A sign in on the front of Gordon Algoe’s West Side home asks Mountaineer Gas workers to restore his family’s gas service. In November 2023, a gas outage affected about 1,000 residents on Charleston’s West Side for weeks. (Lori Kersey | West Virginia Watch)
Gov. Patrick Morrisey has approved a Democrat-sponsored bill requiring utility companies to create plans to notify customers of outages and another bill establishing procedure for filling vacancies to state offices.
House Bill 3263 was introduced in response to a November 2023 gas outage that left more than 1,000 residents of Charleston’s West Side without heat and the ability to cook for weeks. The outage was caused by a “significant sustained water leak” that infiltrated 46 miles of the company’s natural gas distribution system, according to Mountaineer Gas.
The bill requires that such communication plans at least include a way of notifying customers in advance of planned service disruptions, methods of communication and include an estimate of the duration and end of the outage. The plans are to be filed with the West Virginia Public Service Commission. The bill is effective July 10.
“We would think that utilities would already be required to effectively communicate with their customers during these types of situations and during outages, whether they’re planned or unexpected,” said Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, a West Side resident and sponsor of the bill. “One would think that would already be the law. What we found out in late 2023, is that was not the case.
“The rate payers, the customers over on the West Side, were not well informed,” he said. “We were getting our information from the media. We weren’t getting updates from the utility.”
Pushkin originally introduced the bill during the 2024 legislative session. It had unanimous support in the House, but stalled in the Senate, he said.
The bill codifies a requirement the Public Service Commission already has for utility companies. In an October 2024 order, the PSC mandated that the utility companies and cable companies have text and email messaging in place to notify customers of outages.
The legislation is one of two with Democratic lead sponsors that Morrisey signed this year, Pushkin said.
The governor also signed Senate Bill 586, which requires that when filling vacancies of state officials, justices, judges and magistrates, the appointment be made from the same party that originally held the seat at the time of election, not the party to which the official may have switched before he or she resigned.
“This is a bill about fundamental fairness and ensuring the will of the voters, and not the party in power, is reflected in filling vacancies in the Legislature,” bill sponsor Joey Garcia, D-Marion, said in a news release.
The bill has been called the “de Soto bill,” a reference to Joseph de Soto, whose seat in the House of Delegates was vacated after he was arrested on charges of threatening to harm and kill lawmakers. De Soto was elected in November as a Republican then switched to the Democratic party hours before he was arrested. Morrisey appointed a Republican to the seat. The Democrats filed a legal challenge, arguing that House Republicans didn’t follow the proper Constitutional procedure in vacating his seat and that there was legal precedent that the seat should go to Democrats due to de Soto’s party switch.
In 2014, former Sen. Daniel Hall switched parties from Democrat to Republican just days after the election, shifting the control of the body to the GOP. He resigned from the Senate in December 2015, leaving some questions as to which party should fill the seat. The next year, the state Supreme Court ruled that Republicans should replace Hall.
“The Supreme Court got it wrong in 2016, when they ignored the will of the voters in their decision to allow Daniel Hall’s seat to go to a Republican, ignoring the fact that Hall was elected as a Democrat,” Pushkin said in a news release Wednesday. “The Republicans in the Legislature got it wrong in 2018 when they codified this bad decision into law because it benefited them politically to do so. We knew it was a bad law when earlier this year the Republicans twisted themselves into knots in order to ignore the law they passed in 2018 so they wouldn’t have to fill the vacancy they created in House District 91 with a Democrat. We applaud Sen. Garcia for righting this wrong and restoring the voice of the people to this process.”
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