CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State legislatures are ready to make a final push on several proposals as the legislative session comes to a close.
With less than three days left in the session, Monongalia County Senator Mike Oliverio offered an update on WAJR’s Talk of the Town on Thursday regarding what he expects to see heading to Governor Patrick Morrissey’s desk in the coming days. With full floor sessions scheduled for both the West Virginia House of Delegates and the West Virginia Senate in the closing days, Oliverio is ready to see several bills move forward and be put to rest.
“We’ve been working on the budget now, really since day one of the session, the other really important bill deals with this concept of microgrids,” said Oliverio.
First and foremost, Oliverio hopes that no snags take place over in the House of Delegates after an official state budget was passed by the House late Thursday night. The $5.323 billion budget included a $36 million allocation to a personal income tax reduction reserve fund, $50 million in spending if the year ends with a surplus on an economic development loan program, and $50 million in potential surplus for roads. With the House working into overdrive with sessions taking place deep into the night in the closing days of the session, Oliverio expects that no special session will be needed to pass a budget despite the tight deadline.
“You know West Virginia runs on about $19 billion, $5 billion of that is directly appropriated by the legislature, we’re just wrestling the details of that,” said Oliverio.
On the Senate side, a bill focused on power generation and consumption to support economic development was another priority pointed out by Oliverio. House Bill 2014, which delegates passed in a wide margin last week, would allow for developers, particularly data centers, to harness localized, self-sufficient energy systems while introducing a certified microgrid program and a high-impact data center program. With Governor Morrisey heavily advocating for the bill to be passed, Oliverio expects the Senate to make sure it reaches the Governor’s desk for signature.
“West Virginia could be very attractive to companies that want to build data centers,” said Oliverio. “These are really necessary to a lot of organizations around the country and around the globe.”
With the 2025 Legislative Session scheduled to close at midnight Saturday, both the House of Delegates and the State Senate are expected to be working into overdrive to pass several pieces of legislation. With the budget officially passing the House on Thursday, legislation focused on state vaccine mandates as well as numerous regionally based bills are expected to be heavily discussed in the closing days of the session. With dozens of bills expected to be discussed over the next two days, Oliverio hopes that H.B. 2014 is among them.
“We could wake up 5 years from now and we could have data centers in Monongalia and in Marion, so we want to get the appropriate revenue for the local counties,” said Oliverio. “But we also want to structure it in such a way that somebody who is thinking about building one of these data centers says, ‘Boy, West Virginia is the place we want to go.”