Tag: Finance

House to Take Up Funding Bills Monday

Lawmakers continue to move forward with legislation to balance this year’s budget, and three of those bills will be up for a vote in the House of Delegates on Monday.

Senate Bills 342, 357, and 360 are all aimed at balancing the 2016 budget.

Governor Tomblin’s budget officials say the state will end the fiscal year in June with a nearly $400 million budget gap and West Virginia lawmakers are constitutionally required to balance the budget each fiscal year.

House Finance Chairman, Delegate Eric Nelson of Kanawha County says the three Senate bills were introduced on behalf of the governor and complement each other.

“In an overall summary, they’re basically moving expenditures from Medicaid, from the General Revenue line item, over to Lottery,” Nelson explained, “and so the very first bill that’ll be up is expiring $53 million from General Revenue and moving that to Lottery and within that is roughly $9.8 million for title 19 programs, or senior services, and a follow up bill basically requires immediate expenditures out of Lottery for that $9.8 [million] to help fund the title 19 programs in this fiscal year of 2016, then there is another $10 million that’s being expired out of Lottery to fund other Medicaid services leaving roughly 34 million that will be covered in next year’s fiscal year.”

All three bills will be up for a vote on Monday in the chamber. Combined with funding measures being considered in the Senate and actions already taken by the governor, Nelson says the state is in good shape for the current fiscal year, despite a debate lawmakers had on the floor earlier this week.

Democrats are pushing the Republican majority in the House to take on funding shortfalls for PEIA, the state’s public employee health care program, but Nelson says that’s a task for the 2017 budget.

“Our current fiscal, which ends in June, we’re fully covered; the employees, there is no change, and so what we’re looking at into next fiscal year 2017 that begins July 1, the Governor’s proposed $40 some million dollars of new monies that will basically on an 80/20 split, it’ll be a shared premium adjustment for the employer as well as the employee.”

The governor’s new monies Nelson refers to would come from an increase to the state’s tobacco tax- something that has not yet been proposed to the chamber.

Bill to Recalculate Base Tax Revenue Passes in the House

The House considered House Bill 2562 Monday, relating to sales tax increment financing. This bill would authorize recalculation of the base tax revenue amount, specifically in reference to Morgantown and other areas of Monongalia County.

Delegate Eric Nelson, the House Finance Chair, explained the bill and says it will help infrastructure in Monongalia County.

“This is an evolving form of financing,” Nelson explained, “As we move forward as a state and look to create opportunities for new economic development, part of that is having some funding sources. The state is not at risk in this. They do not own the bonds. What has been described here, comparing this as a mortgage, the state doesn’t have a mortgage on this. There are other people that hold these bonds looking to the development up in Morgantown, the excess development, the excess sales, that will pay off their funding that they’ve put in place so that we could finish the development of this area, this interchange, bring in new business to help the whole community of Monongalia County and Morgantown.”

Delegate Doug Reynolds opposed the bill saying it was too vague.

“People in Morgantown got their baseball stadium; the only issue here is, and I’m not sure whether the fifteen million was too high or too low, is who bares that risk? The bond holders or the tax payers of the state of West Virginia?” Reynolds asked.

Delegate Cindy Frich of Monongalia County supported the bill and says it must be passed if Monongalia County’s infrastructure is to improve.

“I heard Mon County’s getting a baseball field, or we got our baseball field, WVU got their baseball field. If this does not go forward, Monongalia County will not get their infrastructure improvements, will not get the interchange, will not get infrastructure for development of one of the least development parts of the county, with one of the poorest schools, accessing, poorest children accessing a school in the area,” Frich said.

Delegate Nelson spoke again before passage, urging support of the bill, and saying it’s just one step in the right direction.

“Let’s look at other forms of development that we have utilized throughout this state,” Nelson said, “How many new entities have come into this state that have received a tax credit of some form or another? We’ve had quite a few of those. So this just happens to be a form of financing that is basically cutting a base at a certain level, and everything above that is benefit to private players taking a risk on the assumption of growth. The state is a party to that, because we’ve looked ahead, set a base, and we go off that.”

House Bill 2562 passed 75 to 20.

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