Here are Steve Williams’ answers to our questions

MSS: When you were  elected mayor Huntington in 2012, you inherited a city that was kind of teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Over your time in office, the city’s finances were largely turned around, essential services were preserved and the city’s bond rating actually increased. While West Virginia has been enjoying a revenue surplus, there’s concern about how the income tax reduction scheme could harm that in the future. As governor, how will you use your experience as Mayor of Huntington to address any potential fiscal issues with West Virginia state government in the next few years?

Steve Williams: It’s a good question. And I’ve been thinking about it. Because it worries me. Fortunately, I’ve had the experience of having to deal with this.

One of the things that we did, that actually turned into our favor —everybody’s talking about continuing to reduce the income tax, or eliminate the income tax–when I came in, we eliminated the business and occupation tax on manufacturing.

But boy, I wanted to get rid of business and occupation tax, but you just don’t start doing it blindly.

You put a plan in place. Work it.  And as you’re working it,  the one thing that a leader has to do is to have a vision of where he’s going to be. Articulate that vision, build consensus towards it.

But when you’re acting on it, timing is everything.

This is a bit of a sports metaphor– all the years that I was playing ball, there were some times that you’d have to be able to move immediately, when a seam would open up. What I’ve come to realize is that that’s very much what we have to do here– know where you’re wanting to go, but be prepared to act immediately.

Interestingly, when we went into COVID, I needed to do something with retail to make sure that my businesses could stay competitive. We developed something very precious downtown. I had to make sure that whatever we were doing was lifting them up. So what we did is we had a pilot program, in essence, a suspension of the business taxes for retail and restaurants. And as we were doing that we said, “alright, let’s see how this can work.”

We had planned that it’s going to take a hit on our income.  All of a sudden we started seeing – we didn’t miss a beat.

People were coming in and buying things in our stores and going to the restaurants. We did special things to allow the restaurants to go out into the streets. And we ended up where we thought we were going to lose $2 million, we ended up making about 3 million. It covered the projected loss and actually got a little bit more.

So the point simply being is that just because you say we are going to do it, you don’t say “Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead.”

You do it very thoughtfully step in a step, in a  step and in a step.

But also, as we got up to that point, I had to make some really hard decisions. And I wasn’t the most popular person there for a while.  It seemed as though I couldn’t do anything right. And I did everything wrong in people’s eyes. And I was standing right in here thinking, “why am I doing this?”

And I had this one thought that came through my head. Now it’s either a thought or Providence or whatever and it said, “ Well, well, if you’re not here, who else would you want to have here?” And I said back to myself – You know, they say if you answer yourself….

MSS: You might need to go up on the hill.

Steve Williams: (Laughs) That’s right.

And I said, “Nobody.

Then there was a response back that said, “Well shut up then.”

(Laughs).

But the point is, I had to make some really hard decisions. Fortunately, I had some time to be able to see through those decisions.

Now all of this is an awfully long answer for you to be squeezing it in –I am worried about the finances.

When I look at everybody who’s running, I’m the only one who’s had to deal with this.

As a legislator, you have to appropriate the budget, but the governor’s got to make the decision. So the question is, what are you going to do, when you’re faced with something that you weren’t expecting?

You have to have the stiff spine to make the hard decisions.  And you know that it’s not going to be popular, but you also know, it’s what’s best for the state. And in the long term that we ended up being better.

As I look at it now in Huntington, because I’ve made the hard decisions, and folks stuck with me, we’ve been able to be successful.

There was one other thing that we did. My background is in finance. I was an investment banker for a while and then in the brokerage business. I understood the markets. When we came in putting my first budget together, we had reserves for workers comp, and for our health care plan, and it all added up to a couple of million dollars.

Well, they were just kind of holding that over to the side and just showing what the expenses were and the day to day revenue that’s coming in.  We had some bond issues that we were trying to get a rating on.

I said include in our entire financial picture, the money that we have holding in reserves.  When I came in, we had a triple B rating. When we did that with the reserves that we had, all of a sudden we were at an A rating.

It jumped way up there and we were able to borrow at a lower interest rate.

But more importantly, as others were coming in to start to look at us they started saying, “They were sitting at a triple B and now they’re in A plus rating. Hmmm…. What are they doing?”

And you know, it’s something that you have to pay attention to the finances, the fiscal condition. Every. Single. Day.

MSS: I know that a lot of cities across country – I’m not sure how Huntington has stood on this – there’s a lot of issues regarding retirement, like the old pension funds and concerns about some type of a cliff. I know the state side we have PEIAand there’s issues there. How would you, as Governor, be able to use some of your experience with that particular fiscal albatross?

Steve Williams:  With PEIA we need to have a dedicated tax.

I made some really hard decisions on our health care plan.I had some retirees that because there had been a lawsuit, who were on Medicare and still were on this on the city’s health care plan, paying just the tiniest premium.

And I came in and said we have to make these changes. And part of the changes was getting our retirees through the city on Medicare Advantage plan. And man, were screaming like stuck pigs.

Now they’re fine.

The police officers and firefighters get their pensions. I was trying to project what we would run into.

Right here’s the fire pensions started off with $13 million. (taps sheet of paper)

Now it’s $45 million.

People were saying go bankrupt. Because of this, declare bankruptcy. And I said, No, we refuse to do that.

Part of it was that, particularly with the firefighters, they weren’t calculating the pensions correctly, and they were making it a little bit rich. We fixed it to make sure from X date on that, we made sure that we had two or three calculations and made sure that everybody’s getting to the right calculation.

