Decreases were expected in personal income tax revenues – and in severance taxes relating to a fluctuating coal, gas and oil market.
Breaking down West Virginia’s $1.8 billion surplus from the past fiscal year, while projecting a 2024 budget, Department of Revenue Deputy Secretary Mark Muchow told members of the legislative Joint Committee on Finance that while funding increases were consistent across the board, decreases were expected in personal income tax revenues – and in severance taxes relating to a fluctuating coal, gas and oil market.
“We also expected a big reduction in severance tax due to lower energy prices,” Muchow said. “Here we have a reduction of $633 million, and the official estimate is 66.9 percent.”
Muchow said recent monthly severance tax collections are currently exceeding budget estimates and will be closely monitored going forward. He said energy production was not the problem.
“Coal production is up 5.9 percent,” Muchow said. “We’re on target for 90 million tons of coal. And natural gas production is up 9.9 percent. It’s all about the price. The math is pretty easy, our tax is 5 percent of the price. So we will rise or fall on price. And we had a very warm winter last winter. Who knows what’s coming in the future?”
Gov. Jim Justice has said new workers and their families coming to West Virginia will offset the 21.25 percent personal income tax cut implemented this year.
Revenue Secretary Dave Hardy noted that these revenue streams tend to slow down in July and August.
“As of the end of August our consumer sales tax revenue was up 2.5 percent from a year ago,” Hardy said. “Our personal income tax revenue as of the end of August, was down 16.2 percent. Well, we did a 21.25 percent income tax reduction. So, the fact that our revenue is only down 16.2 percent in the personal income tax category means that we still have real growth in income in our state.”
Hardy said the personal income tax cut will put a projected $696 million back into citizens pockets through the PIT reduction.
Coal has been “king” for most of the last century in West Virginia and central Appalachia, but in recent years, global market forces, governmental regulations and alternative energy sources like natural gas have reduced its dominance.
That drop off has caused job losses as well as losses in income and severance taxes. At the same time as those coal companies close down, and often declare bankruptcy, it has left abandoned mines behind.
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Brian Lego is a research assistant professor at West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. He was one of the authors of a 2018 study called “The Economic Impact of Coal In West Virginia.” He said that coal production peaked most recently in 2008, when oil prices were high. Natural disasters and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in 2011 also prompted strong global demand.
But coal production has only fallen since then. In an email he noted that “coal production averaged a shade under 80 million short tons (annualized rate) in the first quarter of 2021 and appears to have increased to somewhere in the low- to mid-80 million short tons range during the second quarter.”
That is down from 150 million short tons in 2010.
Lego expects the short-term outlook for coal exports from West Virginia to remain stable through 2023 and 2024 — exceeding coal exports for 2019 and 2020. But, he wrote, exports would likely fall short of the 2017/2018 period – barring some stronger-than-expected growth in metallurgical coal demand.
In more general terms, he said he expected exports to decline over the next decade and then fall off more sharply in the 2030s.
From his perspective, natural gas is a major factor.
“Particularly here in the Mid-Atlantic region,” Lego said in an interview. “With the Marcellus and Utica shale, that was a major emergence of a competitor to coal-fired power in the entire U.S. The amount of growth in electricity generation that’s come from natural gas has, essentially, tripled. Natural gas accounts for half of the region’s electricity generation.”
Jobs
Since 2010, West Virginia has seen a net loss of more than 6,000 direct coal mining jobs since 2010, according to WorkForce West Virginia. There are 14,780 men and women currently working in mining in West Virginia, down from 43,875 in 1971.
The Appalachian region as a whole lost 27 percent of its coal jobs between 2005 and 2015, according to a report released by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The U.S. Energy Information Administration indicated there were about 30,000 people employed in coal mining throughout Appalachia in 2019.
Budgets
The fall in coal production has brought more than just layoffs. Coal severance taxes, which pay for things like schools and senior services, have also taken a hit. In 2010, these taxes brought in more than $300 million or about eight percent of the state’s general revenue fund.
