MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — An already historic year in West Virginia is almost certainly going to get even more noteworthy in the coming months.
Sen. Bob Beach (D – Monongalia, 13) said 2018 started as the year of the teacher, but may end as the year of the disgraced politician.
“(School personnel) voices were very vocal, but intermixed with that was the low hum of the Supreme Court and what was going on there,” Beach said on WAJR’s Morgantown AM this week.
Now just weeks from the start of hearings that will determine the fates of indicted Justice Allen Loughry and justices Margaret Workman and Robin Davis, Beach said he’s attempting to go into the impeachment trial ‘fresh.’
“I still have not even bothered to read the Articles of Impeachment yet,” he said. “I don’t want to get into any arguments on social media about the issue, because you can get baited into arguments on that. I think it is better just to wait, and I plan on reading those articles the weekend before we have to be there.”
Beach said the upcoming impeachment trials compares more to a political tool than a circuit court proceeding.
“It’s not like a civil or criminal case,” he said. “This is a totally different beast. This is within the chambers, and the rules are different.”
That required some conferencing between Senate Democrats and Republicans on how best to set up the trial. Beach said, initially, Senators would not be permitted to question the justices.
“We worked on that,” he said. “We now have the written question and then we have a verbal follow up. That allows us some time to ask questions. And, for the jury, I think we should be allowed to.
The story of an embattled state Supreme Court took on a life of its own following the unsealing of a 23-count indictment against Allen Loughery. Those indictments, including two superseding charges later added, came months after reports of lavish spending by the state’s highest court became the subject of significant media scrutiny.
Beach said the State Legislature has already addressed this through future preventative measures — claiming voters now have to do their part.
“They could come in and say, ‘Hey, we need $200 million dollars,’ and we had to write the check,” Beach said. “Obviously, we didn’t know where all the money was going. So, here we are today in this position.”
Amendment 2, on the ballot this November, makes West Virginia the final state in the union to place control of a state Supreme Court’s budget in the hands of the Legislature.
“I think a lot of folks will come out on that issue alone,” Beach said.