Colby Lopez

A Fair Economy for All West Virginians:

• Combat price-gouging by capping price increases on essential goods ​with consideration to inflation and profit margin.

  • Work with and Subsidize local Farmers, Hunters, and Gatherers in our hollers and backwoods to ensure the availability of fairly-priced locally-sourced food products.​

• Cap prices for a broader range of prescription drugs used to treat common ailments and illnesses among West Virginians, with a basis in prices paid by patients in other jurisdictions, foreign and domestic

• Implement a progressive (multi-bracket) corporate flight tax based on the extent of a business's relocation (Out-of-state vs Out-of-country)

• Make all business taxes progressive (multi-bracket) in an effort to support small businesses.

• Require Government Operations and Contracts carried out in West Virginia, regardless of government level, to prioritize smaller, more local businesses.

• Reform the Wage Laws to benefit the Working Class:

  • Raise the Minimum Wage by inflation since it became $8.75/hour in December 2015; which as of July 2025 would be $11.93/hour.

  • Employees who are not offered health insurance through their employer shall receive >$1.49/hour above the minimum hourly rate.

  • Raise and Index the tipped minimum hourly rate (and other legal uses of sub-minimum wages) to 75% of the standard minimum hourly rate. College Athletes will be entitled to 50% minimum wage for practices, and full minimum wage for games (minimum monthly wage shall not apply).

  • Establish a minimum monthly wage alongside indexing the hourly rate to inflation. Round inflationary adjustments up to the nearest 5-cents.

    • The initial monthly minimum shall be established by multiplying the federal minimum wage by 20 and then by 4 to correspond to the ideal part-time hours and typical weeks per month, -Currently $580-. The federal minimum is used instead of the higher state minimum to allow employees to work fewer than 20 hours a week under some circumstances. Should the federal minimum wage increase so as to make the federal minimum wage multiplied by 20 multiplied by 4 greater than the inflationary increases to the initial amount, the new federal minimum wage calculation shall become the new minimum monthly wage.

    • Establish disability as a protected class in strongly enforced employment anti-discrimination law, particularly as it pertains to their ability or inability to work the hours needed to typically earn the monthly minimum rate at their hourly rate.

    • (EX. An Employee paid current State Minimum Wage $8.75/hour would be guaranteed approximately 16.6 hours a week. An Employee paid $11.93/hour would be guaranteed approximately 12.2 hours a week. NOTE: Even if an Employee does not work the hours to earn the monthly minimum, they will still be paid the remaining balance on their next paycheck, as long as they were employed throughout the entire month; employers being penalized for unfairly distributing hours among their employees.)]

  • Establish when Premium Pay (Overtime Pay) is required:​​

    • Require Premium Pay of 1.25 times the typical hourly rate for employees whose typical hourly rate is <1.5 times the state minimum hourly rate, for time worked >8.25 hours/daily, for a shift split by >2.75 hours off the clock, or the 7th consecutive day.

    • Require Premium Pay of 1.5 times the typical hourly rate for employees, for time worked >10 hours/daily, >40 hours/weekly, >7 consecutive days (>5 consecutive days if at least 1 is a Legal Holiday established in WV Code), or on Legal Holidays as established in WV code.

    • Require Premium Pay of 2 times the typical hourly rate for employees, for time worked >12 hours/daily, >45 hours/weekly, or >10 consecutive days (>7 consecutive days if at least 1 is a Legal Holiday established in WV Code).

    • Require Premium Pay of >$1.49/hour for employees of businesses employing >10 employees across all business locations, for time worked between 9:00 pm - 6:00 am.

    • Require Premium Pay of >$1.99/hour for time worked in excess of 45 hours for those employees typically paid on a salary basis.

  • Give Teachers and School Service Personnel Salary increases, and index their wages to inflation on an annual basis. Mandate a meeting between Public Employee Union Leaders and Government Leadership on an annual basis.​​

• Mandate large, profitable employers to offer sufficient pay and benefits to minimize the number of employees reliant on the social safety net.​

• Adopt a law modeled after the Montana Wrongful Discharge of Employment Act, which will limit at-will employment to a probationary period, requiring just cause to terminate an employee after the probationary period. Such law shall establish the awards to wrongfully terminated employees of lost pay and benefits of up to 4 years minus pay earned/received from other sources in the interim up to a maximum of 49% of the initial award.