In 2020, according to numbers supplied by the state Department of Commerce, total coal severance taxes were just over $200 million. That’s about four percent of the state’s General Revenue Fund.
Employment taxes from those directly associated with coal mining amounted to just over $125 million in 2010, according to a report from the Center for Budget and Policy. At the time there were 21,012 West Virginians directly employed in coal mining. The report estimated that each coal mining employee paid just under $6,000 per person in income taxes to the state.
Using the CBP estimate of approximately $6,000 in income taxes per miner, that reflects a drop of payroll tax income for the state of nearly $37 million to just less than $88 million.
Legacy costs
Coal mining also has a number of legacy costs– from abandoned mine lands to road damages from coal trucks.
A report from the Ohio River Institute says that Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) in West Virginia — these are coal mines abandoned before 1977 — account for just over 20 percent of the U.S. total and more than 24 percent of the costs.
Those mine lands account for 173,000 acres of land that need reclaimed with reclamation costs estimated at $5 billion. Only Pennsylvania has more unreclaimed pre-1977 mine lands than West Virginia. More than 30 percent of West Virginians live within a mile of an unreclaimed mine site.
Since the AML law passed in 1977, federal law has required mine owners to establish bonds that would pay for clean-up costs for coal mines. The law gave states considerable leeway in how they set up those bonds, however, and most are severely underfunded.
A report by Appalachian Voices, called Repairing the Damage, looked at the costs associated with more modern coal mines that have been abandoned as coal companies have declared bankruptcy. Much of the necessary clean-up costs are not covered by existing bonds.
Between 2008 and 2017, the number of coal mines plummeted from 1,435 to 671 mines in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration.
In a seven-state area, there were 633,000 acres of land that needed some level of cleanup. More than 200,000 acres of that was in West Virginia — the highest total for a single state. Kentucky was slightly lower.
The total estimated outstanding cost of this reclamation ranges from $7.5 to $9.8 billion. The total available bonds amount to approximately $3.8 billion.
The clean-up process is expensive, says Erin Savage, who wrote the Appalachian Voices report and calculated clean-up costs for various mine types.
“A fully unreclaimed surface mine, I have at about $12,000 per acre to reclaim. Underground mines at about $29,000 per acre. And the other mines are the processing facilities and those are at $26,000 per acre,” she said.
West Virginia has approximately $3 billion of reclamation liability, from mines abandoned after 1977, but only has approximately $1.2 billion in bonds to secure that reclamation.
A recent legislative audit of the state’s reclamation fund found that the bonds the coal companies are supposed to obtain to reclaim land once mining is done are set between $1,000 and $5,000 per acre. That’s simply not enough, according to Savage.
“For West Virginia, I estimated that the bonds cover roughly 31 to 49 percent of the potential liability,” she said.
Savage noted that this problem may be too big for the state government to deal with on its own.
“The water pollution, the erosion, flooding, those aren’t just environmental issues, those have direct impacts on the communities that live around those mines,” she said. “And that’s why we really think the federal government needs to step in here.”
But she also wants to see the private companies that created the messes held accountable.
“We wouldn’t want to see some new program that really lets coal companies off the hook and incentivizes bankruptcy and just walking away,” she said.
Restructuring bankruptcy in most cases allows companies to shed prior environmental and other obligations. From 2010 to 2019, more than 50 U.S. coal companies declared bankruptcy.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. Senate and pending before the U.S. House of Representatives includes additional money for the AML program.
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Town of Smithers
Reclamation work on an underground mine just above the town of Smithers.
Reclamation
One conclusion made in the Appalachian Voices report was that if the “remaining 633,000 acres in need of reclamation were reclaimed, this would create between 23,000 and 45,000 job-years across the Eastern states. Proper mine reclamation could have significant positive economic impacts, and contribute to carbon sequestration and climate change resilience.”
