CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Cuts in government services and tax revisions are on the agenda for the legislative session starting next week, according to the leader of West Virginia’s House of Delegates.
Speaker Tim Armstead said Thursday that a budget deficit of up to $600 million next year is the big issue on everyone’s minds. The two-month session starts Wednesday. No state program or agency, not even education or health, should be kept off-limits, he said.
Both Republican and Democratic legislators want government cuts, not tax increases, Armstead said. “We want to see a streamlined government. We want to see a right-sized government,” he said.
Newly elected Gov. Jim Justice, a Democrat, has called the financial situation dire. His administration has already begun dropping vehicles from state agency fleets, ahead of the budget he’ll propose next week for the fiscal year that begins in July.
Armstead, who leads the House’s Republican majority, said he wants to put the state on track to improve its economy and broaden the tax base to avoid such financial binds in the future. His to-do list, aimed at improving the business climate, includes reducing voluminous regulation and establishing an automatic right to fully appeal civil judgments to a new intermediate court in a state the American Tort Reform Association once called a “judicial hellhole.”
“We really believe the real way to solve our budgetary issue in the long run is tax reform,” he said. “There needs to be a tax structure that encourages growth, a tax structure that broadens the base, and hopefully we can lower some of these rates.”
Proposals include removing sales tax exemptions, which he said apply to services provided by lawyers and accountants among others. With a broader base, overall tax rates might eventually be cut, he said.
Justice’s proposal for tiered severance tax rates for taking coal and natural gas, which would rise and fall with market prices, is being studied, according to Armstead. “I think the jury’s still out,” he said.
Armstead said more measures to address drug addiction and expand broadband service, as well as a process for legislative redistricting after the 2020 census, will get attention.
With President Donald Trump’s administration likely taking a harder line against legalizing marijuana and federal regulators undecided on medical marijuana, he said this isn’t the time for West Virginia to advance either one.
On education, he agreed with Justice on a power shift from the Department of Education in Charleston to school districts, principals and teachers. That flexibility would cut education costs, he said. He also specifically faulted system-wide standardized testing, saying it currently takes up to three weeks of some schools’ instructional year.
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