The Governor's annual State of the State address took place this Wednesday evening. During the address, Governor Justice previewed a troubling plan to eliminate the income tax by increasing the sales tax, cutting services, and using one-time federal stimulus money to close the gap. Here's WVCBP executive director Kelly Allen's statement on the address: "Every good…
Budget Beat
30+ community orgs sent a letter to West Virginia's state leadership this week urging them to reject tax cuts that would take away the state’s ability to provide critical public services or that would shift tax responsibility from the wealthy and corporations onto the West Virginia families who’ve been most impacted by the pandemic. "We…
We’ve covered Governor Justice’s and legislative leadership’s goal of eliminating the state’s personal income tax from several angles over the past few weeks, showing that states without income taxes aren’t growing any faster than states with the highest income taxes, that eliminating the income tax would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, and that replacing the income tax with…
Feb. 10 marks the beginning of West Virginia’s 85th Legislature, and with this session lawmakers will have the opportunity to build upon their 2020 criminal justice reform efforts. The following are WVCBP's criminal justice priorities for 2021:- Immediately Protect Incarcerated People & Correctional Facility Staff Amid COVID-19 - Pursue Robust Sentencing Reform - Enhance Transparency in…
Last week’s blog post explored how eliminating the income tax in West Virginia would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, and that replacing just half the revenue lost with an increased sales tax would result in a substantial tax shift, with low- and middle-income West Virginians seeing a tax increase in order to pay for a tax cut for…
A primary function of West Virginia's jail system is to house pre-trial defendants, but despite recent bail reform, jail incarceration is surging and this growth is burdening the counties responsible for paying the costs. County spending on jails is rising along with rising jail population, but between 2014 and 2019, jail billing rose nearly seven…
As Gov. Justice and legislative leaders signal desire to implement new tax cuts during the upcoming legislative session, our new issue brief explains how such cuts would harm West Virginia's economic recovery and benefit the wealthy at the expense of all others. Decades of research and West Virginia’s own experience show that cutting taxes will lead to…
Over the past 40 years, the mass incarceration of women in West Virginia has exploded, growing by a staggering 2,731 percent from 1978 to 2019."But the reasons more women are going to prison in WV have less to do with rising crime and more to do with social drivers (like poverty and substance abuse), and…
In March, the federal government passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which established several programs that have since proved critical for stabilizing the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The CARES Act’s remaining provisions will expire on December 31, leaving Americans anxiously awaiting Congress’s next economic relief package. But with no precise congressional…
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, West Virginia law enforcement and corrections officials moved quickly to reduce jail and prison populations. And while the prison population has remained lower than normal, since April, the jail population has steadily increased and was more than 35 percent overcapacity as of November 12. Among the reasons for the burgeoning…