agreed to with the governor, the House and the Senate? That’s the kind of approach that I’d like to do,” he said.

He doesn’t see that scenario playing out when the session begins on Feb. 12, Smith said.

“No, we don’t plan on doing that,” he said. “Because what we’ve found is a lot of those bills that we did that to — suspended the rules, send them over the House and have the House send them over to us — they end up dying in session anyways.”

The Senate will focus more on “priority bills,” Smith said.

“And run everything through the process,” he said. “Everything will go through the committee process so we can let the people vet everything, have transparency and let the members and the public know exactly the bills do before we pass them out.”

Hanshaw recently announced changes to the House committee process that will be in place for this year’s session. Instead of the 20 standing committees the House had previously, there will now be six major committees and a host of subcommittees. Additionally, a step-by-step, three-day structure for considering bills in committee will be in place.

The Senate won’t be adopting a similar structure, but the new changes make sense for the House, Smith said.

“You have to realize that the House has 100 members over there,” he said. “It’s a whole different beast than what we have in the Senate. We’ve got 34 (members), and we’re going to keep our committee process the same.”

Morrisey has said among his top priorities as governor will be to “repurpose and right-size government.”

The details of the governor’s efficiency plans and budget priorities will be worked out in the weeks ahead, Smith said.

“We’re going to be meeting several times to see what his agenda is and what our agenda is going to be,” he said. “I think what he’s wanting to do is — we have agencies that are sort of duplicating each other, doing the same things. I can’t speak for the governor, but I’m assuming it’s trying to be more a efficient process and seeing where there is waste.”