What we ended up seeing is what was being paid out. I went to the city council and said, We made a commitment to these retirees – just because we calculated it wrong, it’s not their fault. So let’s guarantee that we’re not touching their pension. And we’re not going to claw it back. And the legislature gave us the ability that if we were paying too much, we could claw it back.

I said, no, we’re not going to do that.

Whatever was promised, it’s there.

But if it was under calculated, then let’s lift it up.The whole idea is let’s be fair. Look at the return here – a 234% total return. And since 2013, and there were some down years, a 12.3% return annually.This is just on the fire department.

The police department started off with $22 million, now it’s $52 million. So you have this is two and a half times the amount that they started off (police pension) with. This is three and a half times what they started off with (fire pension).

We don’t have time for on the job training. You got to have somebody who’s been there. And nobody has this experience. Nobody has had to sit down and actually redesign the health care plan. I’m not saying take it away, but we have to make sure that we have a dedicated source of income.

The other thing that I bring to the table is that I’ve got five unions that I’m negotiating different contracts with.

I’ve negotiated 16 bargaining agreements, since we’ve been here. I have others sitting at the table. I’m not sitting there myself, but I say this is where we want to go.

We have police, fire, AFSCME unions, one with the city and one with the sanitary board. And then we have one with the theatrical workers as well.

We’ve been able to increase the compensation for our employees by 48% during these 13 years. And you compare that to the six years that before I came into office, there wasn’t a single raise. The previous administration had not even renewed the bargaining agreements. Our employees needed to have the certainty to know that they could come to work, they were certain that they were going to have a job.

But in the midst of all of that I had to lay some people off. And we followed the contract as to how we do it. By the end of the year, we were hiring everybody back who and not everybody did come back – some got jobs elsewhere.

But these are hard decisions that had to be made. And if you’re doing it with the political eye, you’re going to stumble over yourself and just make a mess of things. But if you look at what has to be done, and act boldly on it, and govern aggressively, in time, it starts to show that those things that you’re seeking to do, were the right things.

MSS: And I know you were described in the Huntington Herald dispatch, as a non-partisan, reach across the aisle Democrat who believes in limited government and free market principles. All your potential opponents in  November have prided themselves on being the most conservative. If elected governor you will likely be inheriting a Republican supermajority in the legislature. How will you be able to work with them to get things done?

Williams: If I get elected, it won’t be as big a majority as it is now.

There will be Republicans who think like me, who will get elected to the legislature, there will be some Democrats who will get elected to the legislature.

It goes back to when I was in the legislature.

I was part of a group that was considered business, conservative Democrats. And if we need to work on some we’d work with the leadership. Certainly,  I was never part of the inner circle of leadership. I ended up working my way to be a committee chair of the banking committee.

But the reality was, we would go over to the Republicans, and they were a super minority. They had more than we have right now as Democrats. But we would go over and say, “This is what we’re working on.”

And then they’d say, “Okay, we’ll vote as a bloc.”

Then we had about 16 of us. And then we might be about five or six votes short. So I started learning how to be able to look on all sides and try to draw folks together.

I am a proud Democrat. But I have never, ever asked anybody or indicated to anyone that they should vote for me because I am a Democrat.

Vote for me, because you see that I’m the best person.  Period.

And if I get elected, here, frankly, I’ll find a way to be able to work with these folks. You know why? Because we’re getting some things done.

Now, if somebody is looking to have a political score, they aren’t in the legislature for any of the right reasons.

The right reasons are “ let’s do everything that we can and find a way to be able to help our folks back home”.

And is that as I see it, I had two letters after my name, Steve Williams, West Virginian. That’s it. I just don’t consider myself to be partisan. And anybody who tries to paint me – If they’re looking for the worst in someone, usually all they can do is look in the mirror and they’ll find it in themselves. There will be some things they’ll start saying negatively about me. I’m not a prince by any means. There might be some things they might be saying that might be true. I can’t imagine what they are. But if they’re criticizing me for my positions, fine, then what’s another way that we might be able to help our citizens?

MSS: And I think this really rolls into this next question here. As you well know, West Virginia has seen a dramatic shift in politics over the last 20 years. Part of that has been attributed to the actions of the Democratic Party on the national level. What if anything, separates your platform and campaign from that of the national DNC?

Williams: Everything. Everything.

I’m a Democrat, because this is my 11th campaign. All 11 times I’ve been the nominee of my party. There’s one thing that we are in short supply of — that’s loyalty.

Democrats since 1986, have nominated me every single time. Two times I’ve lost, but I’ve always been in the general election. There’s no way that I’m going to go and switch parties. It was a means to get on the ballot.

Once the primary is over with, then I’m working with Democrats, Republicans, independents. My bet is that there are independents and Republicans who are going to like what they hear.

Here’s the challenge I have – will they take time to stop and listen?

If they stop and listen to what I’m having to say, I’ll win this thing.

Because my experience has been in business, as well as in public life — You put me in a room, when folks will actually listen to what I’m saying and not just tune me out, I’ll walk away with 90% of them.

Now not about to say I’m gonna get 90% of the vote. (Laughs)

It’s a steep mountain to climb, but it’s one that has to be made for this state.

We’re at a precipice,  where we’re either going to just go into the stratosphere, or it’s going to be more of the same. And the only way that I’ve demonstrated that in Huntington, that we’ve been able to move forward is that everybody joined arms and collaborated with one another. Huntington at one time was known as the city that would fight over anything.

Arch Moore said, “If you go into Huntington and you hand out $20 bills on the street corner, they’ll argue about which street corner you should be on.”

MSS: Is that who said that? I always heard that one.

SW: Yeah, that was Arch Moore who said that.

