Charleston Gazette-Mail, Huntington Herald-Dispatch - West Virginia corrections officials were eager to call attention to severe staffing shortages throughout their facilities in a state legislative committee meeting in which other items were on the agenda. Read the full article. “We didn’t want to be in front of you guys with an opportunity to speak without…
WVCBP in the News
WBOY - A representative from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy (WVCBP) held a meeting at the Morgantown Public Library downtown this evening. Read the full article. Much of the meeting spoke about how the state does not have a surplus of money in its budget and how the loss of the…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - Today, Thursday, May 11, the U.S. officially canceled the designation of COVID-19 as a public health emergency in the country. Read the full article. Also this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) removed its designation for COVID-19 as a “global health emergency.” For the first time in more than three…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - West Virginia politics is a bundle of contradictions, as we’ve seen recently. Read the full article. At roughly the same time Gov. Jim Justice was lauding the latest state budget surplus figures (made possible by hilariously low-balled revenue estimates), legislators were hearing about how multiple state agencies, notably Highways and DHHR, owe…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - Higher coal and natural gas prices, and higher demand for both generated a severance tax windfall that fattened the state’s budget surplus last year. But the prices for both fossil fuels have declined in recent months. Read the full article. Sean O’Leary, senior policy analyst for the West Virginia Center…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - On this West Virginia Morning, higher coal and natural gas prices, alongside higher demand for both fossil fuels, generated a severance tax windfall that fattened the state’s budget surplus last year. But the prices for both fossil fuels have declined in recent months. Listen to the full segment. Sean O’Leary, senior policy…
Inside Higher Ed - At his semiannual State of the University address in March, West Virginia University president E. Gordon Gee gave a blunt assessment to a crowd of faculty, administrators, students and staff: WVU is too big—and its student body shrinking too fast—to operate sustainably. Read the full article. With enrollment rates eroding and…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - West Virginia’s annual budget is based on revenue estimates that come from the governor’s office. The budget surplus comes from taxes collected above those revenue estimates. How those estimated amounts are determined garners differing points of view. Listen to the full segment. Sean O’Leary is the senior policy analyst at…
Charleston Gazette-Mail, Coal Valley News - Gov. Jim Justice announced this week the largest single-month surplus in West Virginia history. Read the full article. During an announcement Monday at the Capitol, the governor said West Virginia’s general revenue collection for April 2023 was $319 million above estimates, marking the largest single-month surplus in state history.…
100 Days in Appalachia, The Good Men Project - The numbers are now frighteningly familiar: More than a million Americans dead from a drug overdose in the past two decades. More than 100,000 of those deaths came in 2021, in the middle of a global health crisis. Read the full article. Americans are now more likely to…