Tennant

ELKINS — Natalie Tennant is touring the state, assembly with voters and speaking about how she might help companies if elected to the West Virginia Secretary of State’s workplace within the Nov. three Common Election.

“The Secretary of State’s workplace has such an necessary function in serving to companies, and that’s why I’m operating once more, as a result of this present Secretary of State has burdened our companies,” Tennant, the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State, mentioned in an interview at The Inter-Mountain workplaces. “He put a price on companies that I had taken off.

Tennant, who beforehand served because the Secretary of State from 2009-2017, mentioned she had eradicated a transaction price for companies whereas she was in workplace, however the present Secretary of State, Republican Mac Warner, has reinstated the price.

“I labored actually onerous to modernize the workplace and have on-line providers,” she mentioned. “While you filed your annual report and did it on-line, it saved you money and time, it saved the Secretary of State’s Workplace money and time. There had been a transaction price, and when you used on-line providers you needed to pay that.

“Effectively, I checked out that, evaluated how a lot it will price us if we absorbed it, in comparison with what we had been saving in not having to manually do it. So I absorbed it and took the price off of companies,” Tennant mentioned. “Effectively, he snuck it again on. And he mentioned, ‘I’m doing it for expertise.’ And I mentioned, ‘I already modernized the workplace!’”

Tennant mentioned she streamlined the Secretary of State’s Workplace to make it extra environment friendly and cost-effective, however she believes Warner is making issues extra difficult and costly for state companies.

“He’ll say his crowning achievement is a one-stop enterprise store the place he has 4 businesses beneath one roof,” she mentioned. “That sounds nice. The issue is, he’s misappropriating funds. It’s not presupposed to be beneath one roof, it’s presupposed to be beneath an digital web-based portal that I labored with Republicans and Democrats on to make it one place the place companies might go. They might get to the Secretary of State’s workplace, Tax and Income, Workforce and Labor, and get something they needed on-line.

“He hasn’t performed something on that. The blueprint is there that I put in place, the design that I put in place. He ignored that, and he’s spending a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} on a constructing that, one, can’t be used proper now, and two, would power somebody from Elkins to need to drive to Charleston, simply to be beneath one roof. In order that’s a misappropriation of funds, and that’s the way you’re hurting companies.”

Previous to her election as Secretary of State, Tennant was a tv reporter and co-owner of a video manufacturing firm. She is a graduate of West Virginia College, the place she earned her Bachelors and Masters levels. She additionally served as the primary girl Mountaineer mascot.

“I used to be Secretary of State for eight years, so I do know what companies undergo, I do know the struggles and the successes they could have, and that’s why I’m operating once more, to get issues performed for companies and to cease pointless state spending,” Tennant mentioned.