Mountain State Spotlight, WDTV, News Break, Opera News - The first round of 2020 U.S. Census data is in, and as expected, West Virginia has lost more residents and another congressional seat. Read the full article. There are 1,793,716 people living in the Mountain State. There are also an additional 1,329 West Virginians living overseas, such as U.S. military members…
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Mountain State Spotlight, Beckley Register-Herald, WDTV, Yahoo News, Opera News - Five years ago, West Virginia lawmakers cut state funding to local health departments by 25%. Read the full article. The move — equivalent to an annual loss of $4 million — was a hit to the infrastructure that supports the well-being of our communities: the local workers…
Wheeling Intelligencer, Associated Press - If the human toll is not enough reason for some elected and bureaucratic officials to take seriously the fight against substance abuse in our state, here is one that might come closer to speaking their language: According to the Center on Budget and Policy, treating and addressing substance abuse and…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - I was trying to find a word that sums up the 2021 legislative session, and after much consideration, it came to me: Despicable. Read the full article. Despicable, in that the Legislature committed acts of cruelty for no reason but the sheer pleasure they derived from doing so. They passed a despicable…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - While any 60-day legislative session focuses on the hundreds of bills introduced and considered, Republican supermajorities this year helped push three proposed constitutional amendments to the ballot for voters to ponder. Read the full article. Come November 2022, West Virginians will have the opportunity to decide whether to amend the…
Beckley Register-Herald - Our governor and West Virginia’s supermajority Republican legislators, from backbenchers to those wearing the mantle of leadership, ignored too many of the state’s myriad problems to debate, instead, ideological and cultural hot button issues that they believed, we can only imagine, would play well with their base. Read the full op-ed. While…
Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Flipboard - Republican Gov. Jim Justice and some state lawmakers predict the elimination of the personal income tax would bring hundreds of thousands of new residents to the state. Read the full article. There’s no guarantee of that, but their decisions regarding the tax, and its effect on…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - Rebecca McPhail, president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, recently authored an op-ed on the legislation to place the business inventory tax, which is now protected by the state constitution, up for a referendum in November 2022. Read the full op-ed. Indeed, the state Republican Party is on a tax-cutting spree (and when are…
Associated Press, Times West Virginian, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Star - With West Virginia about to lose another congressional seat because of steady population decline, some Republican lawmakers are convinced a massive income tax cut is the key to reversing the trend. But figuring out how to do that without harming the state’s most vulnerable or…
WOWK - The West Virginia legislature has until Sunday to jointly come to an agreement on whether the state will eliminate its personal income tax. Watch the full segment. Local policy analysts are concerned about what may be in, or left out of a bill with only three days left to debate it. In a…