An example of how reclamation can change things is in the town of Smithers in Fayette County, West Virginia. An underground mine in the hill above the town was full of water and literally buckling U.S. Route 60 — a road that sees 7,000 cars a day during the non-tourist months.
Smithers Mayor Anne Cavalier said they called it the “mountain on the move.”
“That was created because abandoned mine lands from probably 50, 70 years ago had been mined out and they had filled with spring water,” she said. “Mountains are just full of springs and the water pressure was simply pushing that mountain out.”
She said that if Route 60 had been forced to close, even for a few years, none of the businesses in the town would have survived.
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Town of Smithers
An aerial view of the reclamation project that saved U.S. Route 60 and the town of Smithers.
But now the town has a completely different future. A reclamation project through the state Department of Environmental Protection stabilized the hillside with pilings and relieved the water pressure, preserving the road. Traffic continues to move past the town with travelers stopping for gas and food.
Just two miles from Smithers, another reclaimed coal mine has been turned into the Mammoth Preserve by the West Virginia Land Trust. Cavalier noted it is 5,500 acres of land for camping, mountain biking and horseback riding.
“I see us sitting here now in a sweet spot. I see new jobs and new futures for the members of those families who can make that transition from coal to tourism,” she said.
The ability for the town of Smithers to go from facing an uncertain future to one where the future looks bright is thanks to the reclamation of former mine sites. And Cavalier looks forward to what she hopes will be a time of renewal for her home.
“I’ve never been more excited about this town’s history,” she said.
The West Virginia House passed a bill Wednesday that would reduce the severance tax paid on coal burned for electricity
House Bill 3142 passed on an 88-11 vote after contentious debate on the floor.
Long sought by industry, the legislation would reduce the severance tax paid by coal companies on steam or thermal coal from 5 percent to 4 percent effective July 1 and to 3 percent effective July 1, 2020.
The bill originated in the House Finance Committee Friday. Officials from the West Virginia Department of Revenue told lawmakers the state general fund is likely to lose about $60 million in revenue over the next two years if the measures passes.
Supporters say the bill would make West Virginia coal more competitive and potentially boost employment at mines.
“Right now I believe our coal industry is struggling,” said House Finance Committee Chair Del. Eric Householder, a Republican from Berkeley County. “And I think this is the best thing we can do for them right now.”
A 2015 report from the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research that examined the impacts of a tax reduction found reducing severance taxes on West Virginia’s coal industry would create limited economic benefits — between 150 and 196 jobs.
“There’s little evidence to support a severance tax cut for coal as a tool to increase production and employment,” stated a 2016 blog post by the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy that addressed a report issued by the West Virginia Coal Association on the benefits of cutting the state’s coal severance tax. “Overall, the state has little ability to influence the forces affecting the coal industry, be they competition from natural gas, environmental regulations, productivity, or transportation issues.”
Those concerns were echoed during floor debate Wednesday by Del. Evan Hansen, (D) from Monongalia County.
“The question was raised is how many jobs is that going to create and the chairman of Finance said maybe 100. That’s $600,000 per job, this one piece of legislation. Maybe it will create 500 jobs, that’s $120,000 per job. That’s still quite a lot,” Hansen said, adding that dropping the price of steam coal by a few percentage points by slashing the severance tax doesn’t change the overall economic picture for coal.
“We’ve got coal-fired power plants shutting down across the country. We have coal-fired power plants shutting down in West Virginia and the reason is they cant compete,” he said. “They can’t compete because we have vast amts of cheap natural gas that’s cheaper than the coal we mine in West Virginia and it’s not just one percent cheaper or two percent cheaper.”
Del. Larry Rowe, a Democrat from Kanawha County noted during floor debate that the bill lists no requirements for how the money saved must be spent, and because it only reduces the severance tax on thermal coal used to create electricity, not metallurgical coal used to create steel, the benefits will largely be felt in the northern part of the state where steam coal is mined.