When I was running in my first mayoral race when I got elected, I was talking to a man who said to me, “ Steve, you’re the most optimistic person I have ever seen in public life.” And he said,” we had got to play on that.”

I looked at him and I said, “ Thomas, I don’t know that folks can believe that we can accomplish all that I think we can.”

And he said, “Would you want to be mayor of a city that people couldn’t believe that you could accomplish what you’re saying you could do?”

Nope.

When he said that, it just lifted the shackles off me and just made me free.

At that point, I was saying, Alright, dream, dream, dream so big that it makes people hyperventilate.

When we have the America’s Best Communities competition, everybody, everybody, even our group was saying, “ You’re thinking too big.”

Was it? We don’t have time to do anything half measure. We don’t have 20 years to do this. At best, we’ll probably only have eight.

You know, I got 12. (Chuckles)

And son of a gun,  people were saying just identify one area and focus on that. I said no, we’re here to transform the city.

Well, it’s the same thing. We’re here to transform the state. So we’re going to go in full measure, as aggressive as we can, in every part of the state, lift people up and say, “Look what we can do.”

What was also life changing for me, I went to work in Chicago for six years and manage the Chicago market for then Bank 1 in the investment operation. As I was going into the city, I thought, man, these are big city people, sophisticated. How are they going to follow me?

I started finding out real quick, being from here, we’ve got something.

We have things on those folks that are so sophisticated. We have to be great compared to them just to be able to be good in our market.

In the big cities, they have an economy of scale of all people and all the money in the world and everything. We’ve got to scrape and scrimp to be able to get it and by doing that, we start developing some skills.

That’s what we have going for us in West Virginia. And if anything, I think after a while we start developing a little bit of a swagger. It’s not a chip on the shoulder.  It’s a swagger when we come walking in we know we own the room.

Then we go to New York and say, “Yes, we’re in West Virginia, we are the most energy rich state in the nation. We’re the first applied engineers so when you come into West Virginia, you’ll find out that we know how to figure out how to get things done.”

Thus in the Digital Age coding comes in.  They start finding, we’ve got ways and that we don’t give up on how to be able to do things.

Sorry, I get excited.

MSS:

No, you’re fine. But actually, you kind of brought up a couple of questions I have here about your time as mayor.

Downtown Huntington has seen tremendous growth and resurgence. You know, I remember the early 2010s when I  first started attending Marshall –

Steve Williams: Yeah, it was empty.

MSS: What lessons did you learn as mayor, from the experience of growing that downtown that you could use as governor to help other towns?

Steve Williams: There are two things.

What we started finding is local ownership of the buildings and businesses and downtown. When we started having the out of state owners, selling it to the local businesses, there’s a bit of pride there. And there’s a willingness to take a risk, and to do some things that others look on the balance sheet out of Chicago, or out of Richmond or wherever and don’t. They’re not here.

As I was driving in here earlier, I was just looking around and one of the former mayor Bobby Nelson’s sons owns a bunch of these buildings.

Now, he loves Huntington. And then he wasn’t going to get into politics, but he got into real estate and started acquiring buildings.

Now, here’s what’s interesting. The mayor of Louisville, Greg Fisher, he’s the former mayor now. He was coming through and he called me on a Friday evening and said, “Steve, I’m driving by your city, is there a place where I can stop to go for dinner with my wife and get a flavor of Huntington?”

So I told him, the Peddler down here.  Met him down here.

As we were walking around, I said, “Does the architecture of these buildings look familiar?”

Ohio River.

And I said,” Look at what we have here.  You see all the storefronts – the one thing that we have that other cities don’t have is  they’re full up in the top, we have businesses up in the top. And it’s not just right on the main on the main drag, and everything else is empty.”

When we got word  about Pullman Square,  that the ownership was looking to sell its ownership. And we had the largest rescue plan appropriation of any city or county in the state of West Virginia. I had my team come in and I met with the general manager who said they’re going to be looking to sell their interests. They had five partners, three of them were going to be looking to sell their interest.

We got to talking and decided, let’s make a bid. Let’s see what we can do. And we bought the majority interest in Pullman Square. We created another company, we have the Huntington Municipal Development Authority. And the way that statute is structured –  back in the 1960s, amazingly –  allowed that to be separate from the city. It could create partnerships or limited partnerships. We created a separate corporation, so that Pullman Square would stay on the tax rolls.

Pullman Square, you remember in 2010, that was really about the time they were just getting that started, but it still was starts and stops along the way.

Now this is the way that we can give assurance that this is going to do.

So the one thing I will be having a joy in doing is going into the towns – because guess what? I’ll be dealing with the same things there I dealt with here.

I first started my career as the director of the Putnam County Development Authority talking about economic development with them.

Well, as I go into the cities, I’m not ever, ever going to say, you need to do it the Huntington way.

You start identifying what are the strengths within the community? What talent do you have hiding in plain sight? What are some opportunities that we might have, and then who are some individuals locally that would start investing in these things, and then you start to see everything starting to come together.

It works.

MSS: It sounds like to me it would be a collaborative process.

Steve Williams: Everything is.

If you notice, everything I’m talking about is collaborative.

As we worked fighting the opioid epidemic, it ended up everything that we were doing to try to encourage development within the community, we also were trying to do the very same things in fighting the opioid epidemic.

It was just two sides of the same coin. One is bright and shiny, and the other is dark and dreary. But in essence, what you do is that you make sure that you’re communicating, you’re building partnerships, and in building those partnerships, you start having the collaboration, then all of a sudden, you go out and get it.

So it’s a very simple formula.

As you’re communicating and you’re collaborating, as you start building partnerships, and establish trust, you know what the outcome of all of that is?

Hope.

