West Virginia Watch, News from the States - A bill that would cut the duration of unemployment benefits in the state is heading for a vote by the full West Virginia House of Delegates. Read the full article. After a 3.5 hour discussion Monday afternoon, the House finance committee voted 14 to 9 to advance Senate…
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This week, the West Virginia legislature originated a bill in the House Finance Committee to enact work requirements for Medicaid. The bill quickly passed the committee and headed to the House floor. The bill stems from actions last year, when the Trump administration announced that it would allow states to remove some low-income adults from…
For the second year in a row, Governor Jim Justice has proposed a “flat” budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, with only minor changes from the FY 2022 budget. While the state is currently enjoying large budget surpluses, those surpluses are the result of billions in federal aid, artificially low revenue estimates, and continued unpredictability…
For Immediate Release: September 17, 2024 Contact: Jeff Biddle Jr., Executive Director, Midian Leadership Project, midianleadership@gmail.com, (304)-382-8288 Charleston, WV – West Virginia’s criminal legal system for children is at a crossroads. Juvenile reforms implemented in the 2010s led to decreases in the number of criminal cases filed against youth. But as West Virginia emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend…
New SNAP restrictions included in the federal debt ceiling deal will impact West Virginia more severely than any other state on a per capita basis due to the Mountain State’s aging population. Nationwide, nearly 750,000 older adults aged 50-54 will be at risk of losing their food assistance due to these new provisions, including 7,000 in West…
With the end of West Virginia’s 2023 fiscal year on June 30 came bold declarations about the strength of West Virginia’s economy and its historic revenue surplus. A deeper dive into the state’s tax receipts for the year reveals more of a mixed bag: strong tax receipts in the first half of the year slowing…
Last week, Governor Justice held a round table promoting fiscally irresponsible tax reform policy. Notable speakers included Stephen Moore and Grover Norquist, staunch supporters of Kansas' failed tax experiment of 2012. WVCBP executive director, Kelly Allen, recently published an op-ed outlining why it defies both evidence and common sense to follow supply-side pundits down a path of…
Poverty Numbers Out This Week Show Stubbornly High Poverty Rate for West Virginia While its economy has recovered from the Great Recession, West Virginia's people still face an uphill climb in terms of getting out of poverty. Nearly one in five in the state lives in poverty, including one in three young (under the age…
Over the past several weeks, Congress has passed three major bills in response to the coronavirus crisis: the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act which provided $8.3 billion in emergency funding for federal agencies to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act which provided for paid sick leave, insurance coverage…
In April 2024, the WVCBP called on the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) to make their policies and procedures public. Like most government agencies, DCR has the authority to create its own policies and procedures. This administrative law covers every facet of an agency that houses tens of thousands of people every…