Public Financing of Supreme Court Elections
West Virginia has a notorious elections history regarding the Supreme Court. In a recent example, a coal baron sank millions into a fake group called "And For the Sake of the Kids" to elect his preferred Supreme Court candidate. In 2010, Delegate Fleischauer worked to enact legislation setting up a pilot project to provide public funding for candidates for the Supreme Court. Public financing first became available to Supreme Court candidates in the 2012 election. Delegate Fleischauer sponsored HB 2805, which passed in 2013, and made the program permanent.
Amending the West Virginia Constitution
Delegate Fleischauer served as Chair of the House Committee on Constitutional Revision for 16 years. During that time, she was involved in the formulation of several amendments to the Constitution which passed the Legislature by a super-majority and were adopted following a majority vote by state residents. Changes to the West Virginia Constitution that she helped shape include the following amendments.
Family Court Amendment - This amendment created our current system of family court judges (Article VIII, Section 16 - 1999).
Tax Increment Financing Amendment (TIF) - The TIF amendment provided a new way to finance economic development projects; (Article X, Section 81 - 2002).
Prudent Investment of State Funds Amendment - This revision allowed investment of state funds in the stock market under certain conditions, (Article X, Section 6 -1997).
Veterans Bonus Amendment of 2008 (Amendment 17) - As a way of recognizing and thanking those who have served in our most recent conflicts (Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan), this amendment provided cash bonuses for veterans.
Teen Court
In 1996, Delegate Fleischauer was a co-sponsor of the first Teen Court bill, HB 4716. Teen Court is a part of a national effort to reduce recidivism among students accused of lower level disciplinary offenses by using local programs which put on a peer trial using peer judging. She later sponsored legislation that helped formalized teen court procedures and devised a revenue source for county teen court programs. For example, she was a sponsor of HB 4561, which passed in its Senate form as SB 725 1998, and was the lead sponsor of HB 4631, which passed in 2000 in its Senate version, SB 388.