And we were doing that with the opioid epidemic. We started talking with one another, communicating, collaborating, and started building some trust, creating partnerships. All of a sudden, we started seeing some hope that’s being developed.

Well, it’s exactly the same thing on the other side. I’m not sure if you have seen this – the only metro area in the state, whose employment has restored back to pre COVID numbers, and has grown from them, is the Huntington market. Everybody else is still pulling themselves out of the COVID.

And we’re back beyond the pre COVID economic numbers.

MSS: And you mentioned the opioid epidemic here. So what parts of your experience in tackling the opioid crisis as city mayor, do you think you’d be able to scale up and implement on a state level if you were elected governor?

Steve Williams: I think one thing that does work to our advantage from the opioid settlement is the West Virginia First Foundation.

If that’s handled properly, you encourage every community to start identifying innovative solutions, and then they start learning from one another.

One thing that we did at the very beginning, which wasn’t being done, is that it was so very clear what was happening.  We couldn’t understand how it was happening here, with us. What we found is that you had to state it for what it was.

As I see it, it’s an ancient maxim – name it, you can own it.

Now you look back in the Scriptures where people would go settling into an area and then they would name it, they would claim it. As they name it and then by owning it, the owners are the ones that are able to do something with it.

Well, I guess it’s better to say you own the problem and then name it and then be prepared to go forward. Again, collaboration.

One thing that I’m still fighting are sober living facilities.

I have no problem with individuals opening sober Living houses or treatment facilities, so long as they are doing it to try to help people heal. But there are some that are doing it for all the wrong reasons.

They’re the ones that are just trying to make a quick buck. And they’re doing it on the back of people who are suffering. And we’re suing the state Department of Corrections right now, because they’re sending people down here into sober living houses. We’re suing for them to open up their books, and let us see what they’re actually doing.

They’re sending people and putting them in sober living houses – there is no indication that that person is in the midst of any type of recovery. And we’re saying, “ No, you don’t open.”

What I’ve done as mayor is that in order for a sober living house, or a treatment facility to open in this town, it requires one signature –  actually it requires several signatures –  but only one gives them the permission to be able to operate here.

And that’s my signature.

I have my finance people looking at it, I have my police department looking at it. I have my fire department looking at my code. Sure. They’re all looking to make sure that they’re meeting meeting all the goals.

MSS: Sure, you have some of these houses that are cramming 20 guys into a house.

SW: They’re flop houses.  They are just throwing mattresses down.

And they’re saying well, because they have a disability, they can locate anywhere, anywhere.

I live in a nice neighborhood. There was a house across from me that was for sale for a while somebody could have come in and just bought that and said, Well, we have these individuals who have a disability.

And they could have opened up a flophouse. The way the courts are interpreting these things saying Nope. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, they don’t have to be held by certain zoning laws.

So I’ve got off on a bit of a bent, did I answered?

MSS: You’re saying you’re going to work with the West Virginia First Foundation?

SW: It’s interesting, where individuals are coming from some of the largest cities to see what we’re doing.

We have an opportunity in every one of our communities. And I said it earlier is that you have talent hiding in plain sight. You don’t have to have all the answers. And we have within the state, the universities and the hospitals that will come in and meet and partner with you. But the whole idea is that some folks have to decide to lead.

Fortunately, when I came in, it was about January of ‘13 and the middle of ‘14 is when I saw what was happening. And lucky for me, I came out and I spoke boldly and people joined.

But it ended up being businesses decided to get involved because it needed to make sure that it didn’t hurt them. The churches got involved, the university got involved – they created a division of addiction sciences in their health services programs. The emergency rooms in the hospitals started adjusting so that they would be keeping accurate data as to what was going on.

One thing that we did do is we started following data on a daily basis as to our overdose calls. And when we got Naloxone that we were distributing to all of our first responders, what we ended up finding –  and again this is hit and miss but you just never stop, you are always learning.

We found that one day in August 2016 there were 26 people who had overdosed – 28 overdosed,  two died because they were by themselves, the other 26 didn’t die because we had Naloxone, and we prevented them from dying.

But there’s an art in my words.

Not a single person got referred treatment. Not a single person.

After preventing them from dying, we needed to come in and meet with them and encourage them to get to treatment. When you get them to treatment, that’s when you save a life.

All you’ve done is stopped them from dying with naloxone. But to save their lives, you’re giving them an opportunity to be able to start recovery and find a way, letting their brain heal and finding a way out. Now we’ve saved individuals’ lives.

Each of these towns, each of these counties will learn this.

Frankly, what we need is to have more treatment beds, not in the towns, not in the cities not in the population centers.

There are some individuals up in Martinsburg, they might need to get away from that atmosphere and be able to go somewhere else. But there’s some folks that just need to be near their family where they can have some support.

We need to have treatment facilities.

One problem that we’ve had, not just with addiction, but with mental illness, about 50 years ago is when they started shutting down these mental health facilities. And now we don’t have any. There’s nowhere to take them.

As I see it, once again, you got to reach in. And I think you’re seeing a little bit of a pattern here –  going to the local governments to encourage them to be making some decisions. One thing that I’ve learned is that it’s amazing how brilliant people are even in the smallest of towns.

In Inwood,  you know there’s some pretty bright people right there. I guaran-daggone-tee they’re a lot brighter than what you ended up getting out of Charleston. Or out of Washington.

You know, we need partners with our state government, we need partners with our feds.

Early on – this didn’t deal with opioids or anything – it had everything to do with infrastructure and what we were trying to do and building up the community for economic opportunity.

We invited every federal agency who we work with and every state agency who we work with, and we came in and in my opening remarks may have been a little arrogant – surprise.

