Budget Beat

April 28, 2023 by WVCBP
Welcome to the Team, Alex!

The WVCBP is excited to welcome Alex Gallo to our staff as our new Community Engagement Coordinator! Alex received a B.S. in Health Science from James Madison University, where she cultivated and deepened her passion for helping people in need. Prior to joining the Center, Alex worked with a variety of non-profit advocacy groups helping…

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April 21, 2023 by WVCBP
How Tax Cuts for the Rich Trumped Public Investments: The West Virginia Fiscal Year 2024 Budget

During the 2023 West Virginia legislative session, lawmakers had the opportunity to use available revenues to address longstanding needs like ensuring PEIA and Medicaid solvency, filling crisis-level staffing vacancies across state agencies, or increasing investments in neglected areas like higher education and child care. But instead, the FY 2024 budget debate was dominated by creating…

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April 14, 2023 by WVCBP
West Virginia’s Reliance on Volatile Severance Taxes is Fiscally Reckless

During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers passed major tax cuts that will result in significantly reduced revenue to fund public programs and services. Legislators pointed to the state's current budget surplus to attempt to justify these tax cuts; however, that surplus is largely the result of unusually high severance tax collections. The severance tax is highly unstable,…

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March 31, 2023 by WVCBP
Mass Incarceration 2023: A Report from the Legislature

During the 2023 regular legislative session, West Virginia lawmakers introduced more than 300 bills related to the criminal legal system. Nearly half of those bills created new criminal offenses or increased penalties for existing crimes. To a Hammer, Every Problem is a Nail One trend that emerged was lawmakers’ penchant for believing that the criminal…

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March 24, 2023 by WVCBP
Health Policy, the Social Safety Net, and the 2023 Legislative Session

West Virginia has long faced significant health-related challenges, many of which could have been meaningfully addressed by bills introduced during the 2023 legislative session. While a couple of positive health-focused bills were passed by the legislature this year, unfortunately lawmakers focused much of their attention on health-related policies based on fear—not facts.  Two bills that…

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March 17, 2023 by WVCBP
2023 West Virginia Legislative Session Recap

The 2023 West Virginia legislative session came to a close this past weekend. While lawmakers spent much of their focus this year debating tax cuts, bills touching on a wide range of issue areas were introduced and considered. A recent article, including insight from the WVCBP, provides a recap of what bills were passed this session…

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March 10, 2023 by WVCBP
Passage of HB 2526 Fiscally Reckless, Comes at Cost of Years of Needed Investments

Governor Justice signed HB 2526 into law this week. Rather than utilizing state revenues to create shared prosperity by investing in programs and services that benefit all West Virginians, HB 2526 enacts permanent tax cuts that undermine public investments and further rig our tax system for the wealthy. Nearly two out of every three dollars of the…

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March 3, 2023 by WVCBP
Call to Action: Contact Your Legislators and Tell Them to Reject HB 2526

Last weekend, the Senate Finance Committee unveiled and passed their second attempt at a tax cut without discussion or questions and then suspended rules to pass it out of the chamber. The legislation, HB 2526, looks very much like the plan they passed earlier this session (SB 424). Both versions overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, contain a workaround for the tax cuts rejected…

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February 24, 2023 by WVCBP
Kansas Tax Disaster Architects Shouldn’t Inform WV Tax Policy

Last week, Governor Justice held a round table promoting fiscally irresponsible tax reform policy. Notable speakers included Stephen Moore and Grover Norquist, staunch supporters of Kansas' failed tax experiment of 2012. WVCBP executive director, Kelly Allen, recently published an op-ed outlining why it defies both evidence and common sense to follow supply-side pundits down a path of…

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February 17, 2023 by WVCBP
What’s a Sustainable Plan for West Virginia’s “Surplus”?

The 2023 state legislative session has seen both chambers heavily focused on turning the state’s revenue “surplus” into personal income tax cuts, despite the clear need for new spending after four years of austerity forced by flat budgets. We’ve covered at length the temporary factors driving the surplus, as well as the fallacy of calling it a surplus at…

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