Kanawha library funding fight could have statewide consequences

By Anna Sale

asale@wvpubcast.org 

For 50 years, the Kanawha County School board has more than $2 million to the county library system – until now. Earlier this month, they said they would stop giving money to the library. They say they can’t spare it, and a recent court decision allows them to keep it. Library officials disagree. They say a new state law is on their side. And, they say they were blindsided by the cuts. They could lose one-third of their budget overnight. And they worry Kanawha County is just the first.

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Dulcimer, banjo player ‘retires’ to music

By Emily Corio

ecorio@wvpubcast.org 

West Virginia is home to many talented musicians, especially in the bluegrass and old time music genres.  A lot of people learned how to play the music in the traditional way:  by watching people in their family or community.  This was also the case for Preston County musician, Bob Shank.

His love for string instruments started at a young age.  Family and a daytime job took some of his focus off of music, but now he’s turned back to music full time.  This spring he won first place in the old time banjo contest for people under 60 years old. Emily Corio recently interviewed Shank and has this story.

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• Read Story – Bob Shank profile

Historic Weirton Steel building coming down

By Keri Brown

kbrown@bethanywv.edu

Since Arcelor-Mittal bought its Weirton steel plant from ISG in 2005, nearly 1000 jobs have been cut. Earlier this month, company officials announced that the hot mill division is also closing down.  That means dozens more jobs will be lost at the Weirton plant.

Now there’s one more indicator of how things are changing in the steel town. A long-idle steel complex in the heart of downtown Weirton is being demolished, but local officials hope it’s only making room for new opportunities. Keri Brown reports.

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Morgantown contractor buys Weston State Hospital

By Beth Vorhees 

WV PBS producer Larry Dowling attended the auction on the Lewis Co. Courthouse steps.

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Mon Co. workers could pay road tax

By Emily Corio  

The Division of Highways has the responsibility to maintain the majority of roads in WV, but the DOH can’t afford to do it, let along build new roads. The growth in Monongalia Co. puts a lot of pressure on the current road system, so local officials may ask residents if they’re willing to pick up the tab for new and improved roads.

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User fee may not help Eastern Panhandle traffic problems

By Cecelia Mason  

In the Eastern Panhandle, both Jefferson and Berkeley Counties have experienced rapid growth, but a user fee is not the answer to their traffic problems.

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WV Lottery Headquarters Proposal Sparks Controversy

By Scott Finn 

For years, the state Lottery Commission has been trying to find a new home. First, Lottery officials wanted to move to Putnam County – but a lawsuit forced the agency to stay in Charleston. Now there’s a dispute about where in Charleston the new headquarters should go. 

Lottery officials have expressed interest in renovating a warehouse in Kanawha City. But the owner of another proposed site is accusing the Lottery of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars, and threatening a lawsuit to stop the sale.

• Read story: lotteryhq.doc
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Recount doesn’t change table game vote in Kanawha County

By Scott Finn  

Fourteen more uncounted ballots were discovered this morning during a partial recount of the Kanawha County table games election – but they didn’t change the result.  

The “No” side gained four votes in the recount, meaning that table games passed by just 339 votes out of more than 46,000 votes cast.  

This isn’t the first time uncounted ballots have turned up. Several hundred were found in the week between election day and the canvass, when the vote was certified.  

Table Games opponents paid for the recount, but they could only afford to recount 44 of the county’s 175 precincts. Mia Moran Cooper used to run the state’s program for problem gamblers and is now a gambling opponent. She says her side is looking at a possible legal challenge to the election.   

“It’s a travesty, really, and a mockery of our system,” she said. “We don’t know how many missing ballots are still out there.”  

Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper defended the election process. Carper is a vocal supporter of table games.  

“I don’t know why they are shocked. They found 14 ballots in one precinct,” Carper said. “It was an excellent example of how the system can work.”  

Secretary of State Betty Ireland says that her office will conduct an audit of the Kanawha County election. She says the purpose is to learn how to make future elections better and will not change the result.

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Meet Papa Joe Smiddy

By Beth Vorhees

bvorhees@wvpubcast.org 

This Sunday, Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield, Virginia, will host the fifth annual Papa Joe Smiddy Mountain Music Festival. The headliner is Dr. Ralph Stanley with the Clinch Mountain Boys, and other old-time music will be featured at the festival, but the real star of the show is an 87-year-old man with a distinctive white mustache, a cowboy hat, and a left-handed banjo. From Wise, Virgina, Wayne Winkler has this report.