I said to them, “ Welcome to Huntington, we’ve been working and we have plans that we’re putting in place. But if you think that you’re going to come in here and tell us what we need, we might as well just stop this conference right now. We know what we need. We know what we’re wanting to do.  We need you to tell us how you can help us.”

What’s neat is last summer, we had a group that came in who had come in about that time, and we were able to bring them in. So this is what we said we were going to be doing that we were planning. Now come and let’s look at what we are actually doing.

That’s what collaboration will bring, the communities speaking up for themselves. So my goal is to embolden and encourage local communities smaller or larger, it doesn’t matter. And counties. Get together and say, “ Hey, so what is it that you’re wanting to do? Now, tell us where you’re wanting to go? We might be able to show you here’s a better road to be able to get there. But you make the decision what’s right for your community.”

MSS: Speaking of  decisions for the community, Huntington as well as Cabell County decided to go its own way in pursuing damages with the pharmaceutical industry for fueling the opioid epidemic. While the state was able to get a settlement Huntington’s case lost at trial, has been appealed and  is still being litigated with a certified question now pending at the state Supreme Court. In retrospect, are you still comfortable with the legal strategy going to trial? Is going on trial the best approach?

Steve Williams: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

It will be proven that we were right. The billion dollars that the state got for all 55 counties of which we participated in. The Attorney General and the governor went forward on that.

It’s interesting that our data is showing, in order for us to address this properly in Cabell County, it’s $2 billion. That’s why we added a two plus billion dollar lawsuit.

We’re setting standards that the rest of the nation is seeking to follow.

And frankly, if we do this – I do expect that we will be successful, but I don’t know necessarily that we’ll get the $2 billion – we’ll get a boatload more than what we’re getting through the current distribution that is occurring. And that’s fine.

As best as I recall it, we were the first city to actually say “we’re going to sue” in the nation. Others started jumping in on this and then others. And that’s when you started having a statewide program.

But we felt that if we ground zero, then let’s make sure that we’re setting a standard that the rest of the nation will be able to follow.

MSS: Our readers are concerned about infrastructure such as water, sewer, roads and broadband. Areas, such as the Eastern Panhandle, are seeing unprecedented growth, but residents there say  infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Other parts of the state are seeing issues with dilapidated, falling apart roads, Hill slips. As governor, how will you prioritize state and federal dollars in addressing those needs?

Steve Williams: This is what worries me about the money, the fiscal soundness of the state.

Right now we have more infrastructure money available than has ever been at the local level ever in our nation’s history. I would encourage every municipality, regardless of size, to put a plan in place as to what is needed.

We have to have water systems.  Throughout southern West Virginia, there are areas the coal companies provided the water systems and the coal companies have long gone out of business and there was nobody to maintain the upkeep of the water systems. And now trucks are trucking in freshwater. That’s a description of a third world country, not the most prosperous nation in the world.

As I see it, we have to build roads. We have to fix the roads that we have. I am particularly concerned about two major roadways. Corridor H has to be completed over through Virginia. Actually three.

On Route 119 going down from Sutton down to Beckley there needs to be a road connecting over into the Pocahontas County areas, into the Snowshoe area. Because if we’re going to be a haven for individuals to work remotely, then let’s make it easy for you to get there.

The Coalfield highway from Bluefield and Huntington. I grew up in Mercer County  and 50-some years ago when we moved up here, I didn’t realize that Route 52 was the one that connected Huntington to Bluefield. We need to build that up through here and that opens up that entire southwestern part of the part of the State.

The markets are going to determine what businesses are going to go into the area but with tourism and other things that will develop that will also create growth.

If we are handling it,  we’re putting our strategic emphasis on infrastructure, broadband. You have to have that in order to be able to compete with the other side of the world. I mean, we’re not looking to have regional competitiveness – why would we ever shoot so low?

No.

We’ve got to compete with the other side of the world . Every small town, every county in the state has to be able to do that.

Well, interestingly, our colleges are strategically placed all around the state.  We need to enable our colleges to be able to use their research and their brainpower to help lift up the areas.

From a healthcare standpoint,  in order to make sure that we’re addressing healthcare needs, you have to have the ability for remote physician visits. You got to have broadband in order for somebody down in McDowell County to be able to have access either to Bluefield or Beckley or Huntington or Charleston.

So how do I set the priorities?

It’s going to be regionally stated.

One thing that I think that we have matured in Huntington, we just had a housing study that was done – actually, we started on a housing study about five years ago – that was showing the level of available housing, how much was rented.  I think 47% of the city was rental property. Good Lord!

And the cost of rental units is pretty expensive.

MSS:  It’s gone up.

Steve Williams:  We had dilapidated buildings that we’ve had to tear down, we’ve torn down over 500 buildings since I’ve been here. Now, that’s not the way a city grows, by tearing everything down.

What we have to do is also encourage redevelopment of some of these properties. That’s what we’re seeing in the downtown area. Housing in areas like the Eastern Panhandle, need to be able to build affordable housing.

But also, firmly, as you mentioned earlier, I believe in the free markets. I want to create competition and encourage individuals to come in. And yes, we will use the tax code to helping encourage some things. But I’m not going to give away all of our infrastructure just to get somebody to come in and then we can’t afford to lay the infrastructure.

When people see that the roads aren’t kept, that the water systems, the sewer systems aren’t, aren’t there,  Well, dag-gone. They’re not going to locate here.

We have to have our infrastructure be second to none.

And now is the time for us to be building these things, and make sure that we’re giving every community an opportunity to participate in it. Because all of that money that came available out of COVID is not going to be here forever. We have got to take what we have and focus it in every part of the state.

