The Legislature Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

W.Va. Joins 39 Other States Without Social Security Tax

Single filers who made over $50,000 per year, and joint filers who made over $100,000 per year used to have to pay taxes on social security income. However the legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill that will eliminate the tax for all earners.

Gaylene Miller, state director for AARP says this will affect the more than 50,000 West Virginians who were paying Social Security tax.

“We heard loud and clear from our members that that’s double taxation,” Miller said. “They paid on that income when they were in the workforce. Social Security, thankfully, was never intended to fund the state government.”

The cut will take place over the course of three years, progressively cutting down how much Social Security earners pay each year. The law is backdated to cover all of 2024.

Some lawmakers raised questions around the bill asking if it was a worthy expenditure on the premise that retirees are not as beneficial to the state’s economy as working age individuals. And that this money could be used elsewhere to attract and retain working age West Virginians to the state. However, Miller said this tax cut will likely be recycled back into local economies.

“Those folks who get this meaningful tax relief will spend it in the community. So, it’s being reinvested,” Miller said. “It’s an attraction for retirees to come to West Virginia as well.”

The cut will put West Virginia in line with all of its border states of Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania that have no tax on Social Security.

State May Weigh Measure to Allow Concealed Guns Without Permit

After West Virginia’s governor vetoed the idea earlier this year, a push to let people carry hidden guns without permits is regaining steam.

In March, Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed a measure making concealed carry permits optional. He cited safety concerns and an outcry from law enforcement. However, Republican state Senate President Bill Cole says there is enough support for the measure to revisit it in January.

It’s legal to carry a gun openly — like in a holster — without a permit in West Virginia. With the proposed change, gun carriers wouldn’t need a permit to cover their weapons with a coat, or something similar. Few states allow concealed weapons to be carried without a permit.

If Tomblin vetoes the bill again, the Republican-led Legislature would need only a simple majority to overturn the veto.

Lawmakers Struggle with Right Course of Action for Tax Reform

As part of a continuing effort exploring possible changes to the state tax code, members of the Joint Select

Committee on Tax Reform held a day-long public hearing at the capitol Tuesday. The hearing allowed West Virginia citizens to share their suggestions for ways to improve the state’s tax structure, and while at least a dozen citizens showed, few lawmakers filled the seats to listen. That, however, didn’t stop members of the public from openly sharing what they think are the right steps for West Virginia.

From eliminating certain taxes to increasing others – the Joint Select Committee on Tax Reform heard it all.

Many speakers at Tuesday’s public hearing brought up issues with the state’s severance tax, property tax, and income tax credit – giving their own ideas to either lessen the pull or to increase revenue.

Some mentioned the benefits of increasing the tax on tobacco, saying it would help to decrease the amount of West Virginia smokers while also bringing in more money at the same time.

Speakers asked lawmakers to remember the children who come from families making minimum wage and live paycheck to paycheck.

Senator Mike Hall, a Republican from Putnam County, shares the chairmanship with Delegate Eric Nelson, a Republican from Kanawha County.

Hall says the tax reform committees in both houses will have a lot to think about.

“We heard a wide array of comments,” Hall noted, “We heard about the income tax credit, which we were aware we would, but we also heard from the coal association, business community, saying there are certain taxes here that really hurt us, and though it will be difficult to deal with those quickly, because there are multi-millions of dollars of revenue, it’s important for us to hear that.”

Hall says the looming question this session will be how to adequately manage reforming the tax structure in a low budget year.

“Revenues are down, can we live with them, there’ll be a lot of pressure from people to raise this or raise that to cover costs, but, right now, so we’re in a mode of seeing where can we operate, the revenues are low, and so it’ll be very hard to talk about tax policy in this climate in the legislative session, but I think at the end of the day, when the committee’s done, we’ll have a few things to propose and some major principles to look at and say going forward as things would permit that we would like to see our tax code be changed in a manner that would be more beneficial to our economy.”

Tax reform is likely to be at the forefront of the 2016 session, and legislators know they face a contentious battle ahead.

Four Percent of W.Va. Adults are Prescription Drug Abusers

The country will turn its eyes to Charleston this week as President Obama makes a trip to the capital city Wednesday. He’ll hold a town hall style meeting with West Virginians focused on substance abuse. The issue, however, has weighed heavy on the minds of state lawmakers over the past several years and continues to be a topic of conversation in the Legislature. During interim meetings Sunday, legislators began to look at the effects substance abuse is having on the state’s workforce and how they can combat the problem.

We all know substance abuse is a problem in West Virginia, but exactly how much of a problem?

Seven members of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Workforce Investment for Economic Development heard Sunday from Jay Otto – a research scientist at the Center for Health and Safety Culture at Montana State University.

Otto says West Virginians often misjudge the prevalence of addicted individuals in the state.

“So in our survey work, we find that often people drastically overestimate let’s say the number of adults who are misusing prescription drugs. It is high, the survey work in West Virginia indicating it’s in the 4 percent range, that’s a very large number, but it’s by no means what sometimes people perceive it to be as being 40, 50, 60, 70 percent,” he noted, “So the key message is most adults do not abuse substances and we’re very concerned with those who do.”

Otto says while West Virginians perceive substance abuse as a major problem, the state actually falls around the middle of substance abuse usage compared to the rest of the country.

“In some ways, we’re at the top of the list sometimes in terms of rates, and rates can be hard to interpret, because it also depends upon size of the state. We’re actually not at the highest rate for the misuse of prescription drugs as a percentage; there are many states that are higher than us.

What cannot be denied, though, it the high rate of overdose deaths. According to a 2015 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, there are 34 overdose deaths for every 100,000 people in the state.

“We are at a high rate of fatality overdoses associated with that. That can be hard to interpret, that can also be because we’re very rural, so individuals don’t have fast access to emergency services or getting to a hospital, so it’s very complicated when we look at something like a fatality rate as opposed to a usage rate. In terms of our usage levels, we’re not at the highest levels.”

So how do we combat it? Otto told lawmakers one of the best resources to battle substance abuse is talking about it in the workplace.

“Sometimes we have misperceptions that the work of prevention is only with youth, and a big message we need to get out is no, we want to do prevention across the age span, and there’s a lot we can do with adults. Adults aren’t in school, but they are in workplaces, so workplaces become a great opportunity to do some things.”

Otto says there’s not a silver bullet to solve substance abuse problems, but there are strategies to bring about prevention, and he says lawmakers can have a big hand in that.

“Continuing to invest in treatment across the state, or prevention across the state, which is growing and becoming more and more effective every day. I think looking at some of those big picture policy issues, in particular around the tobacco tax and an alcohol tax. We know that at the state level, these are things that can have a tremendous impact by increasing the cost of those substances, we will decrease use.”

Delegate Paul Espinosa, a Republican from Jefferson County and the chairman of the committee on Workforce Investment for Economic Development says he’s eager to continue the conversation this session, particularly about rehabilitation for employees.

“I think some of our members raised a very important issue from an employer perspective is how do you work through some of those issues related to individuals who have been convicted of a crime, particularly if there was a felony conviction,” Espinosa explained, “I know many businesses that would very much like to give those folks a second chance; you know particularly if they’ve demonstrated if they’ve gone through an appropriate program to address those issues they have with substance abuse, however there are liability issues I know many businesses are concerned about. So those are certainly things that I anticipate this committee will continue to look at and the legislature as a whole I think will need to examine.”

So far, Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler has committed to introducing a tobacco tax increase to help fund substance abuse treatment across the state. Members of the majority have not yet released any specific ideas for the upcoming session on how to take on the issue.