The West Virginia legislative session began on Wednesday, February 10 and legislators have wasted no time rolling out their priority bills. Several bills with major fiscal impacts are being moved quickly, raising worries of whether lawmakers have had adequate time to thoroughly consider individual bills — much less to consider how the interaction of numerous…
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Sunday Gazette-Mail - Last week, Gov. Tomblin said he was restoring $260,000 in funding for critical programs serving children and families, funding that he had previously vetoed. This included $30,000 for domestic violence legal services, $80,000 for child abuse prevention from the Children’s Trust Fund, and $150,000 for In-Home Family Education. Read While this is…
When lawmakers passed a "bare-bones" state budget, some lawmakers expressed that the state government needs to "live within its means" because of our "shrinking population and tax base." Other lawmakers have suggested that our state budget is too big and that we will need to "continue making cuts to programs and services" and that we should…
The U.S. Senate has released their version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. While the bill has some differences from the version released by the House, its overall affect is largely the same, with the benefits heavily favoring the wealthy. The Senate's tax bill would raise taxes on some families while giving large tax cuts…
For Immediate Release Contact Caitlin Cook, 304-720-8682 (Charleston, WV) A new West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy report, Repealing the Affordable Care Act: Hurting Our Health and Our Economy, released today provides a detailed analysis of the human and economic impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in West Virginia. PDF of news release. Read…
The 2023 state legislative session has seen both chambers heavily focused on turning the state’s revenue “surplus” into personal income tax cuts, despite the clear need for new spending after four years of austerity forced by flat budgets. We’ve covered at length the temporary factors driving the surplus, as well as the fallacy of calling…
WTRF - A recent executive order signed by The Trump Administration to dismantle the Department of Education is causing some concern about how public schools will receive federal funding. Read the full article. According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, federal funding brings more than $350 million annually into West Virginia’s 55 county school…
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…
A number of proposals have been made this legislative session with the perceived aim to help revitalize West Virginia's coal industry. Two such proposals have been to eliminate or scale back the additional severance tax on coal that is dedicated to paying down the state's workers' compensation system debt. But, despite assurances the tax cut wouldn't…
Today we learned that Charleston Mayor Danny Jones is proposing a tax reform package to pay for upgrades to the Charleston Civic Center. The tax reform package includes both tax reductions and the adoption of a city sales tax. The tax reductions include eliminating the Business and Occupation (B&O) tax on manufacturing and reducing the…