We start identifying through the regional councils;  we have them state, “ These are our priorities.”

But this can’t go for five years.

When we had the America’s best communities competition here, we reached out into the community. What are the needs?

And that’s where I was saying earlier, we put together such an aggressive program where everybody was saying, “Just don’t dream, dream so big. We don’t want you to be disappointed.”

No.

We have to dream dreams so big.  we have to put plans that are just so expansive.

There’s only one objective – for us to Be a top five state in the nation.

Imagine that –  to have us saying in West Virginia, that the investment in infrastructure is at such a level, that our schools are starting to perform, our healthcare is starting to perform that all of these others, we start aiming to be a top quintile.

So if we’re in the top 10%, that means we’re in the top five states.

MSS: So this, this really leads into a couple of my questions here. So education.

Folks my organization recently spoke with in Morgantown, expressed some concerns that the state is not adequately supporting and valuing the work of WVU and higher education at large. Public school systems have teacher and support staff shortages. Our readers want to know what would you do to support high quality education in West Virginia?

I’m hearing infrastructure is a part of that puzzle there, but  what else would you do?

Steve Williams: We also need to make sure college, post-high school, post-secondary education is affordable to everyone.

One thing that’s being developed here at Marshall is they’re putting a program in place that students that come in and qualify for it will be able to graduate without any debt.

What’s happened is higher education has been privatized. I went all through college on a football scholarship. But it really was not that expensive, at the time. I was real fortunate that I was a good athlete and my education was going to be paid.

I see that the only way colleges and universities have been able to make ends meet is they have to keep putting it on the back of students and increasing the tuition to be able to come in.

In my mind, that’s been the privatization of our higher education system.

The same things are starting to happen in the school system.

I think HOPE scholarships are nice and everything, but they’re starting to take money away from public schools. You don’t do those things – subsidize private education on the backs of public education.

Our teachers certainly have to be competitive in their salaries. But we also need to have market differentials as well.  In the Eastern Panhandle, they need to be able to compete with Loudoun County in Virginia and Maryland, in Pennsylvania nearby. Here, teachers can go right over in Ohio, right down to Kentucky.

There’s got to be a market differential, where you have the ability to be able to raise the salaries of teachers. Both my parents were teachers.

MSS: So you’re talking locality pay?

Steve Williams: In my business world, we had called it a market differential.

I was being moved to Chicago, I went in and I said to them, “ I’m going to need this as a base salary because of the cost difference.” And they said, “Oh, well, base salaries is set, it’s within a certain range.”

Long story short, I finally accepted, and I just thought, “Alright, this is something that I just have to do, but I still don’t know how I’m going to make ends meet.”

As I was headed to a meeting, I got a phone call from my manager and said, “We’re doing the paperwork for your transfer”.

He said, “Oh, by the way, is it more expensive to live in Chicago than it is in West Virginia?”

And I said yes.

And he said, “Well, your compensation, there is a market adjustment for your salary.”

And actually they increased it to the level that I said I had to have to begin with. (laughs)

All right, I just stepped forward in faith and it all fell into place.

MSS: Many folks we spoke with in rural communities expressed concern about having jobs in their area to literally put food on their tables, so they don’t have to rely on food pantries. Other communities that have economic development such as solar and hydrogen hubs – as well as areas that have had long histories of coal and gas development –there’s concerns that the jobs that come could potentially poison the air, water and land. As governor, what do you intend to do to balance these two issues of having jobs but also having a clean environment?

Steve Williams: Well, we sold their souls in the past.

Both my grandfathers were coal miners. But I also saw, each of them died at age 64 and age 68. Now that I’m turning 68, it seems very young, to me.

My mother’s father went into the mines when he was eight years old. I don’t ever remember him not having heart attacks. He was never an invalid, but he had trouble breathing. From eight years old to the late 40s, he worked in the mines – 40 plus years working in the mines.

His life got cut short at age 64.

As I see it, mining –also the rare earth minerals – there are markets for those.  The markets will determine that it will still be part of the energy, natural resource landscape.

My goal would be for us to be not not known as the coal state but as the energy state. I said this earlier, and we are the richest state in the nation, when it comes to natural resources.

Let’s make sure that what we’re using is the technology of the digital age, in order for us to be able to accomplish these things.

Again, what I was pointing back to with infrastructure is to make sure that we have clean water, we have clean air. And we use solar, we use wind, we start within our research capacity at WVU and Marshall. And again, they have to be properly funded, as well as our other schools, so they are doing the research to be able to identify other uses of coal, not just burning it.

Just what are some other discoveries that we can have, where we’d be able to utilize, still be able to, to extract them from the earth, but we do it in a clean way. We’ve got to use our technology in order to do this.

Now, the reality is, how do we do this?

I don’t know. But I do know that there are people here and others who we can draw here that will have the mental capacity to be able to be innovative in that way. And once again, that’s where we have an opportunity with our folks.

MSS: So would a Williams administration be an “all of the above” in terms of energy?

Steve Williams: Oh, yeah.

We’re trying to get solar here. Natural gas is in the area, we need to take full advantage of that. I’m not going into the Public Service Commission and making sure that I have everybody who I’m appointing on the Public Service Commission are just in one energy sector.

What I’m looking at is people who can think brilliantly, be innovative as to how we utilize everything.

Again we’re the richest state in the nation when it comes to natural resources: water, wind, sun natural gas, coal. But we’ve got to be innovative in how we’re using it and creating our markets. Because if all of our coal is being used just for energy and for steel – well as we’re starting to see with Nucor and others, they’re using other means of energy to make their steel.

