To win gold coach must know score

Some say a coach is the perfect blend of critic and cheerleader.
Last week, Gov. Jim Justice once again attempted to prove he is well suited to play the role of coach during his State of the State Address.
There’s no doubt he’s got the cheerleader part of being a coach down pat on the sidelines.
However, once again, he failed to establish that vital component of a critic on the field that is so necessary to winning the game.
If we were to believe his latest pep talk those 12,000 people that quit West Virginia’s team last year, joining more than 45,000 others since 2014, don’t even matter. Neither do those rankings in Gross Domestic Product, wage and salary growth, personal income and so on.
Nor do most health indicators (risk factors) that point to one crisis after another as our state’s rankings remain at or near the bottom. And that doesn’t even take into account the ongoing drug crisis which still poses perhaps the greatest threat to our state’s stability.
Sounds more like a crisis of leadership. Meanwhile, though Justice did not fail to bring up the state’s record revenue growth in fiscal year 2019, which ended six months ago, he had little to say about the current fiscal year.
Halfway into this fiscal year, projections for tax collections are more than $33 million off and are expected to potentially top $100 million by summer.
Volatile severance taxes lately resemble that lightning bolt Justice used as a prop, but pointed down rather than upward as the governor might have you believe.
True, for our state to be in the condition it’s in with the declining percentage of the overall general revenue budget generated by severance taxes is a minor miracle. And to this administration’s credit, his budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year reflects scaled back plans in a tight budget year.
Furthermore, some of his proposals, including another ChalleNGe Academy and eliminating the wait list for children dealing with intellectual/developmental disabilities, deserve bipartisan support.
Yet, the governor’s support for the GOP-led Legislature’s initiative to eliminate or phase-out the personal property tax on manufacturing inventory and equipment is disconcerting.
This tax generates about $100 million yearly divided among county and municipal governments and school districts. If the idea is to shift this loss of revenue over to property owners in higher taxes to make up that’s a nonstarter.
Being an election year we expect the governor, who is seeking re-election along with 117 members of the 134 legislators, to play it safe. Least of all do we expect him to make the tough decisions that everyone on his team might follow.
Still, we urge the governor to ensure everyone gets the big picture, including the hard facts that may not be so pretty.
If we are going to win the gold the coach cannot just call it in from wherever, either. And he also needs to acknowledge the score.