Some REALLY good news

 For those who are dreading what promises to be a metaphorical legislative bloodbath in West Virginia, here's some good news for the state and nation.

First a little background. A major provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act was expanding Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Originally, that was supposed to be applied across the board, but the US Supreme Court made it a state option when it ruled the ACA to be constitutional in 2012.

By now, 39 states, including DC, have extended the coverage, which is life saving and game changing in so many ways, from supporting jobs to opening the door to recovery. You can probably guess many of the states that haven't expanded it if you think of the Civil War. Thank God West Virginia isn't on that evil list.

When Trump became president, a major goal was total repeal of the ACA. It was scary for a long while, but eventually that idea went the way of the whole Mexico-paying-for-the-wall thing. However, his administration did encourage states to apply for waivers that would require people in the expansion population to meet so-called "work requirements." 

These didn't promote work but rather paperwork, reporting and surveillance on a population that mostly consisted of people already working. These would have resulted a huge portion of people in the program being cut off for no good reason. Some states applied, but their waiver plans were blocked by the courts.

In West Virginia, we've worked with allies to fight off at least two serious efforts to seek Medicaid waivers and until today were expecting more, which brings us to the good news part of the program. According to an article in today's Washington Post, 

The Biden administration is planning Friday to wipe out one of the core health policies of the Trump era, taking actions that will immediately rescind permission for states to compel poor residents to work in exchange for receiving Medicaid benefits.

Federal health officials will withdraw their predecessors’ invitation to states to apply for approval to impose such work requirements and will notify 10 states granted permission that it is about to be retracted, according to a draft plan obtained by The Washington Post and confirmed by two individuals familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

So it looks like that's one less thing to worry about. I'll take it.

 

West Virginia's race to the bottom

 It seems like West Virginia's current crop of political leaders is hellbent on achieving full failed state status. Instead of investing in education, infrastructure, health, environment and quality of life, Gov. Justice and legislators, especially in the state senate, want to eliminate the state income tax, which brings in around $2 billion per year and makes up around 43 percent of the state's core budget.

The income tax is the only progressive tax in the state, meaning that those with higher earnings pay a somewhat higher portion. The only way to phase it out is to raise regressive taxes, which hit people with lower incomes hardest or to cut public services and programs. Or, more likely, a combination of both. 

Leaders in the house of delegates would like to phase out certain business equipment taxes which brings in $400 million or so mostly to county governments and public schools. This would also impact the ability of counties to pass levies to promote things like libraries and emergency medical services.

Oh yeah, then there's a plan to divert money from public schools via "education savings accounts" for private schools.

One of these days I'd like to hit bottom. It might be better than spiraling downward forever.

Feeding kids, boosting local economies

 I've spent a chunk of the last seven or eight years working intermittently on child nutrition issues, which has a certain amount of irony. After all, the organization I work for, the American Friends Service Committee, first came to West Virginia in 1922, in large part to work on child nutrition issues. 

How sad is it that it's still an issue year 99 years later?

It's an unfortunate truth that today  a lot of kids rely heavily on schools for meeting their nutrition needs, up to and including volunteer weekend backpack programs. 

I first got involved in 2013 when the state legislature passed the Feed to Achieve Act, which was intended to eventually provide free breakfast and lunch for all public school students. One way that would work was by encouraging more counties to implement the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which allows them to provide free meals to all students in schools where 40 percent or more are certified as being low income. Basically, it eliminates the application process for free and reduced meals.

It's a winner all round. More kids eat (mostly) healthy meals, which can help with learning, discipline, tardiness and attendance. Schools cut paperwork and often save money. Any stigma for being on free or reduced meals is gone. And working parents get a break. 

Most counties jumped on board as soon as the program became available and others followed suit through the years. Some took some nudging, sometimes for years. But now, 54 out of 55 counties have implemented the program to a degree and 43 have done so on a countywide basis. Often, a county would try it at a few schools and then expand it after seeing the benefits. And the WV Office of Child Nutrition has done a great job in helping to make all this happen.

Enter COVID-19. Last spring, the USDA provided pandemic electronic benefit cards (P-EBTs) worth $313.50 per child to all students to help cover out of school food costs. In schools with CEP, all kids get the benefits; in those without, only those on free or reduced lunch qualify. Many benefitted but some missed out.

This is where child nutrition translates into direct economic impact. That round of P-EBTs brought around $72 million to local economies in the midst of a pandemic-induced recession. The USDA estimates that each dollar spent on EBT food assistance has a multiplier effect of  $1.5, which would increase the economic boost to $108 million.

The USDA recently announced a second round of P-EBT cards to be issued next month. The benefit will amount to $6.82 per day for days out of school in the 2020-2021 school year. That means somebody's going to have to do some arithmetic and the amount may vary from child to child depending on how the number of in-school days. It's been estimated that this will bring $200 million to the state, which with the multiplier means $300 million in much needed economic activity.

That's good news, or at least a silver lining to the pandemic. Still, more needs to be done to encourage the expansion of CEP. And we need to revisit legislation that died the last two years that would require counties to come up with out of school food plans for emergencies and summer vacations. Last year, the bill died just as the pandemic began to hit. One would hope that the need for such legislation would be self evident this year.