“I think this is something that we should study and be aware of,” Rowe said. “My difficulty is in the fact that I represent the coal-producing portion of Kanawha County — I think we’re fourth in the state in coal production — and it looks like that we may not get the full benefit of this tax reduction.”
The bill stipulates that the portion of the severance tax paid directly to counties and local governments, .35 percent, would not be impacted.
The state also shares 5 percent of the remaining tax collected with counties — 75 percent to coal-producing counties and 25 percent to non-producing regions. Under House Bill 3142, the amount of coal severance tax to be distributed to coal-producing counties cannot dip lower than the amount distributed in fiscal year 2018.
The bill also strikes the provision that counties must use some of their severance taxes for economic development and infrastructure projects.
The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.
Officials say a West Virginia county sheriff’s office has hired four deputies after it had $240,000 in budget cuts during the last few years.
The Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday that the McDowell County Sheriff’s Office now has 13 deputies. County budget cuts had caused the department to lose four deputies in January 2016. It should have 15 deputies.
County Commissioner Gordon Lambert says coal severance money made the latest hires possible. He says the county hopes to hire more deputies.
Sheriff Martin West says one hire is a previous county deputy and has completed his academy training, so he will be able to work at full capacity. The other three hires will start 16 weeks of academy training on Aug. 15.
West Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor is a billionaire, a philanthropist and a resort and coal mine owner who cites his business and mining experience as major attributes as he seeks to lead his home state out of a severe budget and economic crisis.
“I am not a career politician; I am a career businessman,” wrote Jim Justice in an April 5 op-ed that appeared in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
But an NPR investigation shows that Justice’s mining companies still fail to pay millions of dollars in mine safety penalties two years after an earlier investigation documented the same behavior. Our analysis of federal data shows that Justice is now the nation’s top mine safety delinquent.
His mining companies owe $15 million in six states, including property and minerals taxes, state coal severance and withholding taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes, as well as mine safety penalties, according to county, state and federal records.
In the past 16 months, while fines and taxes went unpaid, Justice personally contributed nearly $2.9 million in interest-free loans and in-kind contributions to his gubernatorial campaign, according to state campaign finance reports.
Grant Herring, a spokesman for the Justice gubernatorial campaign, said Justice “won’t be doing an interview,” despite multiple requests after NPR provided details of its investigation.
But Billy Shelton, an attorney for Justice mining companies in Kentucky, responded to Justice’s failure to pay $2.6 million in delinquent federal mine safety penalties, which are levied by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. MSHA and Treasury Department data obtained by NPR show that Justice has paid $675,000 this year as part of a payment agreement, but the agreement covers less than half of the total amount owed.
“Unlike the coal companies that filed for bankruptcy and walked away from their obligations, the Justice companies are being responsible and following the agreed-upon payment plan. … The Justice companies are taking the proper steps to make good on all MSHA commitments,” Shelton says. “To imply anything beyond that is purely for political reasons and ignores the facts.”
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A coal separator sorts and piles up coal at the Tams mountaintop removal mine near Beckley, W.Va. The mine is operated by Southern Coal Corp., which is owned by Jim Justice.
Safety Violations Persist
Justice is celebrated in West Virginia for saving the historic and luxurious Greenbrier Resort, a major economic driver for the surrounding region. But dozens of his coal mines in West Virginia and other Appalachian states have a history of safety violations and failure to pay on time the penalties that are supposed to discourage unsafe practices, according to MSHA violations and penalties data.
That’s what NPR and Mine Safety and Health News documented in a joint investigation in 2014. At the time, Tom Lusk, the chief operating officer of Justice’s mining companies, insisted that Justice “does not run from his obligations. … He’s made it abundantly clear that there’s no way we’re going to not fully meet and satisfy these obligations.”
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A view of Jim Justice’s Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in 2013.
NPR conducted another analysis of federal mine safety data exactly two years later and found that mines owned by Justice added $1.38 million in new and unpaid mine safety penalties.
