Governor Justice will be making his State of the State address this week, followed by the release of his proposed FY 2020 budget. Here's some key areas of the budget to watch for: Pay Raise and PEIA The governor has previously promised an additional five-percent pay raise for public employees, as well as pledging $100…
Budget
Last Spring, Governor Justice formed the West Virginia PEIA Task Force which was set up to find a long-term solution to the issues facing the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency, namely the growing cost of health care for teachers and other public employees. The deadline for the task force's recommendations was this week, and while…
On October 1, the West Virginia Tax Department issued guidelines and outlined intentions to start collecting sales taxes from remote internet retailers on January 1, 2019. As Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter Phil Kabler recently noted, this was a sharp policy shift. Nearly four months ago, Governor Justice proclaimed he had no intentions to allow the state to collect online sales taxes and that,…
A decade since the Great Recession, state spending on higher education has yet to recover from years of deep cuts, including in West Virginia, according to a new report released today from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. West Virginia was one of 45 states that spent less per student in the 2018 school year than in 2008.…
The 2018 Legislative Session came to a close last week, and in a break from the past two years, the budget was passed early with little controversy. While every year, the budget undergoes some changes from the governor's proposal to the final product, this year most of the changes to the budget were part of…
The tax framework released last week by President Trump and Republican congressional leaders would result in huge tax cuts for the wealthiest households, while offering little to middle- and lower-income families. In West Virginia, the richest one percent of residents would receive 39.1 percent of the tax cuts within the state under the framework in 2018, according to…
The Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University released their annual Economic Outlook Report for the state earlier this month. According to the report’s forecast, West Virginia is expected to experience modest job growth, with employment forecasted to grow at an average rate of 0.7 percent per year for the next five years. That’s…
The Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University released their annual Economic Outlook Report for the state earlier this month. According to the report's forecast, West Virginia is expected to experience modest job growth, with employment forecasted to grow at an average rate of 0.7 percent per year for the next five…
On Friday, July 21, Executive Director Ted Boettner presented at the WVCBP’s 2017 Summer Policy Institute. The presentation covers what West Virginia's state budget pays for, where revenue comes from, how tax and spending decisions impact families and our economy, and the state's ongoing budget crisis. Here is his presentation.
When lawmakers passed a "bare-bones" state budget, some lawmakers expressed that the state government needs to "live within its means" because of our "shrinking population and tax base." Other lawmakers have suggested that our state budget is too big and that we will need to "continue making cuts to programs and services" and that we should…