On a vote of 61-30, the US Senate approved $25 billion in state fiscal relief. This includes $15 billion in Medicaid support and $10 billion in education support. For West Virginia, this amounts to $136 million, with an estimated $81 million in Medicaid funds and $55 million in education funds. Both Goodwin and Rockefeller voted…
Tax and Budget
AP has an article this morning showing that the state is running a $24 million surplus in the first month of FY 2011. Mark Muchow, Deputy Secretary of Revenue (and the guy who calculated the revenue projections for FY 2011), said it was "mostly due to...early lottery fund transfer and one-time liquor license renewal payments."…
Every year, the Tax Foundation releases its State Business Tax Climate Index. Every year, West Virginia fares poorly in this ranking, this year we come in at 37. The argument is that taxes matter to businesses, they affect business decisions, job creation and the long-term health of a state's economy. Therefore, a state with low tax costs will…
Rory Mcllmoil (Downstream Strategies ) and I will be testifying Monday, July 19 at 11am to the Subcommittee B of the Joint Standing Committee on Finance on our report, "The Impact of Coal on the West Virginia State Budget." We will be joined in adiscussion of coal's impact on the West Virginia state budget and…
There is a lot of buzz lately at the national level regarding tax cuts, unemployment extensions, and the federal deficit. Last month, Congress failed to pass an extension of unemployment subsidies, which means by the end of this month 13,300 unemployed West Virginians will have exhausted their benefits, putting them at risk of succumbing to the dangers of long-term unemployment.…
This is the only conclusion I can reach after reading Steve Roberts' op-ed in the State Journal attacking our report on coal's fiscal impact on the state's budget. It's obvious that Mr. Roberts didn't read the entire report. In the op-ed, he responds to the report's findings by calling us "anti" everything and he dismisses…
West Virginia has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the country, and nearly 25 percent of personal income in West Virginia comes from government transfer payments. The national average is just under 15 percent. Transfer payments are mainly made up of payments by the government for various social benefit programs. These programs include Social…
According to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), halving the incarceration rates of nonviolent criminals would result in an estimated nationwide savings in corrections spending of $16.9 billion annually, with state and local governments receiving $14.8 billion, or nearly 88 percent of the savings. The national incarceration rate is…
Coal plays a significant role in West Virginia’s economy, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local revenue and providing well-paying jobs to tens of thousands of West Virginians. However, the size of the coal economy, while substantial, is not as considerable as previous accounts suggest. Further, such accounts have only presented coal’s…
Sorry for not posting over the last two weeks, but I've been out of the country. I am just now catching up on the news. Howard Swint had a thought provoking op-ed in the Gazette this past Friday advocating for a 40% profits tax on coal to replace the coal severance tax. As many may…