Delinquent Justice mines also continue to have worse-than-average safety records, according to NPR’s analysis of MSHA injury and violations data. NPR’s analysis shows that injury rates (for injuries forcing time away from work) are twice the national average and violations rates more than four times the national rate during the years the Justice mines failed to pay penalties.
The MSHA data also show that those mines were cited for 3,657 violations while they were delinquent, including 699 violations that are classified by MSHA as factors in mine fatalities, fatal mine accidents and major disasters.
MSHA mine inspectors issued dozens of citations for excessive coal dust, which can feed mine explosions, and roof and wall violations, which can lead to mine collapses.
One Justice mining company, Kentucky Fuel Corp., owed more than $709,000 in delinquent penalties, according to MSHA data, and was admonished in an April decision from the Federal Mine Safety and Health Commission, which adjudicates penalty disputes.
“Kentucky Fuel’s history regarding the payment of penalties is abysmal,” the commission wrote. “The operator’s record indicates that it has repeatedly disregarded final penalty assessments.”
The Justice fines concern Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official, mine disaster investigator and lecturer on workplace safety at George Washington University and Texas State University.
“I don’t think we should forget that the reason that he has those penalties is because there were violations and hazards in his coal mining operations,” says Monforton.
DELINQUENT MINES INVESTIGATION UPDATE
NPR found two more noteworthy developments in its 2016 review of delinquent mine safety data after the 2014 investigation:
As NPR reported in 2014, five people died in in a mine explosion at Kentucky Darby in 2006. The $500,000 in penalties for that disaster plus $2.4 million more in fines at mines owned by Ralph Napier Sr. and his partners disappeared from the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s books. The agency says the delinquencies were declared non-collectible and the IRS issued 1099 forms declaring the unpaid fines taxable income. But the companies are defunct so no collection is ever expected.
NPR profiled D&C owner Horace Garrison Hill in our 2014 stories and detailed a fatal accident there. His mine owed more than $4 million in delinquent fines. That debt also disappeared from MSHA’s records and resulted in a 1099 form. D&C is also defunct.
“That’s the way the system is set up and it has to change,” says Tony Oppegard, a former mine safety regulator who represents the families of miners killed at both D&C and Kentucky Darby. “There’s no incentive to run a safe mine if you know that you don’t have to pay your fines.” MSHA says it supports a bill in Congress that would give the agency authority to shut down delinquent mines six months after they become delinquent.
The agency did revive a little-used enforcement tool after NPR’s 2014 stories. It cited a mine’s failure to pay penalties as a failure to fix the safety hazards that led to those penalties. It then shut down the mine until the owner agreed to a payment plan. That’s happened four times since.
NPR’s stories also prompted an inspector general’s audit of MSHA’s penalties system and practices. A report is expected soon.
Kentucky Fuel also tops all of Justice’s mining companies for delinquent fines, county taxes and state and federal tax liens combined, with more than $8 million due, according to county, state and federal records.
Justice was asked about safety at his mines when he announced his run for governor last year.
“I’m a safety fanatic,” he said at a news conference. “So I’m the last person in the world that’s wanting something to where you would put an employee in a situation that would be unsafe.”
As for the delinquent mine safety fines reported by NPR in 2014, Justice said “we’ll absolutely … make sure that every one of them is taken care of.”
Lusk and MSHA agreed to a payment plan in December 2015, after two years of discussions, and the Justice mining companies have made every $75,000 monthly payment since. But the plan does not cover more than $1.7 million in unpaid fines referred to the U.S. Treasury for collection, according to Treasury records provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The records show that some of the delinquent fines have been sent on to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible litigation and that others are pending referral to the agency.
Shelton says he is seeking a payment plan to cover the fines referred to Treasury.
The “Justice group has diligently pursued payment plans and full resolution of all outstanding issues,” Lusk recently said.
