For people across the state who said they need help with water, food, drug addiction and more, Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s proposed budget won’t bring any new money to the table to fix those issues.
During budget hearings last week, Mike McKown, the director of the state budget office, said this year’s $5.78 billion budget is a bit tight. To make ends meet, the governor is proposing $109 million in spending cuts, moving some money from the lottery to cover gaps and not offering pay raises for public employees.
Of the $5.78 billion, most is coming out of the general revenue fund, which is the money the state collects in taxes. But McKown said there was a $397 million “budget gap” – meaning it cost more to run the government than what is coming in.
McKown said Medicaid and social services many people rely on to survive are “100% fully funded.” But there will be no new spending.
With no new money coming in, long-term issues are still going unaddressed, said Sean O’Leary, an analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
Childcare, a major issue talked about a lot by lawmakers that wasn’t in the State of the State address, is one area where no new money means allowing the problem to fester, O’Leary said.
“We are underfunding our child care assistance program. We spent half of what we spent 10 years ago on it,” he said. “We could put more money into that, subsidize more slots, and raise reimbursement rates.”
According to a study conducted by O’Leary’s organization last year, it would take about $100 million to fix this issue, which includes roughly 20,000 children under the age of six for whom there aren’t places in child care centers.
McKown told lawmakers, when drawing up a list for the governor of items for improvements for the state, he left a lot on the cutting room floor.
“There’s hundreds of millions of dollars of need that didn’t even make this first list that we knew there was no money for,” he said.
Budget requests made by state agencies last year could begin to address many issues West Virginians identified to Mountain State Spotlight during its 55-county tour of the state.
For instance, the Department of Education requested $257 million to fund a school safety program. The proposed budget does not fund it.
The Department of Agriculture asked for $300,000 to fund the SNAP Stretch program, which allows food stamp holders to buy fresh groceries from farmers markets. It’s unclear if that will get funded.
And a request for more than $6 million in state money to hire 131 new CPS workers appears to be shorted by about $3 million.
For state employees, the lack of raises amounts to a pay cut. The Public Employee Insurance Agency, which oversees state employees and teachers’ health insurance plans, is raising premiums by 14%.
PEIA is considered one of the major contributors to the budget gap McKown identified. Another major factor is the HOPE Scholarship, the state’s program that gives homeschool and private school families about $5,000 a year.
Since that program is written into the law, it has to be funded.
With tens of thousands more students estimated to be eligible for it in the coming budget year, McKown said it will need $100 million to make it work. That number jumps up to $300 million in the 2027 budget year.
During a Senate Finance hearing, Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, asked what would happen if lawmakers delayed full implementation of the program for one year. McKown said it would just kick the problem down the road.
Meanwhile, where exactly the cuts are in the budget is unclear, because the governor’s proposal would give agencies a flat amount that’s less than they asked for and leaves it up to them where to make their cuts.
Higher education funding, a priority in Morrisey’s State of the State address, stands to get slashed by nearly $20 million in the proposed budget.
Morrisey has said consolidating state agencies is another way to save money.
He is proposing re-joining the Department of Economic Development and the Department of Commerce, just four years after the Legislature separated them.
McKown said he had a page and a half worth of cuts for agencies, waving it in front of the House Finance Committee. But he didn’t go into a whole lot of detail, nor did anyone ask for him to read his list out loud.
“We can’t swear there’s not going to be lay-offs, we tried to avoid that,” McKown said.
But the budget is already facing headwinds. Every year, the budget bill originates in one chamber or the other for consideration. This year, the House of Delegates will be taking the lead.
The governor sets the amount the state can spend, in this case, $5.788 billion, but after that, the House and the Senate can set the terms of how to use that money.
During Morrisey’s address last week, House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss, a Republican from Wood County, neither stood nor clapped for the governor, who he has publicly labeled, “the gentleman from New Jersey.”
Criss said by statute, the only thing he has to do is match the topline number set by the governor.
“The budget that he presented to the speaker and to the president last night and to the explanation of how they want to spend their money, is their opinion,” he said.
With a budget potentially up for a wholesale rewrite, a lot can change between now and when it goes back to the governor for his signature.