The Dominion Post – Severance tax trust funds are a good way for fracking states to turn a finite revenue source into long-term stability to ride out inevitable boom-bust cycles. That’s the essence of a report issued this past week by the Brookings Institute, an esteemed nonpartisan D.C. think tank. Read
West Virginia has such a fund — the Future Fund — but it has no money and it’s not set up along the lines the institute recommends to best serve the state. That’s the opinion of the Charleston-based West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, which pushed for a type of Future Fund for several years before its creation in 2014.
Oil and gas states are seeing their severance taxes slump as a result of the plunge in prices, Brookings said in its report.