  • Should an employer terminate an employment contract at-will during the probationary period they must provide the employee with a 7-day notice​. During the 7-days, the employee shall be given the option to work their normal schedule for normal pay, or agree to forgo the 7-day notice & pay for 50% of what would have been earned during the 7-day notice, within 24 hours of the decision to forgo the notice. 

• Require that in the event of an employee call-out of a day of work (including when paid leave is utilized), management is to make every effort to award the shift or part thereof to another eligible employee.

• Establish a publicly-owned bank modeled after the Bank of North Dakota to act as a wholesale bank for smaller/local banks financial institutions, invest in financial financial products, purchase stock in local businesses that offer, provide low-interest loans to small businesses and students at local schools/universities, provide a basic credit building high school program -- coupled with a mandatory personal finances course (to convert into a low-limit, low interest credit card upon graduation), provide for the sale of bonds based on bank activity rather than directly taxes, and make monetary decisions with the aim of stabilizing consumer purchasing power within the state economy. This Bank is to support the financial and economic system of the state not to compete in the consumer banking industry.

  • Seek to establish a stable sovereign wealth fund that will provide a small dividend to Public High School Seniors in Good Academic Standing and With Reliable School Attendance (residing and learning in the state). Dividends will be used to pay-down any debts through the credit-building program first.

    • Funds to partially come from fees associated with fines, lottery purchases, the sale of bonds, & a portion of sales of government property.

• Re-enforce and Expand Veteran Assistance Programs, Childcare Assistance Programs, and Mortgage Down Payment Assistance Programs.

• Introduce Basic Rent Controls regarding how often and by how much rent can be increased during a tenancy. Make pets easier to own in rental properties, by prohibiting a blanket ban on pets requiring landlords to explicitly accept non-venomous pets kept inside of a properly-sized and secure enclosure such as fish, small to medium reptiles, and small mammals (such as hamsters, & guinea pigs) as a minimum.

• Alter all taxes, and business regulation policy to favor smaller, more local businesses over mega-corporations.

• Establish a program which evaluates the financials and viability of business locations set to close without establishing a nearby replacement location, funding the creation of non-profit worker-run cooperatives in those locations where viable and/or necessary.

• Create a Legal and Regulatory Framework surrounding intellectual property usage and piracy which favors content creators, and heavily disincentivises abandonware; working with other states to create a region-wide framework.

  • Work-in regulations surrounding the use of generative AI and how the use interacts with intellectual property enforcement in West Virginia.

• Subsidize Childcare for low-income West Virginians, and pursue partnerships with neighboring states and DC to make it a Multi-State/Regional compact.

• Invest in industrial diversity within the economy to stabilize statewide economics, provide for job growth, and expand the tax base.

• Shift Infrastructure Investments and other economic funding towards rural and poor communities rather than those areas, structures, and projects that are consistently maintained and improved each year. Investing in the poorest and the rural communities raises us all, not the other way around.

​Protect Our Natural Resources:​

• Eliminate harmful materials like asbestos and lead from homes, schools, and all other buildings.

• Invest in the mixed energy economy with appropriate pollution capture and cleaning technologies for the less clean fuels, as the world transitions toward cleaner energy sources; ensuring to prioritize any displaced workers for new employment opportunities, early retirement agreements, and education/training at no cost to them.

• Fund reforestation projects and urban planting/gardening initiatives throughout the state. Subsidize, and give tax breaks to beekeepers and others who rear pollinators to support the biodiversity of the Wild and Wonderful.

• Expand state parks and protected nature reserves; with appropriate staffing to maintain clean and beautiful wild areas.

• Promote the practice of and school-age education in safe and sustainable hunting, fishing, and wild fruit/fungi harvesting.

• Regulate non-biodegradable packaging, enhance recycling capabilities, and improve litter collection efforts.

