By John Rosato
At a time when Americans seem divided about nearly everything, there is one principle that still commands remarkably broad agreement: communities should have a meaningful say in what gets built in their own backyards. That should not be a partisan idea. Whether the proposal is a massive transmission line, an industrial solar project, a data center, a power plant or another major development, the people who live nearby will experience its effects long after the developers and state officials have moved on.
Local residents know their communities. They know which roads can handle additional traffic, where flooding occurs, which viewsheds define a place, and how much noise or industrial development is compatible with the community they have built. Local governments are accountable to those residents. When people disagree with their decisions, they can show up at a county commission meeting and make themselves heard. That is local democracy.
Yet in recent years, the West Virginia Legislature has steadily chipped away at that local authority. In 2024, it curtailed counties’ ability to regulate “agricultural operations,” regardless of their scale. And agriculture is defined extraordinarily broadly under state law, extending well beyond what most of us would picture as a family farm to include forestry, silviculture, packing, shipping, milling and other activities.
Hardy County residents should understand exactly what that can mean. Several years ago, our community was in an uproar over a proposed facility that would have fumigated logs with methyl bromide before export. Yet the company maintained that log fumigation was an agricultural process and therefore did not require it to comply with local zoning. Log fumigation is agriculture? Apparently, under West Virginia law, it can be.
Then, last year, the Legislature passed HB 2014, dramatically stripping away local authority over certified microgrid districts and high-impact data centers. The law preempts local zoning, noise, lighting, viewshed, development and land-use requirements, as well as local building permitting and code enforcement.
The responsibility for these decisions should be clear. Republicans control every lever of state government in West Virginia. They had the votes to welcome major investment while preserving a meaningful role for local communities. Instead, the Republican legislative supermajority chose to concentrate more of that power in Charleston. That is particularly striking from a party that has long invoked the virtues of local control.
I want West Virginia to attract investment, good jobs and opportunities that give young West Virginians reasons to stay. Data centers, energy projects, modern agriculture and other major investments can be part of that future. But economic development should be something we do WITH communities, not something Charleston does TO them.
As voters consider candidates for the House of Delegates and State Senate this November, they should ask a simple question: Do you believe local communities should have meaningful authority over land use and major developments? Candidates owe us a clear answer. I know where I stand. This November, I will be voting for Betsy Orndoff-Sayers for Delegate and Jason Armentrout for State Senate. Local control matters to me, and I know it matters to them too.