Payment plans also exist in counties where Justice mining companies failed to pay more than $5.4 million in county taxes.
Media and legal pressure have been successful in getting the Justice companies to pay.
In April, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported that the Justice companies owed $3.9 million in delinquent 2015 property taxes in West Virginia. Most were paid within two weeks.
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A dirt road in Tazewell County, Va., leads to the War Creek underground coal mine, where county officials seized mining equipment in April to force payment of delinquent county taxes. War Creek is operated by Justice subsidiary Black River Coal, which is also named in state tax liens in neighboring West Virginia.
In Harlan County, Ky., in October, the county attorney sued. In Tazewell County, Va., in April, the county sheriff seized mining equipment at a Justice mine, citing back taxes. Both moves got the checks flowing.
In Knott County, Ky., multiple lawsuits were filed against Justice’s Kentucky Fuel Corp. A suit last year sought $2.7 million for three years of back taxes. That triggered about $300,000 in payments, but those suddenly stopped in April, says Knott County Judge-Executive Zachary Weinberg.
Weinberg calls Kentucky Fuel a “habitual offender” that is denying the county critical funds.
“You’re talking about maybe a grant writer, or to keep the senior citizens’ program whole or to pick trash up or to keep lights on, [or] to keep the employees with good health insurance,” Weinberg says, adding that the county health board, school board, conservation district and extension office share in and need the unpaid taxes.
Knott County sought court orders twice in the past two months and payments suddenly resumed again.
Even Shelton, Justice’s Kentucky attorney, sued to get paid.
In 2013, Shelton filed a complaint in Pike County, Ky., seeking $85,220 in unpaid legal fees from seven Justice mining companies. Within a month, Shelton had a default judgment awarding him his money plus legal fees and interest.
“[The] lawsuit was the result of a misunderstanding,” Shelton says now, adding that the right Justice executive wasn’t aware of the dispute until the suit was filed.
Just last week, 26 Justice mining companies and the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to a $6 million settlement for thousands of water pollution violations, which have been the focus of news stories in the past two years.
Millions More in Unpaid State and Federal Taxes
It’s not just federal fines and county taxes that have public agencies seeking money from Justice’s mines.
NPR found in county records in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia more than $6 million in state and federal tax liens for failure to pay state withholding and coal severance taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes.
Most of the state and federal liens — more than $4.5 million worth — are in Justice’s home state of West Virginia, and more than 60 percent of that debt is for state coal severance taxes.
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NPR
A haul road leads to the top of the Tams mountaintop removal mine near Beckley, W.Va.
In 2014 alone, Justice’s Kentucky Fuel Corp. failed to pay $1.14 million in coal severance taxes. That’s documented in a lien filed by the West Virginia Tax Department, and that single lien made up about a third of the state’s total coal severance tax delinquencies for the year, according to figures provided by the agency.
Justice himself touted the importance of coal severance taxes last week in an interview with the editorial board of The Dominion Post of Morgantown, W.Va.
He “adamantly” opposed a proposal to cut the state severance tax. “All that does is put some money in my pocket,” Justice told the newspaper. Cutting the tax would force the state “to cut our roads and our schools and everything else.”
Tough Times for Coal
Two years ago, Lusk told NPR that a sharp decline in the coal industry made it difficult for mining companies to pay their bills. He also said Justice believed his companies had to stand on their own.
“An operator that’s going to maintain a safe operation is faced with a dilemma of what gets paid and what doesn’t,” Lusk said. “And the unpaid fines and citations … have simply been not having the available cash to settle those.”
Coal mining has suffered even more since then, with thousands of jobs lost and some of the biggest operators declaring bankruptcy.
ABOUT THE DATA IN THIS STORY
NPR acquired and analyzed Mine Safety and Health Administration data for all U.S. mining companies that had failed to pay final mine safety fines and had already been through any challenges and appeals. Additional delinquent mine data were provided by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
After the data showed Jim Justice was the top delinquent mine owner, NPR pulled out the delinquent penalties for his mines and then analyzed Department of Labor violations and injury data for those mines while they were delinquent.
