In the final days of the session, lawmakers are hashing out the only bill they are required by law to pass – the state budget.
In February, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the budget would be tight. Money coming into the state coffers has decreased over the last few years, due to a sweeping income tax cut passed in 2023. The cost of the government has increased.
The House and Senate have now released their own budget proposals with different philosophies and priorities.
No matter how it shakes out, state employees aren’t getting a pay raise, as health insurance costs increase.
The governor and the senate’s budgets mostly meet the needs requested by agencies overseeing the programs for the state’s most vulnerable people. The House’s budget, on the other hand, does not.
And on top of all that, there’s uncertainty with how potential cuts in federal government spending – which accounts for nearly half of the state’s $20 billion total budget – will affect the finances.
Over the next week, the governor and lawmakers will have tough negotiations. Senators and delegates will be haggling out details in hushed tones throughout the Capitol hallways. The governor’s aides will be running from office to office trying to strike deals.
And in the end, there will only be one budget.
No pay raise for public employees
None of the budget proposals included pay raises for state employees — about 46,000 people.
And with a 14% increase in health insurance premiums from the Public Employees Insurance Agency, that effectively means people like state troopers, roadworkers and Child Protective Services caseworkers, are taking a pay cut.
But that’s not all – around 18,000 teachers in the state aren’t getting a pay raise either. While teachers are county school board employees, their paycheck comes from the state. Whenever lawmakers raise their pay, they have to pass a separate bill outside the budget.
And many local governments rely on PEIA as well, so it’ll be up to cash–strapped counties and cities to come up with any pay raises for the 75,000 people working for them.
Over the last six years, lawmakers have regularly passed pay raises to offset the rising health insurance costs for state employees and teachers.
Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, said lack of raises to even cover the cost, much less increase take home pay, flies in the face of what the governor said he was going to do.
“The governor said in his State of the State speech that his priority was to make us, our educators, competitive with our contiguous states,” Lee said. “And yet, there’s no pay raise in his budget.”
Elaine Harris, representative for the Communication Workers of America local that represents the state’s correctional officers and state troopers, said pay raises for correctional officers approved two years ago are getting people into the door, but there’s still been nothing done for the counselors and administrative employees.
“We were promised by the previous governor that they would fix that for support staff,” Harris said. “They were supposed to do something to try to bring those people’s pay up, and we haven’t got that done.”
Money in, money out
The starting point for West Virginia’s general revenue fund is the revenue estimate announced by the governor. That part of the budget is made up of state taxes collected — the area where lawmakers can exert the most control.
Think of that revenue estimate like a salary. If someone is making $50,000 a year, then they probably can’t afford to buy a $100,000 house outright.
This year, West Virginia’s “salary” — general revenue estimate — is around $5.3 billion, which is in line with prior years.
The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy has long argued that keeping the budget the same amounts to a cut in services due to the rising costs and demands for services. House Finance Chairman Del. Vernon Criss, a Republican from Wood County, disagrees, stating agencies can leave positions vacant to cover costs.
But even though Morrisey’s topline budget amount is the same, the way he intends to spend it is very different from what the House has proposed. Under Morrisey’s budget, all $5.3 billion would be spent. The House’s budget would spend $5.1 billion.
Almost $200 million would be left over and put “into the back of the budget.” That section is the surplus section, an area Criss called “the want-tos, not the have-tos.”
The “want-tos” this year are $100 million to the Department of Highways – an allotment that’s been given in years past – $10 million in water line projects, $10 million for a victims of crime fund and the rest to a couple other small projects.
About $66 million would still be left over.
“You should never, never spend to zero; you always need a cushion,” Criss said. “And the governor made a brutal mistake in his budget by spending every damn dollar.”
But in shifting that money around, key services are getting less money. The governor’s budget would put $92 million more toward social services, primarily for foster care. The House also budgeted $32 million less than the governor’s budget for a waiver program to help senior citizens live independently.
During a press conference Thursday, Morrisey said the reason his numbers were so much higher is because he was trying to fund those programs based on how the law creating them is written.
“My philosophy, and this is the one that we’re going to keep pushing, is that when you have ongoing programs, you generally try to have ongoing revenue that matches it, right?” Morrisey said.
The Senate’s budget proposal, released Thursday afternoon, would maintain most of the social services funding. The House’s proposal, which is based on last year’s budget instead of the governor’s, would give those programs a little bit more money compared to the prior year, but nothing like what Morrisey proposed.
Potential federal funding cuts make planning difficult
Last year’s budget passed by lawmakers had $465 million cut out of it due to the state anticipating having to pay back the federal government. Ultimately, this didn’t happen and lawmakers put the money back.
This year, changes to federal funding loom large.
With more than $9 billion in funding coming to the state from the federal government, federal cuts to programs like Medicaid could potentially throw West Virginia’s budget into a tailspin.
Just last week, Criss’ committee passed a bill that threatened to cut around 160,000 West Virginians from Medicaid if federal funding for the 2014 expansion was cut. Overall, the state receives around $4 billion from the federal government for the entire Medicaid program and $1 billion for that portion.
State lawmakers received assurances from federal budget negotiators that the Medicaid expansion would not be cut and shelved the bill, said Del. Matthew Rohrbach, who spearheaded it.
Criss said unlike last year’s federal funding uncertainty, there’s no hard dollar amount to plan for.
“You don’t really know what they’re going to do until they do it,” he said. “At a whim, they could cut you off for any particular reason. So it’s very difficult.”
So budgeting in anticipation for federal cuts that may or may not come is impossible, according to Criss.
“We can’t worry about what the fed dollars are,” he said. “We are only concerned about the number that the governor gave us in state revenue. That’s what we have to concentrate on.”