West Virginia Watch – This week, reporter Steven Allen Adams of Ogden newspapers confirmed what many had been hearing in recent days: Gov. Patrick Morrisey inexplicably wants to call the Legislature into a special session mere weeks before the regular session to muscle through a deeply regressive tax and budget plan. The tradeoff, reportedly, is even deeper cuts to a state budget already hemorrhaging from years of disinvestment and underfunding, in many ways fueling the affordability crisis many West Virginians are now facing.
Read Kelly’s full op-ed.
More cuts are unthinkable after years of state budget austerity have already resulted in unprecedented public school closures and program cuts, the failure to make new investments in affordable child care, crumbling water and road infrastructure in rural communities, and low pay and skyrocketing insurance costs for state and local workers.
Morrisey’s proposal is reportedly to move West Virginia from a progressive, graduated income tax (in line with the majority of states) to a flat tax of 3.88%. To be clear, this proposal would not lead to lower taxes for everyone. In fact, it would raise income tax rates for at least one-third of West Virginia households (the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy is crunching the numbers and will have more specific details soon). The biggest beneficiaries by far would be high-income households, who have already seen significant state and federal tax cuts in recent years and, as a result, already pay less in state and local taxes as a share of their incomes than low- and middle-income households in West Virginia. A flat tax would make our already upside-down tax system even more regressive, with Morrisey’s plan requiring low-income households to pay more to give yet another tax break to higher-income earners.