How do we find ourselves in an ever changing market? How do we find ourselves, reacting,  responding to that?

We got things right here. Somebody is going to come up with an idea of a cell phone type of thing. Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, we sure didn’t have these things.

I remember 30 years ago, I was dating a doctor, and she came in with one of these big ass phones.

MSS: The brick phone?

Steve Williams: Yeah, yeah. I thought – what in the world? Then 20 years ago, they said you’ll have access to the Internet?

MSS: It’s just a small computer in your pocket.

Steve Williams: Yeah, yeah. Now you have access to the entire world, just right there.

MSS: As Governor, how will you make healthcare more affordable and accessible for vulnerable populations like the poor, women, seniors, people of color, people with disabilities and LGBTQ West Virginians?

Steve Williams: First and foremost, you don’t place a stigma on these individuals like they presently do. If you’re a West Virginian, and if you’re an American, you are entitled to health care. Period. Done.

Now, what I’ve seen here in Huntington….it’s interesting to to have seen as we dealt with the opioid epidemic, but with other things, just how having having health care providers, who have the ability to go in as detectives and not just see somebody who’s sick, and then finding a way to try to fix it, but having that patient you’re doing testing to be able to identify what can we prevent.

And I think prevention is the key.

The only way that we have is to have broadband everywhere so that we can connect. In some of the small communities, you’re not going to have the hospital right there. But you’ve got the hospital coming to you right.

What I see that the WVU medical system has, what CAMC has, what Marshall Health now has and how that is developing, we have the ability to be able to reach out and flow into every holler in this in the state and every hillside in the state to be able to make sure we’re providing that.

I’ve got to be very direct about this.

Anybody who seeks to marginalize individuals, because  they don’t look like you or  they have a lifestyle that is different from yours, or there are certain things that are present in their life that we don’t understand and can’t be defined  ;anybody that seeks to marginalize those individuals, as far as I’m concerned, they don’t have a place here.

We don’t put up with this.

Everybody is entitled to health care. Everybody is entitled to having an equal opportunity. Now what they decided to do with that equal opportunity that might set them apart.

But if we’re doing all of these other things, then we start lifting individuals up to be able to have a seat at the table of public participation.

MSS: This is another one from our readers – I know you mentioned this a little bit before.

Steve Williams: That’s how I do these interviews – I usually hit on things as I go.

MSS: What will you do to ensure housing is available, affordable to those in need in West Virginia, especially in  growing communities, such as the Eastern Panhandle?

Steve Williams: Once again, we need to set our tax code. We need the development of our infrastructure, we need all of these things to be able to encourage the markets to speak.

I truly believe in – this getting to the side that don’t think separates me too much from the others who are running –the one thing that I have observed is that you need to create the opportunity for the markets to show their efficiency.

It’s amazing what happens. Sometimes we just need to get out of the way to encourage investment in the area.

I think where I separate myself from others is that the government does play a role.

We need to be a partner, not an inhibitor. We need to encourage growth, not inhibit it with over regulation.

In Huntington, there is growth in the area, but people build right outside of town.

The one thing that we did a few years back –frankly, we either didn’t market it properly, or it hasn’t been structured properly –anyone who is looking to come in to build a new home, you won’t have to pay for permits in the first $250,000.

Way I figured it is for $250,000, you’re going to end up with a nice, nice little home.  You won’t have B&O taxes on that first $250,000.

As we had this one company come in doing an analysis of our housing, I’m looking for ways to get a developer to come in and buy several houses in a row, maybe a half a block and redevelop some of those houses.

I started to mention this earlier, when we were talking a little bit about housing, is that as with the development that we’re having in our area in Huntington, there is a maturing that is occurring in what we have to do.

We’re at the point to say, well, it’s not just we need to tear down the factories and not just that we’ve got to upgrade our sanitary and stormwater system and we’ve got to make sure that we have broadband.

Well, now we’re realizing we need to develop housing.

Now there’s two sides to this. Some individuals need housing subsidies and we’ll work with the housing authorities to build those in communities. There are companies that are coming in to encourage housing for seniors.

But also there are some that are just wanting to be able to build. Somebody is going to do this after I’m gone; between Eighth Street and Hal Greer Boulevard on the other side of the interstate, all of that hillside over there. You look up there and see nothing but trees, but that could be the next South Hills.

All of that land is just outside the city limits.

We’ll start encouraging the to put it in city limits, and will create some tax advantages for them  to come in here.

But with that if you invest and start building, we’ll build the roads. We’ll build the lights. You just start petitioning off the lots for neighborhoods and everything.

That was something that I always wanted to do and was never able to get to do.

But again, this also goes with regional councils around the state identifying housing.

If we don’t have housing, then the folks aren’t going to move here. The biggest challenge that I’ve seen is that if you don’t have the infrastructure in place, and the schools in place, higher education in place, folks are going to say,”This isn’t isn’t for me.”

One thing I learned in business –, people start to question the cost of something when they don’t understand the value.

We have our roads, the water systems, broadband, sanitary systems, the schools. Maybe what we need to do is make sure rather than giving away, eliminating all of our taxes to where we can’t afford to do anything, maybe we ought to just be aggressive as hell and make sure that what we are doing is gleaming, brand spanking new.

And it overcomes every stereotype of Appalachia and West Virginia, where we have first rate infrastructure.

I think US News and World Report had recently rated West Virginia was ranked 50th in infrastructure.

In that regard, there’s nowhere but up. But if we’re going to compete with everybody around the country, and on the other side of the world, then we have to be going so much faster and doing so much more than everybody else.

So does everybody start to move here because we don’t have income taxes?

Or does everybody start moving here because we have infrastructure that is turned turnkey, first in the World, infrastructure?

