The start of a new month always brings with it new economic data. In addition to new revenue numbers and natural gas price data, Governor Justice also revised his FY 2024 revenue estimates upward with little explanation. All told, what we saw this week should give lawmakers pause as they consider making large, permanent tax…
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On Tuesday, the Senate passed Senate Bill 547, a radical reimagining of the Controlled Substances Act that doubles down on decades of failed drug policies. West Virginia has been called ground zero of the drug overdose crisis. For the last decade, West Virginia has had the highest fatal overdose rate in the country–more than twice…
On Saturday afternoon of day 46 of the West Virginia legislative session, the Senate Finance committee unveiled and passed their second attempt at a tax cut without discussion or questions and then suspended rules to pass it out of the chamber. The legislation, HB 2526, looks very much like the plan they passed earlier this…
This afternoon the Senate Finance Committee introduced their version of the FY 2024 budget. Notably–to account for their plan to cut taxes for the state's wealthiest households and businesses–the Senate's proposed budget is significantly smaller than the budget proposed by the governor. The Senate budget proposal relies on one-time surplus funds to pay for ongoing,…
Two significant tax breaks for the coal industry are currently moving through the West Virginia Legislature, and together they could cost nearly $100 million in state coal severance tax revenue annually. HB 3133 would enable the state’s coal producers and processors to reduce their severance tax responsibilities by 20 percent annually, by allowing them to…
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…
Over the course of a six-hour period, the West Virginia Senate unveiled their tax cut proposal, rushed it through committee (without a fiscal note, hearing testimony from a single witness, or any members asking any questions), and suspended the rules requiring three days of readings to pass it out of the chamber. While lawmakers repeatedly…
With a relatively short 60-day legislative session, the bills that get considered—and the ones that don’t—tell us a lot about our lawmakers’ priorities. Now that we are exactly halfway through the 2023 session, the WVCBP team lends insight into what we’ve seen prioritized so far and what we would like to see prioritized during the…
From looming PEIA and Medicaid shortfalls to crisis-level vacancies at state agencies, years of so-called "flat" state budgets are leading to real reductions in public services for West Virginians all across the state. HB 2526, the governor’s proposed personal income tax cut plan, would worsen these issues, leading to near-immediate budget shortfalls and eliminating the…
At his State of the State address last week, Governor Justice announced a proposal he called a "tsunami" to reduce the personal income tax by 50 percent. As we’ve previously highlighted, personal income tax cuts by nature overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest households. In this case, one out of every six dollars in tax cuts would…