Charleston Gazette, The Republic, WOUB Public Media, Huntington Herald-Dispatch - Lack of information about economic development subsidies hurt West Virginia's score in the 2014 edition of the U.S. Public Interest Group's annual report on transparency in government spending in the 50 states. Read For a second year in a row, West Virginia on Tuesday received…
WVCBP in the News
Bloomberg BusinessWeek - Natalie Tennant, the presumptive Democratic nominee for West Virginia's open U.S. Senate seat, got an earful visiting a company where workers said President Barack Obama's environmental policies threaten their jobs. Read "I'll fight it," Tennant said of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule affecting coal-fired power plants during a campaign stop at…
The New Yorker - On the morning of Thursday, January 9, 2014, the people of Charleston, West Virginia, awoke to a strange tang in the air off the Elk River. It smelled like licorice. The occasional odor is part of life in Charleston, the state capital, which lies in an industrial area that takes flinty…
Charleston Gazette - In the weeks leading up to the enrollment deadline, more West Virginians signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act than in previous months, according to Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state's only insurer participating in the exchange. Read As of the March 31 deadline, 20,131 people had enrolled…
Charleston Daily Mail - Now that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has signed legislation increasing the state's minimum wage, focus turns to a change in the federal standard. Read Groups including the West Virginia chapter of the AFL-CIO and West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, as well as local employees and business owners, rallied Wednesday…
Charleston Gazette - A bus traveling through 11 states on its "Give America a Raise" tour to advocate for an increased federal minimum wage stopped in front of the state Capitol along the Kanawha River on Wednesday afternoon. Read Urging Congress to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, slogans…
Charleston Gazette - Meanwhile, Ted Boettner, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, takes the time to read the fine print in the budget bill. Read Boettner found at least 12 other accounts where the Legislature's appropriations were larger than Tomblin's proposed budget, but were not rolled back by the governor…
West Virginia Public News Service - Many huge, profitable corporations pay no state taxes, according to a new report from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. Read The report looks at 300 Fortune 500 companies that made a profit every year from 2008 to 2012 and found at least…
Wheeling Intelligencer - Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is being urged by liberal groups to sign a bill he has good reason to believe was not what West Virginia legislators intended. Read As we reported last week, a bill to increase the state-required minimum wage was approved overwhelmingly by both the state Senate and House of…
Beckley Register Herald - Employers ready to budget for next year's minimum wage increase may want to look at another, perhaps unintended, consequence of the law that will raise wages for approximately 100,000 state residents. Read Because of a change in the State Code's definitions, workers formerly exempt from overtime laws may now be eligible…