Governor Jim Justice’s FY 2020 budget includes new spending initiatives and pay raises while avoiding spending cuts as the state’s financial situation shows signs of stability. While the FY 2020 budget is an improvement after years of budget cuts, it represents a missed opportunity to reverse the damage of past mistakes and invest in a…
Reports & Briefs
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…
West Virginia legislators are considering enacting voucher-like programs to transfer tax-payer money to private schools. This week they introduced a proposal to create Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) as part of the omnibus education reform bill, SB 451, which would set public money aside for educational services, including private school tuition, textbooks and curriculum materials, private…
West Virginia is one of the poorest states in the nation, and West Virginians face some of the highest rates of illness and disability. Among the few bright spots are public-funded programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The number of uninsured West Virginians has plummeted since the state’s expansion of Medicaid…
Just in time for the legislative session! Download here or email info@wvpolicy.org to request a free copy.
West Virginia University professor Simon F. Haeder provides an assessment of the impact work requirements would have on Medicaid beneficiaries in West Virginia in this new report. More than 200,000 West Virginians would be affected if West Virginia implemented work requirements similar to Kentucky's. Of the 200,000 West Virginians impacted, 70,000 would be be exempt; 36,000…
West Virginia has one of the largest gender pay gaps in the nation and the highest of all surrounding states, according to Climbing the Mountain: Closing the Gender Pay Gap in West Virginia, a new West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report. PDF of report. The report shows shows in 2017, women working full-time, year round in West…
West Virginia's population is increasingly living in urban areas, with those urban areas experiencing all the state's job growth in the past quarter century, leaving rural West Virginia behind in many key areas, according to a new West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report. State of Rural West Virginia shows rural West Virginians primarily have…
West Virginia can create a more prosperous state if the strength of working families and the policies that support them become a priority. This is according to a West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report that details seven policies to reverse the top-down approach that has left the average West Virginian behind. Since 2006, West Virginia…
In recent years, both public health advocates and policymakers looking for new revenue for public programs and ways to improve health outcomes have focused on a sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) or “soda tax.” Read PDF of report. Numerous research studies have linked the excessive consumption of soda and other sugary drinks to the nation’s epidemic of…