Statehouse Beat: Lantern Makes Lawmakers See Red

By Phil Kabler Week seven of the legislative session will go down as the week that Gov. Jim Justice lit up the state-of-emergency lantern in the Capitol dome and made the Legislature see red. With two weeks to go in the regular session, neither side is backing off from its position - Justice's belief that he needs additional revenue to invest in programs to better the state economy, and legislative leaders' mantra to "live within our means" with yet-to-be-unveiled (as of press time for this column) spending cuts to close the $500 million shortfall for the 2017-18 state budget. Whether Justice's wholly unconventional style of governance will lead to another budget impasse or force leadership into a compromise is still to be determined. Comparisons between Justice and President Donald Trump are inevitable, I suppose.