The secret of my success (that was irony)

 West Virginia's legislative session began this week and I already wish it was over. My annual prayer has been for the state to finally hit bottom politically, but were heading down like the family in the late great John Prine's song The Bottomless Lake.

The session officially kicked off with Governor Jim Justice's state of the state address. Justice was once the state's only billionaire, but recent news reports have placed him a bit below that level but still way ahead of the rest of us. He was elected as a Democrat in 2016 but switched parties the following year. He was reelected in 2020 and seems set on running against Senator Joe Manchin if the latter runs again in 2024. 

He is perhaps best known for the prominent display of his English bull dog universally known here as Babydog. Usually these displays are of her frontal regions, although there has been at least one major exception to that.

If I had to describe him politically, I'd say he's kind of random. Compared to many state legislative leaders today, he looks pretty moderate. His address blended some good proposals, such as raises for teachers and public employees, investing money in the state's tottering Public Employees Insurance Agency, help to food banks and such with some in the not so much category. One of the worst is cutting the state income tax, WV's only progressive tax, by 50 percent over three years.

The rationale is that WV is running a budget surplus and doesn't need the money, but that's due to low budget estimates, years of flat budgets, federal COVID money and a spike in severance tax revenues that are extremely volatile. In other words, it's a sugar high, although most people here don't feel it.

That would mean an annual loss of revenue of around $1.2 billion per year when fully implemented, coming after several years of a state budget that didn't keep up with inflation. This would mean cuts to all kinds of programs from child care to K-12 to early childhood to higher ed to human services at a time of great and unmet needs. I was please to work on a press conference about this and other issues (see here and here) yesterday.

But the event made me think of a self-esteem saving way of always declaring victory when you try to pull something like that together that I cooked up with a friend years ago. It goes like this:

*if you plan to rally the masses and generate media coverage and the masses don't show up but the media does, pretend you just planned a press conference all along;

*if you plan to rally the masses and generate media coverage and the only people who show up are your cronies, pretend you just planned a meeting all along;

*if you plan to rally the masses and generate media coverage and not even your cronies show up, pretend you're just looking around and that was what you meant to do all along.

The main thing is to declare victory, even if it has to be drastically redefined.

So there.

To protect education, just say no

 Public education was a major concern of West Virginia’s founders. Article 12 Section 1 of the state constitution states that “The Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”

Good luck with that these days.

The public education system that taught most people reading this newspaper is now under attack as never before. And the source of that attack is some of the leadership of the West Virginia legislature. 

In recent years, a majority of legislators pushed through a bill allowing public money to be diverted to profit-making charter schools, which have little or no public accountability, as well as a program that essentially pays parents to take kids and funding out of the public schools that the vast majority of West Virginians rely on.

Now some want to rewrite the state constitution with two amendments that would centralize in their hands control over school funding and curriculum that now resides with county governments, local voters, and school boards. 

To paraphrase the late great Mister Rogers, can you say power grab?

Amendment 2 would essentially give the legislature to power to eliminate business taxes on equipment and property that now provide over a quarter of funding for counties, cities, and schools. As a sweetener, it would also give them power to eliminate taxes on personal vehicles, although the lion’s share of more than 70 percent would go to businesses, many of which are out of state corporations.

If voters approve this amendment, the legislature could cut property taxes by over $500 million dollars. As things now stand, 66 percent of this revenue funds county school districts. Another 33.5 percent goes to county and municipal governments to provide funding for things like emergency medical services, fire protection, public safety, public libraries and senior citizen centers and other services.

This would end a long tradition of constitutional protections for local services, take authority for property taxes away from local voters and communities, and could impact bonds and levies supported by supermajorities of 60 percent or more of local voters. Currently 44 of West Virginia’s 55 counties fund services through voter-approved levies.

Supporters of Amendment 2 say that local governments will be “made whole” by state funding, but there’s no guarantee of that—and doing so would simply require cuts to state funding for other programs. The budget surpluses the state now enjoys are mostly the result of one-time federal COVID relief funding. Making long term plans based on temporary gains is a bit like counting on lottery winnings in making a family’s budget.

The likely long-term results will be either cuts in public services or regressive tax increases that fall on working class families…or a combination thereof.

As Governor Jim Justice put it, with the apparent approval of Babydog, “We’re taking away an income stream and betting on good times forever and putting at risk our schools, our EMS, our firemen, our police and whatever it may be. We have to step back and think about what we are doing.”

And while eliminating those taxes might give a break to corporations and the politicians they financially support, it’s not likely to result in more jobs for West Virginians. State and local taxes make up less than two percent of the cost of doing business, so we’re talking about a fraction of a fraction. Some evidence even suggests that cuts in equipment taxes can result in automation and loss of manufacturing jobs.

Then there’s Amendment 4. If passed by voters, this would essentially nullify the intent of Article 12 Section 6 of the state constitution that specifies that “the school board of any district shall be elected by the voters of the respective district without reference to political party affiliation” by giving partisan politicians control over classrooms and taking authority away from educators, school boards, parents, and voters.

Do we really want politicians to be able to control and censor the books kids read, the lessons they learn, and even the songs they sing? 

Once you go down that road, there’s no telling how things will end up, but it’s never a good place. It’s a slippery slope from book banning to book burning.

Here’s hoping West Virginia voters of all stripes show up in November to vote “no” on 2 and 4 and protect the education system we need for a decent future as well as local control of the investments we rely on for everything from emergency services to parks and recreation.

