CHARLESTON — Is Gov. Joe Manchin greasing the tracks for a toll increase on the West Virginia Turnpike by moving to allow state residents to deduct E-ZPass expenses from their income taxes?

Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth suggested as much Monday night, after reluctantly voting for the Manchin proposal that allows West Virginians to subtract up to $1,200 from their gross adjusted income for money spent on E-ZPass commuter passes to travel the Princeton-to-Charleston highway.

“To use a media term, it’s a nice sound byte to say that we’re going to give a deduction for their passes,” Caruth, R-Mercer, said of the bill.

Caruth reminded fellow senators that no commercial user can deduct the electronic pass expenses, nor can anyone who is reimbursed by an employer. Thirdly, he said, it only applies to the E-ZPass, “not to people who pay as they go.”

To get the maximum deduction, one would have to buy at least four of them.

“If anyone out of their own pocket pays for four E-ZPasses, I’d like to meet them,” he said. “I just don’t see very many people in West Virginia taking advantage of this. It’s another stage toward eventually increasing Turnpike tolls.”

Tolls soared to $2 per barrier for passenger cars and to $7 for five-axle trucks last year until a Kanawha County judge restored them to former levels in a class-action suit by trucking outfits. The Parkways Authority since has been reconfigured under Manchin’s directive so that its sole mission is to maintain a safe toll road.

Senators suspended their rules to pass the E-ZPass bill, along with a flurry of appropriations measures Manchin placed on his call in this special session.

The Senate advanced to third reading with the right to amend the so-called “wire tap” bill designed to make it easier and quicker for police to gain permission for the use of electronic surveillance devices for undercover agents in drug buys.

House Judiciary panelists spent several hours on a similar bill, one that expands the ability of police to get court orders in all counties, even from magistrates, to wire undercover informants for drug buys.

A number of delegates voiced concerns over the broader scope in contrast to the original 1987 law that limited surveillance to crimes of drug peddling, kidnapping and murder.

Now, the new proposed law would be unlimited, allowing police to gather evidence, although any other criminal activity uncovered in a drug sting would require a separate warrant specifying that crime.

“I think every legislator here wants to eliminate drugs and kiddie porn,” offered Delegate Bill Proudfoot, D-Randolph. “I do have some concerns ... it’s preservation of constitutional rights.”

House Republicans began pressuring Manchin months ago to make it easier for police to wire undercover agents in drug buys after the state Supreme Court reversed the drug conviction of Eddie Mullens in Boone County on grounds that officers used an “unreasonable search” to collect evidence.

House counsel Joe Altizer said the existing law, enacted two decades ago, was limited since it dealt also with wire taps on telephone lines and bugs in homes, and for that reason, such court orders were confined to five circuits.

“There was a much higher bar,” he said.

With drug activity proliferating in the past two decades, however, police say it has become impractical, if not impossible, to catch traffickers by having to travel long distances to reach the five available circuits, and the delay has let many pushers move on when an immediate court order would have produced arrests.

“This will allow an excellent tool for law enforcement to get the warrants any time they need them,” Altizer said.

Police may collect information on unintended reasons, such as child pornography, but would need an additional order to make such arrests, it was emphasized.

Altizer acknowledged Delegate Cliff Moore, D-McDowell, had posed “a good question” by asking how one defines the term “immediate” in describing an officer’s need for a court order to wire an informant for sound or video when making buys.

“Is ‘immediate’ an hour? A day? Two weeks?” Moore asked.

“That results in being a judgment call for the judge,” Altizer replied.

Phil Morrison, director of the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Institute, was questioned at length by delegates, particularly on the inclusion of the “retroactive” clause that allows police to get a warrant after a bust is made.

“Why go through this process if you can do it retroactively?” inquired Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia.

Morrison said any number of “exigent circumstances” dictate a drug agent move quickly, such as the fluid tactic of traffickers to move operations hastily from one setting to another, even within a city, or from one apartment to another, in what he termed “the old switcheroo.”

“This gives guidance to police as to exactly what they can do to validate a warrant,” he said.

A revelation that some police officers remain wired at all times surprised Fleischauer, but Morrison said this is done as a means of “self-protection to keep from being sued.”

Delegate Bonnie Brown, D-Kanawha, reminded him of a recent incident in Charleston in which two troopers “beat up a lawyer” following a traffic arrest and wanted to know if police have the ability to erase any damning evidence against them from their video cameras.

“If they’re wearing a camera, they’re not supposed to erase anything,” he said.

Morrison said the “retroactive” clause affords police a sense of uniformity since justice, in some respects, is administered differently across the counties.

“I’ve prosecuted in 14 counties and every one of them did things differently,” he said.

Asked how many drug cases are pending after the Supreme Court ruling, Morrison told Proudfoot that all of the pre-Mullens drug cases are considered dead.

“Hopefully, this will put us back in the hunt and we’ll get half the cases we used to,” he added.