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Weirton seeks to limit casinos

By Keri Brown

Six years ago, the Legislature legalized video lottery machines outside the state’s four racetracks. Businesses throughout the state were making illegal payouts on thousands of the machines. Former Governor Bob Wise lobbied for the video lottery bill by saying it was time to “reduce, restrict and regulate” the industry.

But in Weirton, video lottery machines have proliferated. Weirton now has more businesses that operate video lottery machines than any other city in the state. The City Council worries that casinos may someday expand beyond the nearby Mountaineer Racetrack and Gaming Resort, just like video lottery did. So it’s acting to restrict the location of casinos in case that day ever comes.

• Read story – Weirton seeks casino limits

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• Breakdown of video lottery establishments by city/county

Health insurance numbers up in W.Va.; advocates doubt Census figures

By Anna Sale
asale@wvpubcast.org
Yesterday, the Census Bureau released its annual findings on poverty, income and health insurance trends across the country. For the second year in a row, more Americans had no health insurance. For West Virginia, the census numbers told a different story. They show more West Virginians had health insurance in 2006 than the year before.  But as Anna Sale reports, state health advocates are skeptical.

• Read story – Health insurance figures

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Poverty rate, median incomes improve in WV

By Scott Finn 

The census data holds some good news for West Virginia. Last year, the poverty rate went down and the median income went up. 

West Virginia is one of the most improved states when it comes to poverty – its rate improved from 18 percent in 2005 to 17.3 percent last year. That ranks the state fourth – behind New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi. That’s an improvement since 2000, when the state had … Click here to read rest of story.

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Another report shows West Virginians are obese; Can dancing keep the pounds off?

By Beth Vorhees, Emily Corio and Greg Collard

 A national report released Monday ranks West Virginia the second-most overweight state in the country. Only Mississippi has more overweight and obese adults, according to the report released by the Trust for America’s Health. The group based its findings on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rounding out the top five were Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina.

This segment includes comments from a WVU professor active in promoting walkable communities, and an official with the Tug River Health Association in McDowell County.

Beth Vorhees then interviews WVU Research Instructor Emily Murphy. She’s studied the health benefits of the game “Dance Dance Revolution.” Efforts are underway to put the game in all public schools in West Virginia.

• Click here to listen to segment

Irene McKinney essay: ‘Out Here’

By Irene McKinney
West Virginia Poet Laureate 

Here’s another installment of our occasional series from West Virginia Poet Laureate and author, Irene McKinney.  She’s working on a memoir and sharing some of what she’s written with us on West Virginia Morning. This essay is called “Out Here.”

• Click here to listen to essay

Raises help Berkeley retain, recruit teachers

By Cecelia Mason
cmason@shepherd.edu 

More than 200,000 West Virginia students headed back to school on Monday.  About 17,000 of them are in Berkeley County, where it’s been difficult to build classrooms and hire teachers to meet the area’s growth.

Teachers in the Eastern Panhandle have lobbied for locality pay because of the higher cost of living. That hasn’t happened, but it appears pay raises given to school employees this year is helping Berkeley County retain its teachers, and recruit new ones. Cecelia Mason reports.

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Woman’s love for butterflies leads to Monarch Festival

By Keri Brown
Kbrown@bethanywv.edu

In 2005, we brought you a story about a Brooke Co. woman who breeds butterflies on her farm just outside Wellsburg. Heather Tokas has been raising and protecting butterflies for more than 30 years. She’s turned her passion for the insect into a business and an educational platform. Now, she’s busy planning the 3rd annual WV Monarch Buttterfly Festival with the state Tourism Department.

• Click here to listen to story

Murder investigation reveals strains in police, black community relations

By Beth Vorhees

bvorhees@wvpubcast.org 

Two weeks ago, a Charleston teenager was gunned down. Leland Chase Miller was a week away from his 18th birthday when he was killed. Initially, no witnesses would come forward with their stories. Finally, after a witness finally came forward, Charleston police arrested a teen-ager for the crime last week.

A day later, police discovered that copies of the sealed criminal complaint were being passed around the neighborhood where the shooter occurred. It included the name of the witness, who fled the area apparently facing retaliation.

The victim and the suspect met each other in juvenile detention. Matthew Watts is a Charleston pastor. He runs the HOPE Community Development Corporation, a program that, in part, works with youth who have served in juvenile detention. The victim was in HOPE’s program. Rev. Watts spoke to Beth Vorhees on West Virginia Morning.

