Expanding Medicaid to 130,000 West Virginians would provide $281 million in uncompensated care savings, according to a new report by the Urban Institute. Taking these savings into account, the total cost of expanding Medicaid in the state would by only $338 million or just $33.8 million per year over the next ten years (2013-2022). This…
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Today, the New York Times had an in-depth front page article exposing the $80 billion state and local governments bankroll businesses each year in subsides, including low-interest loans, grants, tax credits, and other gifts through the tax code. The report finds that West Virginia spends $1.57 billion per year on business incentives, ranking the state…
It seems every year, proposals are floated to remove West Virginia's property tax on business personal property or personal property in general. My first report with the WVCBP looked at the fiscal impact of eliminating the property tax on business machinery, equipment, inventory, and other business personal property, as recommended by then Governor Manchin back in 2010. In that…
Yesterday, Mark Muchow, the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Revenue, presented at November Legislative Interims on the future of state severance taxes. In his presentation (Severance Tax Trends -November 26, 2012), he found that severance taxes are going to decline and stagnant over the next few years because the boom in shale natural gas…
As part of the "fiscal cliff" and "grand bargain" deficit negotiations, some CEOs, politicians, and pundits are saying that raising the retirement age of Social Security should be on the deficit chopping block despite the fact that it does not contribute to the federal budget deficit. Raising the retirement age is usually premised on the…
We often hear that one of the state's biggest economic problems is a skills mismatch. More specifically, we are told that manufacturing firms in the state cannot find enough qualified workers and that this is holding up our state's economic recovery. The problem with this argument, as we've pointed out before, is that it is…
In this month's edition of Jobs Count, I looked at the Congressional Budget Office's report on the employment and GDP effects of the fiscal cliff. The CBO report spells out how many jobs lost and how much GDP would be reduced for each deficit reducing policy that is a part of the fiscal cliff. Overall,…
Last week, the Pew Center on the States released a report that looks at the impact of the "fiscal cliff" on state tax revenues and spending programs. The report also includes a nice fact sheet on the impact to West Virginia. On the revenue side, West Virginia, like several other states, is linked to the…
On Friday, we co-released a report with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute on the rise of income inequality in West Virginia. Most striking in the report was the average drop in incomes among the bottom 20 percent of West Virginia households since the late 1970s. While the wealthiest…
The independent think tank Headwaters Economics has released a report on the best fiscal practices for states and local governments with oil and natural gas extraction. The report states, "Drilling for oil and natural gas is a high-impact economic activity that presents opportunities and challenges for state and local governments seeking to reconcile the benefits of job and…