WHATS NEW WITH AMENDMENT 2?

     West Virginia's State Supreme Court Justices spent about 2 million dollars of the state's money to renovate their offices. That is an outrageous amount of money. West Virginian's have a right to be upset. The Supreme Court Justice's are being dealt with at this moment with impeachment trials due to the over spending. Two of the Supreme Court Justices have resigned, and so we get to vote to replace those two in the upcoming election. The West Virginia State Legislature has put on the ballot an amendment to deal with this issue of the Supreme Court over spending, Amendment 2.

 https://www.wvnews.com/news/wvnews/new-wv-supreme-court-audit-shines-light-on-renovations-overpaying/article_5af9a21f-0303-559f-9a72-14bcfaf1ad9f.html

     Amendment 2, if approved, will grant the State Legislature a certain amount of power and oversight regarding the State Legislatures budget. See the West Virginia Metro News link below for more.

 http://wvmetronews.com/2018/03/19/for-or-against-2-proposed-constitutional-amendments-will-be-on-west-virginia-general-election-ballots/

     Granting the State Legislature more power over budgets is giving more responsibility to a government agency that can't get its own budget in balance, or in on time, year after year. Its swapping one group of over spenders to look after the states Supreme Court budget, with another group of individuals who are bad at completing budgets. 2018 was the first year in quite a while that the West Virginia State Legislature completed the budget on time (never mind my opinion on the budget's priorities). In 2017 it took the state legislature months of extra time to hammer out a budget. It took until June in 2016 as well.

http://wvmetronews.com/2018/03/10/wv-budget-set-for-passage-today-day-60-of-wv-legislative-session/
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/politics/wv-legislature-passes-budget-takes-million-in-one-time-funds/article_063067d2-6259-59d9-b95e-fa7cd847cf3a.html

     Granting the State Legislature power over the State Supreme Courts budget would give the party in power improper influence over the State Supreme Court, and potentially the Courts decisions. I don't care which side of the aisle you are on, that's a bad idea. If Republicans are in charge and have increased influence over the courts budget, Democrats wont like it. If Democrats are in charge and have increased influence over the courts budget, Republicans wont like it.

     The State Supreme Court needs to be responsible with their budget, no on will argue against that. Amendment 2 is the wrong way to bring the Supreme Court budget back to being reasonable. There is another way, and that's by electing experienced Judges with a proven track record to the State Supreme Court this election. Judges like Will Thompson and Joanna Tabit, both of whom are currently Circuit Judges. So I would encourage West Virginians to vote no on Amendment 2, and to vote for Judges Thompson and Tabit.