January Update

Several things were on the agenda for the January meeting. With the Legislative session starting, the January’s meeting is important. Plan B is at the top of the Association’s Legislative agenda, as it has been for the last several years. Elaine Harris advised that she had a meeting with the Governor and that he stated he was on board with Plan B improvements. That will be a big help in the fight to get the bill passed. The Plan B Improvements bill is out and has been sent to Senate Pensions. The On Call Bill is out and has been sent to Senate Finance.

The Association has sent out an information pamphlet to all of the Legislative body. This pamphlet outlines our legislative agenda and asks for a commitment from each member.

We also revisited the previous decision of not letting non-association members play in the golf tournaments or the bass tournament. This has caused some of the members heart ache. I see both sides of the coin on this one. The Association sponsors the events, so you should be a member to play or fish. But if it alienates people, then it is not worth the fight. We were thinking about maybe paying a portion of a members fees to join the event. If you have any opinion on this please e-mail it to me. I will vote the way you guys want me to.

We have received a letter from the Sheriff’s Association asking us to side with them on the new accident report. Their side, of course is that they do not like it, and believe that if will tie up their man power typing an eleven page report. Lt. Zerkle came to the meeting to ask us not to side with them without letting him try to work out some of the problems. We covered several problems with the new report, too numerous to cover here. The report is not going anywhere, it is here to stay, and it’s not going to get any shorter either. So what I think we need to do is write down any problems you find while typing the reports and e-mail them to Lt Zerkle, if you don’t want to do that, then e-mail them to me and I will send them. This the only way I know to get all the bugs out.

This is a big one. The Association along with an open minded Governor’s Office, has stopped a plan by the Director of MAPS to buy the State Police a few hundred Chevy Impalas. These were going to be patrol vehicles, blue and golds, can you imagine where we were going to put all our stuff. It is not in writing as of yet, but John got the word that they are now going with our proposal of one hundred Crown Vics, 4-wheel drive for the Sgt to free up their current 4-wheel drives, and some Impalas for staff cars. We were able to present our proposal only because the Governor’s Office asked us to be at the meeting, and to give our opinion.

That is all for now I will keep you up to date on the progress of our bills.

One last thing, THE West Virginia State Police lost two brothers in 2007, lets not forget to take care of their families, they need to know that we still care about them and that they will always be a part of our family. Also guys we need to be taking care of ourselves and each other. I know sometimes we get busy and over whelmed, we fight with each other over issues big and small, but remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself. God created all men equal then some became Troopers.