Behold the way the sausage is made! Fine pork products seem headed to Braxton, Mingo and Barbour counties because of, believe it or not, Senate Bill 125, the one that was initially intended to create the TIF district for WVU’s new baseball stadium.

It was ensnared in a political web with the capture spiral in Harrison County. It seems “many” delegates were prepared to spike the bill because they weren’t happy about the treatment, and presumed fate, of a separate bill that was intended to give magistrates in certain counties pay raises.

Suddenly, two seemingly unrelated issues are attached at the hip and we’re getting a look at the process better than we have since that high school civics class, though now we have fun descriptions you never saw in your textbook, like “unconscionable”  and “old-school horse trading.”

The legislative session is nearing its end, and today and probably tomorrow are big days for these issues. There are people against the TIF, or the implied necessity, but I think we can agree raises for teachers and law enforcement and fire and rescue personnel are good ideas.

And what a world if the TIF gets muddied, but ends up getting WVU and Granville a ballpark and county magistrates their raises.