LEGISLATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer was first elected to the legislature in 1994 and is now serving her seventh two-year term. During her tenure in the West Virginia House of Delegates, Ms. Fleischauer has passed numerous bills and successfully secured funding for a number of important projects.
Recent Local Issues
During the 2009 Legislative session, Delegate Fleischauer along with her colleagues from the 44th District in Monongalia County was successful in passing several bills affecting the local area. Morgantown City Council requested two bills which passed – HB 3134 which sets up a pilot project for municipalities to conduct elections by mail and HB 3197 which allows city employees who are not police officers to issue litter citations.
- SB 338 started out as a bill to alter the Promise Scholarship. Amended into the final version of that bill was a House Bill to reform the selection of the WVU Board of Governors, sponsored by Fleischauer and the rest of the local House delegation. The bill which finally passed and was signed by the Governor added one more faculty member to the board, required the Governor to consider gender and minority balance when nominating board members, and mandated training of Board members. Fleischauer also co-sponsored a House bill adding an additional circuit judge in Monongalia County - the identical Senate bill passed.
- Delegate Fleischauer, in collaboration with the rest of the Monongalia County House delegation, secured Community Partnership funding for local projects that resulted in funding of nearly 1/4 million dollars for community non-profit agencies.
Services for Veterans:
- After reading articles in the Washington Post and New York Times about the horrible treatment of injured veterans by the armed services and/or the Veterans Administration, Delegate Fleischauer decided that something had to be done to ensure state veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan received the best treatment possible once they returned to our state. She drafted a study resolution, which resulted in four years of hearings on the need for expanded education, employment, medical, and mental health benefits and services for veterans in our state.
- The Select Committee on Veterans Affairs, which Delegate Fleischauer Co-Chairs, commissioned a study, to which over 1,000 state veterans responded. Among the troubling findings was the conclusion that nearly 48 percent of the respondents suffered from either depression, post traumatic stress syndrome, or both.
- The Select Committee also made several recommendations relating to upgrading the private health infrastructure to be better able to respond to veterans and their families. A first down payment on this concept was the inclusion of $100,000 in funding in the higher education budget to place clinical psychology and social work students in rotations with other health care students in rural areas. The Select Committee has also successfully encouraged an upgrade of the State Division of Veteran's Affairs website, so that West Virginia veterans, National Guard members, Reservists and active service members all over the world can become informed about the many services our state provides for veterans.
- During the 2009 interims, the committee focused attention on how state colleges and universities can become more "veteran or military friendly." West Virginia University has come the longest way in meeting this objective. Delegate Fleischauer will be sponsoring legislation in the 2010 session requiring the state Higher Education Policy Commission to ensure that all state colleges and universities are "veteran friendly."
Protecting Women's Rights:
- The Equal Pay for Equal Work for State Employees Act, drafted by Fleischauer and passed in 1998, established an Equal Pay Commission, which was assigned the task of studying pay inequities in state employment, reviewing in particular the wage rates for occupational classifications dominated by one sex or the other. Additionally, the Commission makes recommendations regarding funding pay inequities. Delegate Fleischauer served as Co-Chair of the Commission until 2005. Under her leadership, the Commission hired consultants who found significant disparities and made recommendations on needed changes. Funding has been placed in the Budget every year since 2002 to address the disparities. As a result, state employees, 80 % of them women in undervalued job classifications, have received over four million dollars in permanent raises. Fleischauer continues to serve on the Commission and will be sponsoring legislation to continue and expand its mission this session.
- Delegate Fleischauer was the lead sponsor for the Domestic Violence Treatment and Prevention Act, passed in 1998, which set up new requirements for continuing education for the many professionals dealing with domestic violence cases and provided new authority for Judges issuing protective orders relating to safety plans for victims and battering counseling for perpetrators.
- Delegate Fleischauer spearheaded successful efforts over many years to dramatically increase and stabilize funding for shelters and legal services for domestic violence victims.
Restoring the WVU Rifle Team:
- WVU's decision to eliminate the rifle team in 2003 was a shock to Mountaineers around the state and the country, especially since it was the only WVU team to win any national championship -- much less 13 of them. Delegate Fleischauer worked behind the scenes with the House and Senate Finance Committees to place funding in the state budget for the rifle team, which led to the team's official restoration in 2004. The team rewarded our state in 2009 by winning another national championship.
