By Phil Kabler
Staff writer

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Gov. Joe Manchin continues to work with legislators to finalize a special session agenda for later this month, an agenda that the governor's spokesman said is likely to be lengthier than originally anticipated.

"It's going to be a fairly busy session," Matt Turner said Tuesday. "It's probably more than what you'd normally see."

In the past, Manchin has generally limited special session calls to a handful of bills, most often with the consensus of the House and Senate leaders.

Manchin has previously announced three bills he will put on the agenda, including a bill to provide additional in-school, after-school, or summer school instruction to third- and eighth-graders who are academically deficient in reading, language arts, or math.

Turner said the agenda is likely to be much longer than the three bills, possibly with other education legislation, but said a final agenda has yet to be determined.

"We're seeking agreement from both houses on any issues on the call," he said. "There's not room for any lengthy debate."

Raamie Barker, administrative assistant to Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, D-Logan, said Tuesday that finalizing a special session agenda remains a work in progress.

"I'm sure there will be more discussions between now and [next] Tuesday," he said. "There are a lot of bills under consideration. Some are on one day, and off the next, and vice versa."

He said legislators are also getting pressure from constituent groups to get their issues included on the special session agenda.

"There's a large number of requests from folks wanting us to reconsider bills that died in the regular session, or to consider new bills," he said.

The Legislature will reconvene on May 26 for an extended session to complete work on the 2009-10 state budget, and to act on veto messages on some of the 20 regular session bills vetoed by the governor.

About 18 of the bills had to be vetoed for technical errors, and Barker said the Legislature is likely to vote to make corrections to many of those bills and send them back to the governor for his approval.

Among those measures are bills to allow approval of a Kanawha-Charleston metro government by a simple majority vote in the city and county, and legislation to create a cabinet-level office to coordinate state health care and wellness initiatives.

The resolution authorizing the extended session goes from May 26 through June 6.

Turner said the hope is that House and Senate budget conferees will be able to complete work on the 2009-10 budget bill within the first few days of that extended session, allowing Manchin to immediately call a special session to fall within that 11-day time period.

"Our goal would be to stay within that time-frame to have the special session, and be out by June 6," Turner said. "Although that may be optimistic."

While House and Senate conferees have been meeting independently to work on the budget bill, Barker said the mandate to cut $200 million of spending out of the $4.4 billion general revenue budget complicates matters.

"There's going to be a lot of hard bargaining in that budget," he said.

Each day of extended or special session costs more than $30,000 in legislative pay and per-day expenses.

Reach Phil Kabler at philk@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1220.