• Invest in Making Infrastructure Last Longer with processes that are less harmful to the environment, and work to establish a multi-state expansion of rail systems, bus lines, et cetera as a viable public transit system with incentives for counties and municipalities to fund connecting public transit, sidewalk expansions, and walking/biking & ATV trails.

• Transfer funds into the Flood Resiliency Fund for the first time and other funds for natural disaster destruction prevention. 

​Fiscal Moderation:​

• Pursue a budget with a minimal surplus or deficit to ensure programs are properly funded and opportunities are not missed. Address any surplus or deficit in subsequent budgets.

• Prioritize social safety net programs as essential government functions and programs. Any "waste, fraud, and corruption" based cuts must be re-appropriated to these programs in a more direct benefit to those who need the funds.

  • Pursue the transition of federal and state social safety net programs into more a flexibly utilized straight financial assistance program to make welfare spending more efficient and effective in raising people out of poverty, rather than the current format that traps people within poverty.​

• Establish and enforce strong protections against corruption and waste, within all branches and levels of government.

• Ensure salaries for all political officeholders are indexed in relation to the Per Capita income of the state.

• Mandate Fines to be based on the income of the perpetrator (up to a reasonable maximum and reasonable minimum) to ensure that the wealthy aren't able to be more reckless, negligent, or criminal due to their wealth. With reasonable alternatives to debt for lower income West Virginians falling below the typical minimum.

• Ensure a wide tax base, rather than continued reliance on single industry taxation.

• Prioritize Debt Repayment, and Emergency/Resiliency Funds. Any surplus is to automatically pay down debts, and fund emergency funds. Should debts equal less than 10% of the value of the prior budget, and emergency/resiliency funds are determined to have been adequately funded any remaining surplus shall be paid out as a equal dividend payment to families of children under the age of 5.

• Understand that true fiscal responsibility comes from raising money from reasonable and progressive (multi-bracket) taxes, and precise, careful, small spending cuts with appropriate monitoring for waste and abuse of the system.

• Order regular independent audits of all government accounts, with automated funding freezes on a failed audit.

• Allow those making <$100k/Annually to Deduct a portion of the Sales and Personal Property Tax they pay from Income Taxes, with incomes closer to $100k being able to Deduct a lower percentage.

Other Policies:

• Fund an expansion for the Humane Society within Fayette County (with no-kill commitment), among others throughout the state, to provide extra spaces for those facilities that are overcrowded, expand their in-house capacities to treat animals in their care, and expand their ability to employ more caretakers and attract volunteers.

• Pass a resolution calling on the federal government to abolish the NSA (merging essential functions and employees into other intelligence and law enforcement agencies) and to Repeal the PATRIOT Act. (Introduce/Pass this Every Session until its goals are achieved.)

• Ensure that police prioritize Drug Dealers/Traffickers over Drug Users, perhaps through decriminalizing MOST drug use in private settings (use in a group >3 people and/or in the presence of a minor is not considered a private setting) but maintaining the illegal status of the selling of such drugs, public intoxication, and driving under the influence. Should first responders encounter use of such substances in private settings, the user may still be hospitalized for detox, and for severe or repeated encounters ordered to rehab.

• Fully Decriminalize/Legalize the use, and sale of Cannabis and Cannabis-derived products for adults. The growing, and manufacturing of Cannabis and Cannabis-derived products shall be regulated by the laws pertaining to other agricultural crops and agricultural-derived manufacturing laws of the state and shall not be made prohibitably difficult.

• Invest in providing a Universal Government ID valid under Voter ID law provided without charge or application to every eligible voter. Provide for a process for people to claim their card should the system fail to send such ID to them, available both online and offline.

• Change the Method West Virginia uses to award its Electoral College Votes to a statewide proportional allocation, and mandate political parties to appoint delegates to national nomination conventions based on a proportional allocation.

• Abolish term limits which promote short-term solutions and empower bureaucrats, and implement fractional terms schemes for all offices with terms >2 years in length.

• Reduce the length of WV Supreme Court Justice terms from 12 years to at least 10 years though preferably down to 8 years.

