Kanawha County is getting set to vote on a proposed school excess levy in order to fund the county's library system, which recently lost the financial support of the county school district. The proposal would increase the school excess levy from 29.82 cents to 45.9 cents per $100 for class II properties, and from 59.64…
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Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut SNAP, or the food stamps program, by nearly $40 billion over the next two years, kicking nearly four million people off the program. The House bill achieves this primarily by denying SNAP benefits to unemployed workers and struggling families whose incomes are just above the poverty…
Who are the uninsured in West Virginia? Well, they are mostly the working poor, who, as it turns out, are exactly the people that the Affordable Care Act will help cover. Data released today from the United State Census Bureau provide detailed estimates on household characteristics at the state level including income, education, employment, race, and…
According to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of West Virginians covered by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan has dropped significantly since 2000. In that year, over 63 percent of all West Virginians had insurance provided through an employer compared to less than 56 percent in 2012, a drop of over…
It's with a heavy heart that I share the news of the passing this weekend of Dr. George Pickett, a titan of public health, not only in West Virginia but nationally and abroad. Dr. Pickett was a physician who spent his career working in public health in every imaginable way possible. He worked at the local…
Obamacare isn't perfect and I don't hesitate to admit it. Recently, however, there has been a number of opponents referring to it as a "train wreck." They say it will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor, that it is driving health care costs up, and that people won't support it. Fortunately, we…
Over Labor Day weekend, the Economic Policy Institute released a handy tool, based on their inequality.is project, that shows you how much you would be making today, if wages had kept up with productivity over that last three decades. After WWII, wages and productivity grew hand in hand. As workers produced more, they earned more.…
The Big, Bad, Scary Wolf that is Obamacare is coming after the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. At least that's what our insurance provider wants us to think. In a letter sent to the office a couple of weeks ago, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield plays the Obamacare fear card, and then, somewhat astonishingly,…
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey misinformed business leaders and elected officials this week at the WV Chamber of Commerce's Annual Business Summit when he said: "We know that if you look around to all the states West Virginia touches, we have the highest combined individual and corporate tax rate." There are several problems with this statement.…
Last year, using projections from the Energy Information Agency's Annual Energy Outlook report, we showed that coal production in Central Appalachia was heading for a steep decline, with or without new environmental regulations. This year's report tells the same story. Under the EIA's baseline model, Central Appalachian coal production is projected to decline from 186.4…