CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Although some West Virginia lawmakers drafted a budget proposal for the coming year emphasizing government cuts, Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday that the Legislature’s Republican leadership has failed so far to produce its spending plan halfway through the two-month session.
Passing a balanced budget is state lawmakers’ most important job and the only one they actually have to do, Justice said. He stood in the Capitol by a countdown clock showing 30 days left in the session.
“Today we were promised a budget. No budget,” he said.
Earlier, Republican Delegates Pat McGeehan and Michael Folk, who head the Liberty Caucus, said their proposal would halt government growth, cut $84 million from this year’s spending level and won’t raise taxes. However, accompanying legislation wasn’t immediately introduced Thursday.
“While this is not a perfect budget, we believe it is a rational approach to balancing the state government’s checkbook in difficult economic times,” McGeehan said. He and Folk, who have a dozen caucus members in the Republican-controlled Legislature, said their proposal targets Charleston bureaucracies, uses unspent funds from prior years and cuts “corporate welfare.”
The Justice administration has projected a nearly $500 million deficit next year, proposing fractional sales and corporate tax increases, almost $27 million in government funding cuts and a highway reconstruction program to create jobs funded with bonds that would be seeded with receipts from gas tax and motor vehicle fee increases.
The first-term Democratic governor said Thursday that too-deep cuts won’t solve the fundamental financial problems, will hurt people and will drive more people from the state.
“Right now, I’m the only one that’s come up with ideas that will take us somewhere,” he said.
He warned against using one-time money or refinancing the teacher retirement fund to close the gap. He said the state bond rating would get worse and future deficits would still loom. His only proposed increase was for the Commerce Department to promote the state, which has since reduced from $105 million to $35 million.
Justice said his staff found $80 million of unspent state agency money to apply against this year’s projected $123 million budget deficit. He hadn’t seen the Liberty Caucus proposal yet, he said.
If the Legislature failed to pass a budget by the scheduled end of the session on April 7, Justice said he thinks he has the right to call legislators back in three days. “We won’t be going home,” he said.
Folk said their legislative proposal is only a blueprint, one that would cut funding to 2015 levels or Justice’s proposed levels, whichever is lower, and eliminate Justice’s proposed $105 million special SOS fund for future infrastructure and economic needs. It’s meant to show that tax increases aren’t needed. It would keep Justice’s proposed 2 percent raise for the state’s teachers. Higher taxes would drive people out, he said.
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