This West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report, West Virginia Economy Would Suffer Under Proposed Health Care Plans, breaks down the economic gains the state has experienced since the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the devastating impacts its repeal could have in West Virginia, specifically in rural areas with higher concentrations of…
Reports & Briefs
This West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy Issue Brief, On the Brink: Closing West Virginia’s Budget Gap, released today, details the various budget proposals offered by Governor Jim Justice and the West Virginia Legislature to close the state’s nearly $500 million budget deficit. Read the full brief. The legislature passed a budget with major cuts…
Higher education in West Virginia has been hit hard by the state’s recent budget problems. Public colleges and universities across the state have seen multiple years of budget cuts, at a time when the state sorely needs to invest in its workforce. In response, tuitions have sharply increased to compensate for the budget cuts, making…
Even though faced with a $600 million budget deficit, some West Virginia lawmakers are proposing reducing or eliminating the state’s income tax, and replacing that lost revenue with an increase in the sales tax. This plan is unlikely to produce the economic growth, instead it dramatically shifts tax responsibility responsibilities from the wealthy onto low…
This West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report, Repealing the Affordable Care Act: Hurting Our Health and Our Economy, provides a detailed analysis of the human and economic impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in West Virginia. Read the full report. Repealing the ACA would have far-reaching effects throughout the Mountain State, including…
With a new president and Congress, the health care gains made throughout the last six years face their greatest threat yet. Congress has voted more than 60 times to roll back the historic progress that has been made to expand health coverage to millions of people in this country and to improve coverage for those…
A persistent question for those who pondered West Virginia’s fate is a simple: why, in a state rich in natural resources, are West Virginians so poor? For more than a century several explanations have been developed by natives and interested “outsiders.” Read the report. This report, the ninth annual investigation of The State of Working…
Over the last two decades, states across the country have modernized their marijuana laws to reflect the growing evidence that doing so will help reduce criminal justice costs, help treat some medical conditions, and boost tax revenues and their state’s economy. As of 2016, four states and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational…
This report card evaluates the current policies of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia in a range of policy areas informed by the research of the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative (MSSRC). It compares policies across the three states that address the social and economic issues that unconventional drilling delivers to the communities in which it occurs.…
This handbook provides recommendations to county and local governments, human and social services, police and emergency services, and other local officials dealing with unconventional gas drilling. These recommendations are based on previous research conducted by the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative (MSSRC) to document the human and social service impacts of increased drilling. Read PDF of report. The MSSRC…