(This appeared as a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Deja vu

I give Gov. Jim Justice credit for pointing out that some promised remedies for West Virginia’s ills didn’t pan out. In a televised town hall meeting, he told the audience:

“Really and truly, let’s just be brutally honest. We passed the right-to-work law in West Virginia. And we ran to the windows looking to see all the people that were going to come — and they didn’t come. We got rid of prevailing wage. We changed our corporate taxes and we’ve done a lot of different things. And we’ve run to the windows and they haven’t come.

“We’ve absolutely built the field in a lot of different places thinking build the field and they’ll come, and they didn’t come.”

It’s hard to argue with that. The promised benefits of West Virginia’s 2007 tax cuts under the leadership of one party never happened. And the state has lost about 60,000 people, more than the population of its capital city, since the push for anti-worker legislation began in 2015 under the leadership of another party.

The governor promises that things will be different this time around, with his plan to drastically cut or phase out the state income tax. I’m sure he has the best of intentions, but, for some reason, I keep thinking about Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, in the old Peanuts comic.

(In case that cultural reference is dated, it didn’t work out well for Charlie Brown.)

The state income tax provides more than 40% of revenue for the core state budget, to the tune of over $2 billion per year. Eliminating or drastically reducing it would involve shifting taxes to the least wealthy or eliminating state investments in people, infrastructure and health at all levels. Or, more likely, it will mean a bit of both.

West Virginia’s income tax is the only progressive tax in the state, meaning that those with more resources pay a somewhat higher rate. According to an analysis of the proposed legislation, 63% of the tax cuts will go to the top 15% of earners. Proposed rebates notwithstanding, overall taxes likely would go up on people in the lower 60%, who, by necessity, spend most of what they make on taxable goods and services.

Even if all the proposed new and/or increased taxes are enacted, it would still leave a budget gap of about $185 million. That means that more cuts to state programs and services would be required. And that’s assuming that the Legislature agrees to all aspects of the plan, which seems pretty iffy.

The plan includes an increase in the regressive consumer sales tax to 7.9%, increasing excise taxes on soft drinks, beer, wine, tobacco and such; taxes on “luxury goods;” and taxing some new services. All these are likely to arouse a great deal of opposition from retail and industry groups, which have a long history of getting pretty much whatever they want from compliant lawmakers.

We also can be sure of hearing a rousing round of protests from and about the economic impact on border counties, if West Virginians take their purchasing power elsewhere. About 30 counties are at or near the border of another state. More to the point, our colonial overlords extracting the state’s mineral wealth might not be happy about changes to severance taxes.

If these groups get their way, the revenue hole to be made up would be even deeper and the overall package probably would include even more budget cuts.

Proponents claim that any impact will be more than compensated for by the hordes of new people flooding into the state. However, as a saying variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Mark Twain and many others goes: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

I will venture to make one, however: If West Virginia’s leaders cut investments in the things that make a place worth living in — good schools, higher ed and job training, child care, parks and natural resources, public libraries, good roads, broadband, access to health care, support for the elderly — nothing will stop the bleeding of our youngest, best and brightest.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Reading the signs

In ancient Rome, augurs tried to read the future by looking at the entrails of sacrificial animals or the flights of birds. These days we tend to rely on things like polls, which is probably just as well. The results of the latest WV MetroNews poll are pretty interesting. Respondents were asked about their approval of President Trump, Governor Justice, Senator Capito and Senator Manchin.

In it, Trump's approval isn't as high as you might think it is (or as low as you might think it should be, depending on your viewpoint). It looks like Gov. Justice didn't do himself a whole lot of favors even among Republicans with his switch to that party during Trump's WV visit.

Senator Capito's approval rating is the lowest on record, which may or may not have something to do with fears related to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which, for all its flaws, has brought health coverage to around 225,000 West Virginians. At this moment, it looks like Senator Manchin is riding high, with more Republicans, Democrats and Independents holding favorable rather than unfavorable views. Of course, it's way too soon to tell how all this will play out in 2018 and beyond.

You can read more here.

Digression: when the ancient Greeks didn't like the results of auguries from entrails, they sometimes kept sacrificing animals until they got some guts that promised good news, which is kind of like commissioning more polls until you get one you like.

The Romans weren't much of a sea power at first. They would sometimes seek to read the future by seeing is the sacred chickens would eat before a fight. When the chickens wouldn't eat before the battle of Drepana with the Carthaginians, one commander got into trouble by throwing them into the sea and saying "Let's see if they'll drink." The Romans lost that one. Take home message: don't mess with chickens.

I'm not big on omens, but things would have to get pretty bad at the farm for chickens not to eat.

Switcheroo

I just finished listening to the ancient Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which all kinds of things change form. Little did I know that he could have written a post script on WV's governor Jim Justice, who switched parties publicly during a certain visit to WV earlier this week. We talked about it on a special edition the Front Porch, but I can't remember what I said or if I even agree with myself.

Justice calls for justice

Here's another big "thank you!" to WV Governor Jim Justice for standing up for West Virginians and opposing the senate "health care" bill in the strongest terms. Here's part of what he wrote in a letter to Senators Capito and Manchin:

While the impacts outlined in the Congressional Budget Office report are cause for serious concern, the reality is things are worse than they seem. I want you to be fully aware of the impact the current legislation would have on the state we both love.

Since so many of our people count on Medicaid, any cut to Medicaid would destroy families in West Virginia. We can't put the 175,000 West Virginians who benefit it from the Medicaid expansion at the risk of losing coverage. The consequences would be beyond catastrophic.

In the face of our drug epidemic, fewer people would have access to drug treatment programs under the current proposal. As the  debate moves forward, I hope you and your colleagues will consider the fact that it will only make it harder to combat e the drug problem that's ravaging West Virginia.

And that's no BS...and you know this governor knows a thing or two about that.


The whole letter is here.

Happy 4th!