Charleston Gazette - Much of West Virginia is still owned by large, mainly absentee corporations, according to an updated examination of landownership being released today. Read Twenty-five corporations own nearly 18 percent of the state's roughly 13 million private acres, according to the report produced by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and…
WVCBP in the News
Charleston Gazette - With Medicaid expanding to cover those who make up to about $15,000 a year, West Virginia could save millions of dollars over the next few years by using Medicaid funds for treating eligible inmates, a health policy analyst said. Read Brandon Merritt, of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, estimates…
West Virginia Metro News - Thousands of fast food workers across the United States are uniting to continue the call for a higher minimum wage and the ability to unionize. Read The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour or about $15,000 a year for full-time work. On Thursday, those workers and labor organizers…
West Virginia Public News Service - Less than 1 percent of West Virginia's jobs come from Marcellus shale drilling. That has many asking how much the state can count on that industry for its future. In a recently released study, the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative found drilling and related work accounted for .8 percent of…
Charleston Gazette - Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said thousands of West Virginians celebrating Thanksgiving will be plagued by "devastating" reductions in federal food assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Department of Agriculture's Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Read In his weekly Wednesday column, Rockefeller wrote, "It's a time of gratitude and…
Charleston Gazette - Last winter, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy predicted that the snowballing Marcellus Shale gas boom and spinoff industries will create 30,000 high-paying West Virginia jobs by 2020 and 58,000 by 2035 -- vastly outstripping the fading coal industry. Read Projections in a three-part study titled "America's New…
West Virginia Public News Service - Kentucky political leaders across party lines are looking for ways to diversify their state's economy, after big job losses hit the coal industry. Some feel West Virginia leaders need to do the same. On Dec. 9, Kentucky will host a Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) symposium in Pikeville to…
Wheeling Intelligencer - Ever notice, fellow taxpayers, how liberals are quick to inform us we're not sending enough of our hard-earned dollars to Charleston and Washington? It's happening again in West Virginia. Read Later this year, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin probably is going to have to order another round of spending cuts in West Virginia…
Charleston Gazette - The boom in shale-gas drilling accounts for thousands of regional jobs but has not lived up to some of the most optimistic estimates offered by industry backers, according to a report released Thursday. Read Natural gas drilling in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations has created jobs, especially in Pennsylvania and West…
It has been a long-standing joke between older members of the West Virginia Legislature and legislative staffers who are also veterans of the system that fiscal notes attached to proposed bills indicating the potential costs of that particular piece of legislation are often designed to reflect the desires of the bill's sponsors. Read In other…