Health Care
- In 1996, Fleischauer sponsored the Osteoporosis Treatment and Education Act, beginning state planning and funding for programs to reduce the incidence of this disease, which at the time was not well known. More recently, as a result of legislation sponsored by Delegate Fleischauer, the mission of the Advisory Council created by the osteoporosis statute was expanded to include arthritis, another painful, crippling disease that affects women more often than men.
- Delegate Fleischauer championed the need for improvement in our state's oral health by sponsoring and passing HB 3107 in 2002.
- Having benefited from care from alternative health care providers, Delegate Fleischauer sponsored and passed legislation in 1996, 1997, and 1998 regulating the massage therapy and acupuncture professions.
Protecting Rights of Employees:
- Responding to a local issue in which an employer had a hidden camera in a locker room, Delegate Fleischauer sponsored and passed House Bill 2985 in 1999 that bans electronic surveillance of employees in locker and lunch rooms.
- Following the beatings and murder of late night convenience store employees, Fleischauer co-sponsored and helped pass House Bill 4119 in 1998, which mandates safety precautions for such employees.
Modernizing Procedures for Corporations:
- Delegate Fleischauer served as House Chair of an interim subcommittee that worked on reform of statutes which regulate corporations. One of her friends and supporters, WVU College of Law Professor Ann Maxey, had worked for several years on a draft of the re-write, which streamlined and modernized procedures for both profit and non-profit corporations. Unfortunately, Professor Maxey died suddenly of a brain tumor in 2002. Delegate Fleischauer was able to successfully steer passage of Professor Maxey's efforts by sponsoring and passing corporate overhaul legislation in 2003.
Protecting the Environment:
- Environmental issues have always been high on Delegate Fleischauer's priority list. As a delegate, she was active in helping to defeat the so-called "Dirty Secrets Bill" which would have allowed corporations to refuse to disclose any information about investigations of environmental incidents. Fearing what would later become the Enron crisis and the potential for dramatic increases in consumer utility prices (which happened in other states), Delegate Fleischauer also played an important role in the successful effort to derail proposed electric utility deregulation.
- During the 2008 and 2009 sessions, Delegate Fleischauer introduced environmental bills relating to: 1) energy savings contracts for local governments 2) green buildings, 3) beverage container recycling, 4) global warming, 5) vehicle emissions, 6) renewable energy targets for utilities, 7) regulation of water quality, including TDS limits (total dissolved solids) and Marcellus shale water usage, and 8) energy efficiency. The Municipal Energy Savings Contracts Bill passed in 2008 and the Governor's renewable and alternative energy passed in 2009. There was action on some of the above bills in 2008 and 2009, most notably green buildings and beverage container recycling. The massive Dunkard Creek fish kill, however, is emblematic of the work that remains to be done legislatively on environmental issues in our state.
Children's Issues
- For over ten years, Delegate Fleischauer introduced legislation to limit the time school children ride on busses in our state. Inspired by her husband Bob Bastress' efforts in the court system to limit school consolidation in counties where kids spent inordinate amounts of time getting to and from school, Fleischauer's bill limited trips for elementary students to one hour per day, middle schoolers to one and one half hours, and high school students to two hours. In 2008, Governor Manchin championed legislation modeled on Fleischauer's bill. The bill which passed was limited to elementary students. Delegate Fleischauer has introduced legislation to cut the bus riding times of the upper grade students, who she thinks may be even more disadvantaged by long bus rides.
- Delegate Fleischauer served as House Chair of an interim subcommittee which did a complete overhaul of our state statutes relating to adoption. The new Statute makes it easier for adopting parents to obtain a final adoption decision in a shorter time. The Statute also ensures that the Constitutional rights of birth parents, both fathers and mothers, were properly respected.
- As House Chair of the Juvenile Task Force, Delegate Fleischauer shepherded and passed legislation relating to Child Advocacy Centers, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) and Teen Court programs. With her efforts, these programs provide added protection to children involved in the Court system, either by creating professional and volunteer advocates to ensure kids do not become lost in the child abuse and neglect system, or by providing peer judging for juvenile offenders which has been shown to reduce recidivism.
Delegate Fleischauer has received many awards at the National, State and Local levels appreciation of her legislative service.