Mountain State Spotlight A quarter of West Virginia’s children are living in poverty thanks in part to the actions of Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who repeatedly stymied federal legislation to extend the expanded child tax credit. The program provided monthly cash payments to families of over 300,000 kids in the state in 2021. West Virginia’s…
WVCBP in the News
WOWK CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) – Millions of dollars worth of overtime within the Charleston Police Department dominated conversation Monday night at the Charleston City Council meeting. On Monday, Sept. 18, council members Shannon Snodgrass and Beth Kerns voiced their opposition regarding the thousands of hours of overtime racked up by officers last year. In fact,…
West Virginia Watch, Hampshire Review - One in four children in West Virginia were living in poverty in 2022, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week. Read the full article. West Virginia was the only state in the nation to see its rate of child poverty increase from 2021, according…
WOWK CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) — It’s not just leadership issues that are stirring up controversy in the Charleston Police Department. The staggering cost of police overtime pay is also raising some eyebrows. Major events such as the return of the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta and Live on the Levee fuel the need for police overtime. But the city…
Charleston Gazette-Mail A recent report from the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy found that Charleston police officers are increasing overtime by thousands of hours and dollars each year. Sara Whitaker, author of the report, found that, in fiscal year 2023 (July 2022-June 2023), Charleston officers claimed 78,004 hours of overtime to the tune of almost…
West Virginia Watch More than $300,000 in Hope Scholarship funds, which provide money for kids for private school or homeschooling, have been used at out-of-state schools that border West Virginia. The Hope Scholarship, launched in 2021, gives West Virginia students roughly $4,400 per student in taxpayer money that would otherwise go to public schools to…
WOWK : Inside West Virginia Politics CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) — On this week’s episode of Inside West Virginia Politics, we talk about jails and prisons, spending, and Veterans. In Segments One and Two we talk about the state of jails and prisons in West Virginia. Segment One includes Bishop Mark Brennan, Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston,…
The Center for Public Integrity JACKSON, Miss. — Amia Edwards lives here because she wants to make a difference. But in this majority-Black city, long starved for funding by the state’s mostly white Legislature, that’s proved a steep challenge. The city’s recent water crisis came after years of chronic underfunding of Jackson’s aging water infrastructure. The stench…
Louisiana Illuminator Both sprawling, public land-grant flagship universities in two of the poorest states in the nation, Louisiana State University and West Virginia University are more similar than you’d think. It’s why higher education observers in Louisiana are watching the slashing of WVU’s budget with trepidation. Faced with a budget crisis caused by declining enrollment…
Minding the Campus One of the key stories in higher education finance is so-called “state disinvestment,” which alleges that states have made relentless cuts to college and university funding. But state disinvestment is a myth—states have not, in fact, disinvested in higher education. Disinvestment implies a downward slope, yet the slope of the line is…