Troop 3
JANUARY UPDATE
By Lonnie Carpenter
Jan 23, 2007, 09:27

I know I have not updated the web page in a while. Actually there has not been much to talk about. Well there is now, we had our monthly meeting today, and we covered a lot of ground.

The first thing is what we are going to ask for during the Legislative session. The five main things are as follows, 1.) 55 to 50 for retirement; 2.) On call pay; 3.) Getting rid of the revert clause; 4.) Cost of living adjustment; and, 5.) Gambling bill. I will go though each of these and give you a summarization of what is going on.

1. 55 to 50 -  This is looking good so far, the fiscal note on this is $350,000, so it should be easy to push though. The Governor seems to be on board, he wants his people to check the fiscal note, and then he will decide if he will back the bill.
   
   
2. On Call Pay. This bill will give us minimum wage for all on call  time. This only applies to night calls, not the Crime Scene Team, SRT etc. As you can imagine this is not a popular bill, but we have pretty much let the Governor know that we are prepared to go to court with a federal lawsuit if they don’t take this deal, and it is a good deal compared to the lawsuit. The Governor does not want another lawsuit (The lawsuit involving the classes that need to be changed to plan A). They are in arbitration with that right now. We think this bill will go through, they know they have to do something with this issue.

3. Getting rid of the Revert Clause. Some of you may not know what this is, I didn’t. The Revert Clause is this, say you work for five years and get hurt. Now you cannot work, so you get your disability retirement. At retirement age 55 or 50 if we get that bill passed, your retirement will revert to your years of service, which is five. That sucks! The Governor seems to be on our side on this one also, but it is early in the session. We are going to have to sell this. Thats where you guys come in, we need you to contact your Representatives and tell them how disappointed you are that you work for a State that would do this to its Troopers that get injured in the line of duty. Listen, most of our Representatives don’t even know this clause exists. Trust me, most of them don’t know that most of our detachments are not 24 hours, or that we don’t get paid for night calls. We need to tell them so that they can’t say they did not know, without lying. 
   
    
4. Cost of living. This bill will affect the guys in the Eastern Panhandle, but guys in Morgantown, Charleston, and Huntington, will most likely benefit also. A summery of the bill is this; they will take every county where the average mortgage over $700.00 a month, (based on the 2000 census) Troopers that live in those counties will get a housing allowance supplement. To read the whole Bill look at Senate Bill #22 on the legislative web page.

5. Gambling Bill. Like it or not this state is going to get table games. What we are trying to do right now is to get us in on the money that the State is going to take in. I can’t put everything on the web page but we have been in contact with the lobbyist for the race track, and they seem to be on board. Basically we wrote a bill stating that there would be Troopers in the race tracks and that we would be in charge of investigating crimes that occurred there, including them violating the law as well as their employees. We would have a minimum of four Troopers in each race track and that would be all they do. I know this is going to take Troops off the road, but we have to be on top of this from the get go, or we will never catch up with the organized crime that is bound to come with the table games. The race track will have to pay for the salaries, equipment, overtime, office space, and any thing else the Troopers need to perform their jobs. This is in its early stages, so we have a lot of work to do.

As for other business, we are getting ready to try some direct mailing, we had a guy come in today and give us a sales pitch. I think this is the way we want to go, it cost us nothing to start up, and they will guarantee us they we will make money every year. We are trying to get out of the Telemarketing business. We think this is the way; it is going to take a few years to get the return that we want and need to get rid of CDG.

I know this was a lot of information but we did a lot today. Call me if you have any question about this stuff, I will try to answer if I can’t I will find out the answer. I am new at this and it will take me time to get caught up, the board is working on some stuff that was in the works before I was elected. One other thing we are having a lot of problems with the company that is doing our web page. Anyone with the knowledge on building a web page, we need your help, give me a call. Remember guys, don’t ask what the Association is doing for you, you are the Association, get involved, I know everyone can’t get involved but you can do small things. Below are the names of our local representatives call them let them know what you thing about the bills.

District 48: Allen Evans