MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Democrat John Williams said his youth and energy turned out to be a positive during his successful challenge for the House of Delegates in 2016.
At the time the fourth youngest legislator in Charleston, the slightly more seasoned Williams is asking voters to send him back to the Capitol to represent the 51st District in a crowded field of 12 candidates vying for five spots.
“I got involved in public policy and in politics because my papaw, John Nelson, was born into a coal camp in southern West Virginia into the kind of conditions that would be unimaginable if they weren’t all too common,” he said. “Not only back then, but today also.”
Williams considers himself an advocate for a number of issues, but said perhaps nothing is as close to his heart as impoverished West Virginians.
“The people of West Virginia are hurting,” he said Friday on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “That’s something I don’t need to tell you.”
That’s why Williams is an advocate for a long-term solution to PEIA and a supporter of additional teacher and state worker pay raises. Though he is concerned that Governor Justice’s October announcement of a new five percent pay raise and $100 million pledge to the Public Employee’s Insurance Agency (PEIA) is a political maneuver, Williams said he will happily shake the Governor’s hand if it turns out he’s wrong.
Regardless, Williams wants to say new revenue infused into the budget — and like many Democrats, his eyes are fixed on the oil and gas industry.
“In three years, they are expecting the price of natural gas to be $3,500 per thousand cubic feet,” Williams said. “I don’t think that an increase of three percent — which on $3,500 would be a $280 severance tax — that’s not going to kill their profit. I want business to be able to come and boom in West Virginia — just let the people boom with you.”
When pressed on whether or not he’s concerned about gas companies leaving for neighboring Pennsylvania and Ohio, Williams pressed back.
“I would agree with that argument if it was a static industry that could be moved to Mexico — if it was manufacturing that could be uprooted and planted,” he said. “We’ve got the gas here. They have to come here if they want it, and I think we need to see our value and not sell ourselves short.”
There are other areas of untapped revenue that Williams wants to figuratively mine — recreational and medicinal cannabis.
“It’s common sense to me,” he said. “The studies are showing that it’s much better form of pain management. And then you take into account that West Virginia has the highest amount of people on worker’s comp — those are back injuries, neck injuries. West Virginians work with their body.”
A populist uprising saw medical cannabis pass in the House of Delegates in 2017, but continued questions over legal financing have left the industry with significant unanswered questions ahead of a July 1, 2019 roll-out date.
Williams said, if returned to Charleston, he’ll make fixing the law a priority. He said West Virginians can’t afford to wait.
“So what happens is, they get hurt, they get prescribed these highly chemically-engineered opioids that not only take them out of the work force but they give them an opioid addiction to boot,” he sad. “We have medical cannabis — something that can help them manage their pain that isn’t addictive. Most of it is not even mind altering. I think it is common sense for me that we passed that cannabis law in my first session.”
A supporter of teachers during the historic work stoppage of 2018, Williams also has an idea for funding PEIA — legal recreational marijuana.
“Once the Legislative Session starts, if they Legislature keeps on kicking the can down the road and they are not seriously taking a look at PEIA, teachers are going to walk out again,” he said. “That’s what is going to happen. Public employees are going to walk out again.”
That, Williams said, would still require a ballot referendum for voters to be the final arbiters.
If any of these priorities can be done with bi-partisan support, Williams said he would welcome help from the current majority party.
“As a Democrat, I have fundamental disagreements with Republicans,” he said. “With that said, I don’t harp on those disagreements with them. I don’t belabor the points with them. I try to find places where we can agree on — roads is a common issue we can agree on.”
You can hear the full interview with Williams in Friday’s podcast of Morgantown AM, which can be found on the WAJR.com main page.