West Virginia Public Broadcasting - When life long Valley Head resident Melissa Wilfong first heard that the 600-mile Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline was going to be constructed just a few miles from her community, she wasn’t happy. “My first thought was, ‘oh no, they're going to just tear up everything and be a nuisance,’” she…
Energy & Environment
Charleston Gazette-Mail – Earlier this month, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled in a case in which local tax departments and gas companies battled over the way property taxes should be calculated. But the companies and counties are still trying to figure out how they’ll be affected by the court’s decision. Read article. Ted Boettner, executive…
Governor Justice once again drew attention to a strong quarter of personal income growth for the state, with WV having the highest 2019Q1 personal income growth in the country. But, as was the case the last time the governor highlighted this particular statistic, there is more to the story than one quarter's worth of data…
Governor Justice is touting recently released state unemployment figures to conclude that West Virginia has the "best job rate in 11 years" and "record-setting job growth". A clear understanding of the data tells a very different story, where West Virginia's economy is performing worse than the rest of the country since he took office and…
The State Supreme Court heard several cases earlier this month on oil and natural gas property taxes that could have a significant impact on local government and school district finances, and also potentially impact the state budget. At issue is how the State Tax Department calculates production expenses on natural gas wells. When valuing oil and…
The nearly six-fold increase in West Virginia’s natural gas production in the last decade, due largely to shale development, or fracking, has fallen short of expectations for economic growth, job creation, and tax revenue generation, according to a new report released by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and the West Virginia…
The Trump administration unveiled its replacement of the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP), the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. The goal of the CPP was to help curtail the harmful pollution caused by emissions from generation of electricity, particularly from coal-fired power plants, which is causing severe environmental and health problems throughout the world. While some view the…
Earlier this month, this blog post examined the impact of the booms and busts of the natural gas industry in the counties where it is most active, using some broad economic metrics. As it showed, despite producing billions of dollars in natural gas during the recent boom in production, there hasn't been a significant impact on…
WVCBP executive director Ted Boettner presented at the Appalachian Justice Symposium - West Virginia Law Review in Morgantown on the "resource curse" and how it has impacted the state's economy and workforce over the years. View Ted's presentation here.
On the eve of the Marcellus Shale boom, we at the West Virginia Center on Budget Policy released a report on the economic boom and bust cycles of West Virginia’s natural resource extraction economy. AS the report showed, counties in West Virginia with high concentrations of mining employment were particularly affected by the boom and…