Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram – Last week, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced across-the-board 4 percent budget cuts to state agencies and a 1 percent cut to state education funding, but the full extent and impact of West Virginia’s budget woes remains to be seen. Read
On Tuesday, Tomblin announced the mid-year cuts and said they would help to close a projected $250 million budget gap for fiscal year 2016, a gap driven by sharp declines in severance tax collections from the coal and oil and gas industries.
The state’s revenues have fallen $60 million shy of projections through September, up from a $12 million revenue shortfall through August, officials have said.
Ted Boettner, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget Policy, said it’s important to put the governor’s budget cuts in context. Though the state is projecting a $250 million shortfall, that’s still just a projection, he said.
