WBOY – A representative from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy (WVCBP) held a meeting at the Morgantown Public Library downtown this evening.
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Much of the meeting spoke about how the state does not have a surplus of money in its budget and how the loss of the funds will affect schools, libraries, healthcare, and emergency services to name a few. The center said that funds from the more than $800 Million in personal income tax cuts will not be available to the state again even though there are several unmet needs across the state.
“The governor’s office is using a couple of budget gimmicks to make things look better than what they are. The first is they are deliberately lowballing what is referred to as the revenue estimates, and that is the number that the governor gets to set on the amount of revenue that is going to come in for the next fiscal year,” said Seth DiStefano, Policy Outreach Director of the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy. “They are deliberately setting that number very, very low to make it look like we have a big surplus coming in and we can take money away from our higher education system, money away from healthcare, money away from community services, that we, in fact, cannot afford to take away.”
