CHARLESTON — Gov. Joe Manchin trotted out a “bogus” price tag of $91 million a year for keeping sexual predators in West Virginia’s prisons for longer terms as leverage to advance a weaker version of the bill, Minority Leader Vic Sprouse charged Friday.

Sprouse went on a tear after Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler, D-Marshall, unveiled the projected cost of confining sexual predators in extended terms, saying the figure came from the Division of Corrections.

Kessler supported a milder version that specifically targeted “violent” sexual predators and pedophiles.

Sprouse led the Senate at mid-week, however, into accepting an amendment that essentially doubles sex offense penalties across the board and allows courts to stretch prison terms if offenders are deemed unfit for re-entering society.

Kessler suggested the steep cost of fulfilling that proposal, estimated by the Manchin administration, must be considered at a time when prisons are near the breaking point and the Legislature is scouting for ways to ease the burden of crowding.

“With that kind of price tag, the Senate finance chairman is going to have an awful lot of work to do over the next week and a half as he puts the budget together,” he said.

Sprouse mocked the figure, saying it was conjured by Manchin’s administration to frighten lawmakers into accepting a watered-down proposal.

He pointed to former Gov. Bob Wise’s constant wavering on the number of illegal gray machine bills as an excuse to expand gambling by licensing video poker machines.

At first, he recalled, Wise spoke of 6,000 machines, then it climbed to 9,000, and later it was 12,000, and that figure rose to 15,000.

“And by the time they needed the 18th vote in the Senate, Gov. Wise said 30,000 machines were in the state and he couldn’t maintenance the turnpike because of having to go along the sides and scrape up all the gray machines falling off trucks as they were coming in here delivering all the machines from South Carolina,” the Republican leader said.

More than once, Sprouse applauded Democrats who joined the GOP in accepting his stronger sexual predator stance, saying they would recall it with pride in their sunset years in rocking chairs on home porches because it protects children.

“Don’t get snowed and plowed under by the governor’s office and the House leadership,” Sprouse intoned.

As the bill was debated, he said, like the video poker numbers kept going up, so did the projected cost of putting sex offenders away for longer sentences.

“First, it started off at $20 million, then I heard $40 million, now I hear $90 million,” he said.

“I suspect before next week is out, the governor’s office, which doesn’t want this bill, and the House of Delegates, it’s going to be $250 million or $1 billion. They simply do not want this bill to pass.”

Anyone with doubts about the bill needs to check with the grandmother of Logan Goodall, a toddler killed in Kanawha County, allegedly at the hands of a sexual predator, he said.

Sprouse allowed some offenses — he mentioned incest — possibly aren’t considered a violent offense.

“But someone who commits incest on a child should not be spending five years in prison and getting out in even less time than that,” he said.

“They should be spending 10 to 30 years prison. That’s a reasonable sentence.”

Sprouse challenged the skeptics to find one West Virginian unwilling to spend part of his tax obligation to “the keep the violent of the violent in prison.”

“These aren’t burglars,” Sprouse said. “These aren’t armed robbers. These aren’t people who steal a car. These are people who molest 4- and 5-year-olds. I don’t believe the price tag of $91 million. I think that is a bogus figure being thrown out here because the governor doesn’t want this bill to pass.”

Turning in all directions, Sprouse added, “Don’t get weak-kneed on this. Don’t back off this. You’re on the right side.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com