Many times I write articles with little news and much bloviation by yours truly. This article is different. It gives the complete timeline of Logan’s Law, the sex predator bill the Democrats killed, with as little commentary as possible. I will lay out the facts before you and let you form your own opinion. Because the tale is so lengthy, it will be split into two parts. And now, “part the first.” (You can read part two here)

The Democrats have been against Logan’s Law ever since Senator Sprouse (R-Kanawha) successfully amended it into the governor’s pathetically weak legislation.

To be honest, we did not think the amendment would pass because a Republican was the sponsor, but it did pass with 28 for, 5 against, and 1 absent.

Logan’s Law seemed to have a good chance of passing since 15 Democrats voted for it, but Democrats are such fickle creatures. They learned the governor and Democratic leadership were unhappy and quickly turned against the Republicans in general and Sprouse in particular.

First came the funding attack. The day after the bill was introduced, a Senator stuck his head into my office and warned me that the Democrats decided in their caucus last evening to rail against Sprouse on the Senate floor that day. When I asked why, he told me they were going to say Logan’s Law was too expensive.

I threw my head back and laughed. They’ll never win that one and they are not senseless enough to make the argument in public, I said. The Senator shrugged and went on. But I was right and I was wrong, respectively.

Senator Kessler (D-Marshall) stood up on the floor that day and challenged Senator Sprouse. According to administration figures, he said, the cost for Logan’s Law would be over $90 million dollars and West Virginia does not have the money to spend. The Democrats were all looking across the isle at Sprouse, many of them with a smirk on their face that said “what are you going to say to that?”

After Kessler finished his diatribe, Sprouse challenged his figures, saying that by tomorrow they will be over $150 million dollars. He called the costs “bogus” and said that Democrats as well as Republicans voted for the Logan’s Law amendment and they should be proud of what they did and not kowtow to the Governor.

Regardless of the cost, he said, what is it worth to the Democrats to keep the children of West Virginia safe? He challenged them to tell Logan Goodall’s mother and family that there is not enough money in the budget to keep the children of West Virginia protected from sexual predators.

After Sprouse sat down there was silence. No Democrat stood to reply. What could they say?

Afterwards, a Democratic Senator told Sprouse that when professional baseball players are having a hot streak, the ball looks like it is as big as a grapefruit. Kessler, he said, threw you a watermelon.

The next day proved Sprouse right: as the governor cooked more figures, the cost of Logan’s Law gradually grew until it peaked at $160 million dollars per year plus a new prison.

The Democrats and the governor have problems with civil commitment, the process to continue the confinement of sexually violent criminal offenders who are found to have a “mental abnormality” that causes them to pose a danger to others, even if they are not found to have a “mental illness.” Under Logan’s Law, once a sexually violent predator has completed his term in prison, a prosecutor may petition the court to have the individual committed indefinitely. The Court then determines whether a violent sex offender who has completed his or her prison sentence poses a continuing danger to others. If so, that person is committed to a state facility and their case is constantly reviewed.

The governor was estimating that thousands of violent sexual predators would be kept for life at a cost over $7,000 dollars greater than the average cost of incarcerating a West Virginia inmate. If we look at other real world scenarios in other states, we find that dozens, not hundreds of predators are kept and it certainly has not bankrupted anyone.

The issue quickly became a “sticky wicket” for the Democrats and they found themselves in a hole when the good people of West Virginia would not let the issue die. Instead of conceding that maybe once the Republicans knew what they were talking about and just perhaps their constituency was right, the Democrats grabbed more shovels and kept on a-diggin’.

Democratic Party Chairman Nick Casey then issued a press release calling Sprouse the most corrupt politician in West Virginia and accused him of supporting Logan’s Law for political reasons. He failed to mention that West Virginians Against Abuse, Logan’s Law’s supporters, had approached the Democrats about sponsoring the bill before the session started and were turned away. Plus there is that awkward fact that more Democrats voted for the amendment than Republicans. But what good are facts in a Democratic press release?

Then the Democrats said that Logan’s Law was a knee-jerk reaction and the Republicans were senselessly doubling all penalties that had the word “sex” beside them. There was an illustration the governor loved to use about the penalty being increased for intercourse between a prison guard and prisoner. That increase was obviously of no use to children. There are penalties like this and others, the governor would say, that make the bill too sporadic to support. Of course the governor would never give an example of the other penalties that did not, according to him, have anything to do with crimes against children. That was because there were not any more. Instead of trying to amend that one provision out, the governor and Democrats wanted to kill the bill totally.

Why was the Democratic Party fighting Logan’s Law after the Senate Democrats overwhelmingly voted for it? We soon found out in a secret memo the Democrats accidentally left in public.

The Democrats had a caucus in the same room that is used for the Finance Committee. After they finished, the Finance Committee met and the Republicans joined the Democrats. A Republican Senator went to his customary seat, looked down and there laid before him the Democrat’s talking points on Logan’s Law. He chuckled as he walked over to Senator Sprouse, handed it to him and said, “you might want to see this.”

After the committee meeting was over, Senator Sprouse walked into the office with an ear-to-ear grin and silently plopped the memo before me. I immediately got on the phone with certain media personalities and had the memo faxed to them. It was not long before there was a copy on the chamber desks of every Senator just so they knew they were caught.

In the memo, the Democrat’s first and obviously most important point was “reclaim ownership of the issue.” (read more about it here)

As soon as the Democrats heard Mike Agnello of 58 Live talking about the memo on 580 WCHS radio and the media started calling them for their response, the House Democrats put the memo on everyone of their member’s desk. They knew they were in big trouble from the honest remarks in the memo and tried to make it look like the Senate Republican’s discovery was not a discovery at all and that they meant to release the memo to the Republicans. Riiiiiiiiiiight.

It was becoming increasingly clear that the Governor and Senate Democrats thought Logan’s Law was a good idea in general, but were worried that Republicans had “ownership” of the issue. The Democrats could have set their mind at ease. There was no master plan by the Republicans to wrest ownership of the bill. They just wanted to pass good legislation.

Because the bill was, according to them, a “Republican issue,” the Senate Democrats and the governor wanted to kill the bill. But the bill was now out of their hands and in the House and the Democratic Delegates were not listening to the governor or Senate Democrats. They intended to amend Logan’s Law into a workable bill that both the Democrats and Republicans agreed with. But that wouldn’t be so easy.

This is the conclusion of part one. Do you want to know what the governor said 30 minutes before midnight on the last day? Stay tuned for part two.