After the headline-grabbing stunts of previous years — including presenting legislators with a literal pile of feces and proffering Babydog’s rear-end for a celebrity’s smooch — Gov. Jim Justice’s final State of the State Address was almost surreal in its normalcy.
Instead of using his allotted time for some kind of fantastical stunt, Justice used his last big speech in front of the West Virginia Legislature to make the case for his tenure as governor — and, ostensibly, the case for why he should be a U.S. senator. He, of course, painted his years as the state’s top executive with rosy hues: “We’re at a different place today,” he said. “The rocketship took off, didn’t it?”
If the rocketship took off, it never made it into orbit.
Because even though Justice spearheaded several successful taxpayer-funded corporate initiatives — and some that fizzled out, like Virgin Hyperloop — he also presided over nearly a decade of flat budgets that left multiple state agencies and services in states of emergency, such as the corrections and foster care systems.
And true to form, Justice has once again presented the Legislature with a flat budget. We previously explained how a flat budget works and the dangers of artificially lowering revenue and expense estimates in a Nov. 17, 2023, editorial. Just to refresh your memory: Unlike many other states, the governor of West Virginia has the constitutional power to set the state’s budget for the coming fiscal year, which is based on its revenue estimates. It is up to the governor’s office to set the “size of the pie,” or the total dollar amount. The Legislature then decides how that money gets divvied up for the year. Legislators can technically go over the governor’s budget, but they must increase revenue in order to do so, which would mean increasing taxes. Instead, legislators have worked around flat budgets by allocating one-time funds from the “surplus,” which is any revenue that comes in over the governor’s estimates for the prior fiscal year.
In this year’s budget, Justice is already proposing even more tax cuts (translation: even less revenue) plus a number of “one-time” expenses that really should be base-budget items.
The tax cuts he’s proposing aren’t themselves bad ideas: Two benefit senior citizens and the third is a child care tax credit. As a principle, these are great policies to help two demographics that have struggled, especially in the post-pandemic years. However, these tax cuts would be coming on top of last year’s income tax cuts, the possibility of more income tax cuts because of last year’s legislation’s baked-in thresholds and a handful of long-term outlays, such as a 5% raise for state employees. As a state, we cannot afford any more tax cuts until we understand how the previous cuts will affect state revenue in the long term.
Legislators are already questioning the long list of Justice’s supposed one-time expenditures paid for with expected “surplus” funds. Sen. Eric Tarr questioned Acting Revenue Secretary Larry Pack about several line-items that could easily become ongoing expenses, including: $3 million for pregnancy centers, $10 million to support emergency medical technicians, $5 million for a Military Ascend program and appropriations for the Communities in Schools program and for supplementing Medicaid.
If Justice really wants to leave West Virginia better than when he took office, he shouldn’t have presented yet another flat budget that will harm the state but give him a brag-worthy surplus — and he should finally give the Legislature the multi-year revenue projections that his administration has been hiding for the last several years. Let us all see what financial state he will actually be leaving West Virginia in.