It’s a question to ponder.

Now, if I’m with a supermajority legislature, then I’ve got to be a heck of a salesman in order to be able to accomplish this. And I think at some point, if we demonstrate that we are developing our infrastructure where the best of the best can come here, from all over the world, then I think businesses are realizing, “ they don’t go on the cheap”. They end up seeing if we invest a little bit, we’re going to get a return that we’ve never ever had before.

Just saying.

MSS: Shifting gears a little bit.

A lot of our readers told us abortion was a top issue for them. I know you’ve gone on record in support of putting it up on a statewide referendum.

Steve Williams: It’s the number one priority for me.

MSS: Okay.

In the event that referendum were to be placed on the ballot and the people voted down, do you have any ideas to help prevent unwanted, unplanned pregnancies in West Virginia while maintaining the spirit of the current laws in place?

Steve Williams: If they voted it down? Then I’d still be saying we need to have a priority on birth control on prenatal care, post delivery care, maternity leave, and also having mandatory childcare.

I’m willing to put it on the ballot and encourage folks to make a statement that women’s reproductive health is a right. But if they come back and say they’re not and still don’t mean that we shouldn’t have the platinum women’s health care in the country.

I think it’s a mistake to have a restriction on abortion because the nations that don’t have restrictions have the lowest rate of abortions in the world. Isn’t that interesting?

I understand individuals who are pro-life and I respect that. But do you have to have a law that says, “You will not do this or we’re sending you to prison?”

Or do you have the power of persuasion, to provide proper health care to individuals, so that they have the opportunity to live a life and that if they do bring a child in, that child is going to have proper health care?

Could very well be that you start reducing abortions, not by mandating everybody has to be restricted and not trusted.  Maybe the best way to do it is by using the power of persuasion and in caring.

MSS: I hate to break things down like this, because usually the answer is usually somewhere in the middle. Are you pro life or pro choice?

Steve Williams: I’m neither.

Really, I believe in individual freedom. I trust that women can make the decision with their physicians as to what is best.

If I’m sitting there with my family, and I have daughters that are facing pregnancy, I will sit down and if they need my input, I’ll advise accordingly. If they would choose that, with everything faced, this is the best way to go.

Then I’m going to love them.

I do have some friends whose daughters have been in a pregnancy and they’re told that that baby is going to live beyond a day.

They were so committed to pro life, and they said, “We’re still going to continue through this and she’s going to have the birth and then we will bury the baby.”

My heart aches for them.

And I understand why they would make that choice. But they made that choice.

It wasn’t something that the state was saying, “You have to do this.”

It’s nobody’s business. That’s where I believe in individual freedom. There are some points where it’s not the responsibility of the government official to weasel his or her way into the doctor’s office and saying, “ You can say this, you can’t say this.”

A doctor has ethical responsibilities. And the doctors then are put in a position that if they have to make a recommendation that would be in the mother’s best interest health wise, they could lose his license or her license by saying this needs to be done.

Again, I think you can tell by  way I’m talking about this,  I really don’t see myself as pro-choice or pro-life.

I respect the individual freedom of women to be able to make the decision that is right for them and their family and their life.

MSS: What separates your message and your platform from whoever your opponent would be in November?

Steve Williams: I’ve done it and  they haven’t. Every person on that other side I’ve worked with, I respect, I like.

I’ve done it and they haven’t. This job is too important to learn on the job.

MSS: Are you referring to being in an executive position?

Steve Williams: Yes.

I’ve had to work on public safety, building roads, water systems, sanitary systems, negotiating with multibillionaires on acquiring property to be redeveloped, environmental issues, to take brownfields and turning them into something that’s productive. Health care and pensions for our employees.

When I say I’ve done it, I have been doing this every day since January 1, 2013.

The difference between the city and the state?  Nothing but zeros.

Zeros in the budget and the zeros in the population. And I learned that some time ago when I was in private enterprise . When I was doing investments in investment banking, all of the deals that we were putting together, the fundamentals are the same. The only difference was the number of zeros.

Actually, I said that to a major city, major, major, major, one of the largest city mayors of one of the largest cities in the nation.

We were sitting there talking, and I said, “Mayor, you know the difference between Huntington, West Virginia, and your city? Nothing but zeros.”

We’re dealing with the same stuff. The same stuff.

The only thing that I’m not dealing with is the education system. But I have to partner with the University, I have to partner with my public schools, I have to partner with the community college.

MSS: I ask this all the time, whether I’m talking to the guy who runs the gas station or the governor, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Steve Williams: That’s what every good reporter asks.

One thing I want to say is, the challenge that I have here is one-third of my city’s population lives under the poverty line. An additional 16% are asset limited, income constrained.

Which means about 48% of my town –my town is a city, A Tale of Two Cities, the haves and the have nots. It’s not that extreme.

I think 17% of people in West Virginia live under the poverty line.

My number one priority is to build prosperity so that individuals can reap the reward of their hard work. And nobody’s holding them back.

Everything comes around to how we create prosperity in the state? How do I start building infrastructure so that it builds that up?

How do I create freedom within our state so that individuals can make their own decisions, their own choices and live with the repercussions of them?

Well, the way you do that is to trust them.

How do you, once again, give individuals who were being marginalized the freedom to be able to live their life and nobody is trying to pigeonhole them or looking at them in judgment?

You’ve heard me say this a couple of times –identify the vision, articulate that vision, build consensus towards that vision as we’re working on it, as we’re starting to implement it.

I want us to be the most optimistic, innovative state in the union. And I think it starts with the leaders.

Here are Steve Williams’ answers to our questions appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.