Violations numbers and details were also drawn from raw Department of Labor enforcement data for the delinquent Justice mines. Violation rates for each mine were calculated using the Violations Per Inspection Day calculator available in MSHA’s searchable Mine Data Retrieval System.
Coal tonnage for each mine is reported annually by the Department of Labor. Coal value is estimated using average sales prices provided by the Energy Information Administration for each mine type, state and subregion, if applicable (i.e., eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia).
Court documents and county officials provided information about lawsuits and other enforcement actions. Payment plan information was gleaned from documents and information provided by MSHA, interviews of county officials and attorneys and correspondence with an attorney representing Justice.
Most of Justice’s delinquent mines are now either abandoned or temporarily closed. But while they were operating and delinquent, they produced more than 2.4 million tons of coal, according to MSHA data.
And that coal, according to coal price reports from the Energy Information Administration, was conservatively worth an estimated $697 million.
Still, Justice campaign spokesman Herring cited “the downturn in the coal industry” in trying to explain something else NPR discovered — Justice’s failure to honor two highly publicized pledges to major charities.
In 2011, with news stories celebrating the announcement, Justice promised to contribute $10 million to Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the commercialization arm of the Ohio medical giant.
Cleveland Clinic spokesperson Janice Guhl tells NPR “no money was received from Mr. Justice.”
Three months earlier, the Boy Scouts of America announced a $25 million gift from Justice to create the James C. Justice National Scout Camp, which is part of a 14,000-acre Boy Scout reserve in West Virginia.
But Herring confirms that Justice donated only $5 million and some land. He says the coal industry’s decline “has delayed some larger donations, but Jim Justice always keeps his word and has every intention of fulfilling all of his charitable pledges.”
In Knott County, Weinberg notes that his county is also suffering from coal mine closures and layoffs. The county budget, he says, was slashed in half in the last six years.
Weinberg believes Justice has the resources to pay what his companies owe. Forbes says Justice is the richest person in West Virginia and worth $1.56 billion.
That’s plenty for Weinberg. “He could pay it one way or the other,” he says.
UPDATE, 11:56 a.m., Oct. 8: Effie Delimarkos, spokesperson for the Boy Scouts of America, said in a statement to NPR: “While we do not disclose details regarding individual donations, we are proud that Mr. Justice chose to provide the Boy Scouts of America with a generous contribution, and we have every reason to believe that he will honor his pledge (to) Scouting.”
This story was also reported and researched by Robert Benincasa, Barbara Van Woerkom, Lily Lieberman and Anna Boiko-Weyrauch of NPR; Jesse Wright, Ashton Marra and Dave Mistich of West Virginia Public Broadcasting; Jeff Young, Benny Becker and Becca Schimmel of Ohio Valley ReSource; and Ellen Smith of Mine Safety and Health News.
Members of the House took up a bill Wednesday that would give coal producing counties more control over how they spend those revenues.
House Bill 4668 increases the threshold of coal severance taxes counties can use to pay salaries and employee benefits. State law says only a fourth of those severance dollars can be used to pay personnel, but the bill would increase the allowable share from one-fourth to one-half.
Although it impacts all 55 counties, it was Kanawha County that brought the issue to lawmakers.
Delegate Nancy Guthrie of Kanawha County is one of the sponsors of the bill. She says the Kanawha County Commission uses the tax to pay the salaries of three sheriff’s deputies who patrol the eastern portion of the county.
Unless the county can increase the percentage of the tax used, she says declining tax collections could force the county to cut the pay or even the positions.
“We need to have those deputies in those communities policing and cutting down on crime. That’s really invaluable for a community that has a high drug rate, has a high rate of violence, because of the lack of jobs in that area,” she said.
The bill passed overwhelmingly 99 to 0 and now heads to the Senate.