• Click here to listen to interview.

Chuckilepsy: the Chuck E. Cheese Disease

By Scott Finn

Earlier this month, Chuck E. Cheese’s celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. The kid’s restaurant is famous for video games, pizza and its mouse mascot. In fact, an independent survey shows that Chuck E. Cheese is more popular with kids between the ages of six and eight than Mickey Mouse, Ronald McDonald, and Barbie. 

The restaurant’s slogan is, “Where a kid can be a kid.” But I’m not so sure.

Last week I was home with my kids, alone, and it was a hundred degrees outside, I needed to find someplace air-conditioned where they could run around until they tired themselves out. Then it came to me – I’ll take them to Chuck E. Cheese’s. It seemed brilliant at the time. I had no idea it would end so badly. Here’s my four-year-old, Iris, after the meltdown.

Me: We just got out of Chuck E. Cheese’s and you’re upset, why are you upset?

Iris: Because I didn’t get the other glasses.

Me: You wanted to get a different type of glasses.

Iris: Yes.

Me: And how do you feel right now?

Iris: (sobs) I don’t know…

Now, you need to know that my daughter is usually a pretty happy kid. So what reduced her tears? I blame it on Chuckilepsy.  

Chuckilepsy is the state of consciousness created by the blinking lights, loud music and animatronic life-sized puppets at Chuck E. Cheese’s. The symptoms are glazed eyes, high heart rate, and a general state of agitation. 

The minute you walk into Chuck E. Cheese’s, your senses are assaulted. (Nat sound of restaurant) There’s the noise of all the games – video games, little cars to ride on, skeetball, et cetera. Then there’s the stage with an eight-foot-tall robot mouse – the famous Chuck E. Cheese. In back of him are music videos blasting from several large-screen TVs — like this one: “Chuck E. Cheese – keep dreamin’ of you…” 

It’s sung to the tune from the 1984 smash “I feel for you” by Chaka Khan. I used to dance to that one in junior high. Now, an animatronic mouse breakdances to it for the entertainment of small children.  So on top of the wretched noise and the flashing lights I was forced to confront the fact that I am, indeed, that old.

Soon, my daughter was begging for tokens to play the games. I put a five dollar bill into the machine and heard a familiar sound — the clink, clink of coins.

I started to think – what did this place remind me of? Then it hit me – a casino. This place is just like a casino. You look around at both places, and you don’t see a lot of smiles. Some of the faces are excited, others are glazed-over, but I wouldn’t call them happy. I’d say they have Chuckilepsy. 

But what really gets me is the slogan: “Chuck E. Cheese — Where a kid can be a kid.” 

Let’s review what happens at Chuck E. Cheese’s: Kids labor over computer screens so they can earn tickets so they can buy useless trinkets. That’s adult behavior, if you ask me. 

In my book, being a kid means playing games that use your body and your imagination. It’s playing army in the forest or having a tea party for your dolls – not interacting with some machine. 

As we were leaving, we traded in Iris’s tickets for a pair of fake sunglasses. But with all the noise, the lady behind the counter gave her the wrong glasses – they had dollar bill signs on them and not the stars that Iris wanted. Thus, the meltdown. 

But later, my daughter surprised me. When we got home, she wanted us to make our own glasses out of cardboard and pipe cleaners. So we did, and when I tried mine on, she did more than smile. She gave me a full-on belly laugh. Now that’s the Iris I know and love.

• Click here to listen to Commentary

Feds back Mormon in Promise Scholarship case

By Greg Collard
gcollard@wvpubcast.org
The Justice Department is taking the side of a Mormon student in his First Amendment lawsuit against the Promise Scholarship board and the Higher Education Policy Commission. Greg Collard reports.

• Read story – Feds back Mormon student 
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Appalachian coalfield protest history

By Anna Sale and Greg Collard

asale@wvpubcast.org

gcollard@wvpubcast.org

This story looks at the controversy surrounding a coal operation near an elementary school while also examining the history of protests in the Appalachian coalfields. It first aired March 29, 2007, on the program “Outlook” on West Virginia PBS. It was rebroadcast Aug. 23, 2007, on “Outlook” with an update of more recent protests regarding coal issues.

• Click here to watch Part 1 of History of Coalfield Protests.

• Click here to watch Part 2 of History of Coalfield Protests.

• Click here to watch Aug. 23, 2007, update that focuses on coal liquefication.