Published: January 19, 2008 06:21 pm      

Scent of an election year

The smell wafts through our nostrils

Ah, the scent of an election year.

Pepe LePew has appeared in Charleston once again and the smell is wafting out to touch the nostrils from Bluefield to Benwood, Martinsburg to Man, and all places in between.

And what better topic to come up again in an election year than the disbursement of funds derived from lawsuits which Attorney General Darrell McGraw’s office has filed on behalf of the state.

Under the glare of television lights and media reports, McGraw has made it a point in recent years to dole out millions in settlement funds to various public and private entities across the state. Legislators like to gripe and moan about it, say the attorney general shouldn’t be doing it, but at the end of the day they don’t do squat about it.

Last week, McGraw announced that $11.6 million from a settlement with Visa USA Inc. over antitrust and consumer protection charges has been placed in a trust to be used for a sales tax holiday.

Hey, Pepe, a tax relief plan will be hard for the majority of voters to sneeze at, don’t you think?

Despite how good it may sound to the citizenry, the McGraw announcement has again started the hooting from many lawmakers over who should be doing the appropriating.

“That’s one of those areas where there’s been contention over who has the right to appropriate money,” said Sen. Walt Helmick, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

“If there is money obtained in a settlement by the attorney general, that money belongs to the state of West Virginia,” said Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth, R-Mercer.

Really?

McGraw will likely agree it belongs to the state, but he has made it clear he’ll decide what to do with it. The attorney general also says the criticism of his actions is pure political posturing.

This is West Virginia. That can’t be happening, can it?

So where do we line up here?

It was our understanding that we elect our legislators to appropriate and the attorney general to litigate, but, hey, remember we’re in West Virginia and sometimes it’s just downright difficult to decipher who is really in charge and who’s fooling whom.