• Allow Citizen's Initiative to place the creation or repeal of a law on the ballot. Any referendum which passes with at least a 2/3 majority may not have the applicable language amended, repealed, or otherwise altered by government of West Virginia for at least 5 years from the date of the referendum without a 3/5 (60%) vote in both chambers of the legislature, and the signed approval of a majority of publicly elected executive branch officials. 

• Pursue electoral reform including but not limited to:

  • Allowing electoral fusion, including allowing registered unaffiliated/independent/no party candidates to receive party nominations and for such fusion and no party registration to be displayed on the ballot.

  • Expanding voter registration deadlines as close to election day as possible, including pursuing allowing voters to register and vote early (at least provisionally) on the same day at the same location.

  • Repeal restrictions on allowable voting methods that can be adopted for use in elections, and consider their usage in our elections.

  • Require elections to all offices of all levels of government to list the party preference of each candidate, regardless of whether a primary election occurs for the contest or not.

  • Expand the Number of Offices that are Elected via popular vote, while guaranteeing at least 1 member of alternative political party affiliation on the Supreme Court, in the State Legislature, and other statewide bodies by awarding a "compensatory minority seat" to the losing candidate of alternative political affiliation who received the most total number of votes in the event that any such body fails to elect a member of alternative political affiliation.

  • Reform laws and regulations regarding Ballot Design:

    • Instead of Listing each Recognized Political Party with "No Candidate Nominated" on separate ballot lines in the general election, have a message listed below all Ballot-Listed Candidates and the space to write official write-in candidates which reads: "The following Political Parties recognized under W.V. Law have not nominated a candidate for (office): (list of party abbreviation(s) without a nominated candidate).". This message is to take up no greater that 1.5 x Ballot Lines.  The "No Candidate Filed" message shall continue to be used on primary election ballots. ​

    • Require that the space for a Candidate to be written-in on the ballot only be placed upon the ballot should an Official Write-In Candidate have filed, and eliminate the oval next to the write-in space taking the act of having written-in a candidate to indicate a vote for such candidate unless such name is crossed-out by the voter. (Change Write-In Candidate and Ballot Finalization Deadlines as Needed.)

    • Should a Candidate who is the Incumbent run unopposed ​in any election by neither ballot-listed nor write-in candidates, the ballot is to instead be formatted so as to ask "Should (Incumbent Candidate) be elected to another term as (Name of Office/Member of Name of Office)?". On a single ballot line worth of space, voters will mark either a box labelled "Yes" or a box labelled "No". Should "No" receive a majority of the vote on this question, the Incumbent shall vacant their office at the end of their current term and a special general election for the seat shall be scheduled at the earliest viable Saturday or Legal Holiday (viable taken to mean with enough time for candidates to file and campaign) established by WV Law as determined by the Secretary of State (unless they are the vacating Incumbent, in which case such shall be determined by vote of the WV Legislature). The vacancy shall be filled per normal rules for the interim period with the vacating incumbent barred from filling the vacancy. The vacating incumbent shall NOT be barred from running in the special election, and should the vacating incumbent be elected via this special election the vacancy shall not be counted as a vacancy for the purposes of any applicable fractional term schemes nor term limits.

• Amend the Constitution to create a publicly elected Lieutenant Governor position nominated on a separate ticket in the primary election, but on a joint ticket with the Governor candidate in the general election; the Lieutenant Governor shall be appointed a member of cabinet with the approval of a majority of the State Senate but would not come with any additional salary or staff; the State Senate may elect the Lieutenant Governor as President of the Senate in lieu of approving them to a cabinet position, in this event each Senator shall forfeit an equal portion of their governmental salary so as to provide the Lieutenant Governor with a salary of equal amount to the Senators remaining salary. In the event of death, resignation, inability, or removal from office of the Governor the Lieutenant Governor would become acting Governor until the next general election; as this would limit an Acting Governor to a 2-year limit this term as acting Governor shall not be counted against any term limits or fractional term scheme for the office of Governor.

• Amend the Constitution to require a 3/5-majority (60%) of the whole State Legislature and a minimum if 1/2 (50%) per chamber for them to override a regular Governor's Veto. A line-item veto will continue to only require a simple majority in each chamber (50% plus 1 in each chamber).