Later today, Gov. Joe Manchin is expected to issue the call for the second special legislative session of the year - a session that will begin about 24 hours later, on Tuesday afternoon.

A key issue in what the administration foresees as a one- to two-day session will be an estimated $20 million appropriation - basically, the down payment of the state's share of the cost to transfer nearly 15,000 teachers and school personnel into the Teachers' Retirement System.

However, the idea of having to act on multimillion-dollar legislation on such short notice isn't sitting well with at least one legislator.

Sen. John Yoder, R-Jefferson, issued this rant about having to vote on legislation with no advance notice - and in abbreviated time frames:

"Typically, in special sessions, we do not get any advance notice of what is on the agenda for consideration until we show up for the beginning of the special session. That means we will most likely see the proposed legislation at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, June 24, when the session begins, if even then, and not a moment before," complained Yoder, who is leaving the Senate to run for circuit judge.

"This is the way the governor of West Virginia controls the Legislature during special sessions, making sure the agenda and proposed legislation are not given to legislators in time for them to disseminate the information to the public and get adequate public feedback prior to being forced to vote on it."

Yoder argues that the teacher pension merger bill itself passed in a one-day special session in March - without time to adequately determine its ramifications on state taxpayers.

"It demonstrates one of the problems with special sessions, where the agenda is totally controlled by the governor and the legislative leadership," he said.

(On the other hand, the teacher pension merger was one of the few pieces of legislation to actually emerge from the work of a legislative interim committee - and passage of the bill was taken up in the one-day special session, rather than trying to rush it through on the final day of the regular session.)

Ironically, in the same week as Yoder's rant, attorneys for House Speaker Rick Thompson and Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin argued that the fact that many legislators did not understand that they had voted themselves retroactive increases in per-day legislative pay is not grounds to overturn the legislative pay raise legislation.

"There is simply no explicit or implicit 'due process' provision of the Constitution that may be invoked to invalidate legislation because a member didn't fully understand it," they stated.

In other words, you can't overturn legislation just because the rank-and-file members didn't understand what they were voting on.

A key issue in what the administration foresees as a one- to two-day session will be an estimated $20 million appropriation - basically, the down payment of the state's share of the cost to transfer nearly 15,000 teachers and school personnel into the Teachers' Retirement System.

However, the idea of having to act on multimillion-dollar legislation on such short notice isn't sitting well with at least one legislator.

Sen. John Yoder, R-Jefferson, issued this rant about having to vote on legislation with no advance notice - and in abbreviated time frames:

"Typically, in special sessions, we do not get any advance notice of what is on the agenda for consideration until we show up for the beginning of the special session. That means we will most likely see the proposed legislation at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, June 24, when the session begins, if even then, and not a moment before," complained Yoder, who is leaving the Senate to run for circuit judge.

"This is the way the governor of West Virginia controls the Legislature during special sessions, making sure the agenda and proposed legislation are not given to legislators in time for them to disseminate the information to the public and get adequate public feedback prior to being forced to vote on it."

Yoder argues that the teacher pension merger bill itself passed in a one-day special session in March - without time to adequately determine its ramifications on state taxpayers.

"It demonstrates one of the problems with special sessions, where the agenda is totally controlled by the governor and the legislative leadership," he said.

(On the other hand, the teacher pension merger was one of the few pieces of legislation to actually emerge from the work of a legislative interim committee - and passage of the bill was taken up in the one-day special session, rather than trying to rush it through on the final day of the regular session.)

Ironically, in the same week as Yoder's rant, attorneys for House Speaker Rick Thompson and Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin argued that the fact that many legislators did not understand that they had voted themselves retroactive increases in per-day legislative pay is not grounds to overturn the legislative pay raise legislation.

"There is simply no explicit or implicit 'due process' provision of the Constitution that may be invoked to invalidate legislation because a member didn't fully understand it," they stated.

In other words, you can't overturn legislation just because the rank-and-file members didn't understand what they were voting on.

Meanwhile, rent on the Charleston warehouse the Department of Agriculture uses for its donated-food distribution program went up last month - but not as much as critics of the program had said.

Rent on the facility, owned by St. Albans auto dealer Jim Love, increased by about $1,300 a month to $23,630 - increasing the annual cost from $267,939 to $283,568.

However, figures being circulated by food bank operators - including the Mountaineer Food Bank - put the cost of the new lease at $395,000 a year.

For some time, the operators of the nonprofit food banks have been pushing Agriculture Commissioner Gus Douglass to turn the department's commodity food distribution operations over to them.

Finally, when Justice Larry Starcher failed to pose with the other justices for the 2008 Supreme Court official group portrait, it was easy to surmise why he was AWOL.

However, it turns out Starcher actually filed a memorandum explaining why he refused to appear in the official photo, and it goes verbatim like this:

"In November 2006, the majority of our Court, in violation of the Chief Justice rotation order that was in force at the time, denied me the right to be the Chief Justice in 2007. The rationale was that Justice [Robin] Davis 'had done a fine job during 2005 and had several "Year of the Child" projects underway that needed continued, so that she deserved to serve a consecutive year as Chief Justice.' There were also denials that it was an attempt to 'prevent Starcher from being the Chief.'

"Obviously, that was 'hogwash,' since logic would dictate that if the rational [sic] had any basis, then Starcher would have taken his term as Chief the following year - being, more or less, true to the rotation order. The real reason was I was being denied the right to be the Chief - ever again!

"Enough said."

Whew - talk about holding a grudge.... Besides, I thought only professional athletes were allowed to refer to themselves in the third person.

Reach Phil Kabler at ph...@wvgazette.com or call 348-1220.