General revenue collections for December 2013 ended up $24.1 million below estimates, and are down $81.5 million for the year. The biggest underperformer so far has been the personal income tax, which is currently $63.9 million below estimate. So what is the cause of its poor performance? To understand why personal income tax revenue isn't…
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The Governor's FY 2015 Executive Budget was released last week. After an across-the-board round of 7.5% cuts in last year's budget, followed by a $30 million mid-year cut, this year's budget features another round of cuts, totaling $70 million. The chart below list a sample of those cuts. Highlights include higher education, which bore the…
Governor Releases State Budget Right at the start of the 2014 Legislative Session came news of mid-year budget cuts that will fall heavily on the state Department of Health and Human Resources and on the state's colleges and universities. These additional cutbacks will be in addition to budget reductions already impacting these agencies and their…
7:30AM - 9:00AM, Charleston Marriott The state budget is the most important bill passed each year by the legislature. It directly impacts all West Virginians - from the quality of our schools and highways, to the cost of college education, to working families' access to affordable child care and health care. REGISTER TO ATTEND Although West…
Nothing highlights the shift in Appalachian coal production more than Boone and Marshall County, West Virginia. For as long as I can remember, Boone County was always #1 in coal production. Today, Marshall County, which is located in the north-west part of the state, is the state's biggest coal producer at 17.2 million tons (compared…
The National Association of Budget Officers (NASBO) has released the Fall 2013 edition of its Fiscal Survey of the States. When we last checked in on the NASBO report, West Virginia was one of eight states cutting its general budget in FY 2014 from Fy 2013, with the second largest cut among the states. With…
The recent budget deal announced by leaders in Congress has left out one very important provision for those struggling to find work, the extension of emergency unemployment insurance benefits. On December 28, 1.3 million long term unemployed workers, including 16,000 West Virginians, will lose their unemployment benefits. As I previously discussed here, these benefits increased…
The lead editorial that ran in the Charleston Daily Mail on Monday was...well, a bunch of malarkey. Or maybe it was hogwash. Either way, it was an inaccurate and misleading piece of partisan hackery (yes, I made that word up*) that was better suited for late-night talk radio and had no business being run in…
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment figures released yesterday have apparently taken some people by surprise (which is a bit mystifying to me considering the absolute media saturation about the poorly functioning healthcare.gov website for weeks). Enrollment numbers were low across most of the country, they were very low in West Virginia as well---only 174…
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the enrollment figures for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for the first time today. Across the country, nearly 850,000 applications have been completed through the health insurance Marketplace, around 106,000 of which have enrolled in a health plan. In West Virginia, 174 individuals have selected…