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West Virginia Metro News - Gov. Jim Justice has pledged to test inmates and staff across West Virginia’s corrections system after confirmation of at least 83 cases of coronavirus at the prison in Huttonsville. Read article. “As we continue to expand our testing capability, we should test every single inmate and every single staff person…

West Virginia Next State to Drug Test Welfare Recipients? A bill making its way through the West Virginia Senate would create a three-county pilot program to drug test recipients of cash assistance. At its current projected costs, the drug testing program would cost over $600 per cash assistance recipient. To put that amount into perspective,…

Huntington Herald-Dispatch - The West Virginia Senate has approved a bill that could lead to a 3-year pilot program to drug-test certain applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, commonly referred to as TANF. ReadThe Senate approved Senate Bill 6 by a vote of 32-2 Tuesday morning. The bill moves to the House…

WDTV - Friday morning at a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee many spoke out against a bill that passed in the Senate around a month ago. Read/Watch That bill is Senate Bill Six, which would require drug testing for some welfare recipients. The bill spells out a program that when there's "reasonable suspicion"…

Huntington Herald-Dispatch - The West Virginia House of Delegates has approved a bill that would establish a three-year pilot program to drug screen and test certain applicants for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, commonly referred to as TANF. ReadThe House voted 91-8 Wednesday to approve Senate Bill 6, which would require officials with…

Last week, Senator Jay Rockefeller gave an historic and courageous speech on the future of coal and the EPA (MACT) rule to limit contaminants and mercury emissions from coal fired power plants. Ken Ward analyzes the speech at Coal Tattoo so we don't have to. As the Center for American Progress (CAP) points out, this…

After the Trump administration announced last year that it would support state efforts to add “work requirements” waivers to their Medicaid programs, no less than 15 states have filed for these waivers. In addition to value statements around such things as “fairness”, proponents of these work requirements argue (under the administration’s guidance) that work requirements…

Charleston Gazette-Mail - Just like voting, paying taxes is a civic duty and a shared expression of our representative democracy. Our taxes allow us to achieve together what any one of us would never be able to accomplish individually or through charity. Link to article. Inscribed above the entrance of the Internal Revenue Service building…

During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers passed major tax cuts that will result in significantly reduced revenue to fund public programs and services. Legislators pointed to the state's current budget surplus to attempt to justify these tax cuts; however, that surplus is largely the result of unusually high severance tax collections. The severance tax is highly unstable,…

The 2014 County Health Rankings were released this week and in a bit of a surprise, little Pleasants County took top honors, while for the 5th year in a row, McDowell County earned the dubious distinction of the least healthy county in the state. These rankings, compiled annually by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and…