Dear Editor:
We have an opportunity this election to send a leader from a new generation to the WV House of Delegates to represent Greenbrier County. Stephen Baldwin was born and raised in Greenbrier County. He left briefly to obtain undergraduate and post graduate degrees at excellent universities and then returned home with his wife to begin his career and a family. He is now one of a few of his generation to pursue office to help to improve our community, state and country. We need more of our brightest young leaders to impart their perspective and knowledge to help to change the dynamics of a legislature that has shown itself to be dysfunctional.
Stephen speaks of education as being one of the cures for a sick economy. He knows of what he speaks, having served on the Greenbrier County Board of Education. He has seen, first hand, the way money that should go to teachers and to students finds its way to Charleston with only a fraction coming back for our students.
The current legislatures inability to raise the funds necessary for our state institutions to function or to even pass a budget is evidence of a need for change. We need people representing us in the legislature that have an interest in policies that will improve the lives of our residents. We need the help of our state government to facilitate creating jobs to help keep our young people in state. West Virginia’s current legislature appears to want to follow a Kansas – like austerity that we have witnessed bankrupt their schools. The current legislature’s emphasis on dictating social issues and unfettered gun carry ignores education, the drug epidemic and the economy at our peril.
George Bernard Shaw said: “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” It’s time to make an investment in not only our future but our present by electing Stephen Baldwin to the WV House of Delegates this November.
Dr. Roger A. Holliday
Lewisburg