There are holes in the budget, but
no clear consensus at the State Capitol — with just more than two weeks left in
the 2014 Regular Legislative Session — on how to plug those holes for this year
and next year.
Senate President Jeff Kessler
(D-Marshall, 2) said he thinks state lawmakers should raise the state cigarette
tax to generate an estimated more than $90
The current state tax on a pack of
cigarettes in West Virginia
As of now, Senator Bill Cole
(R-Mercer, 6) said he does not know if he’ll support such an increase if it
comes up for a vote in the Senate. “It seems easy, ‘Let’s tax people that
have a bad habit,’ but if we utilize that, I guess we need to go after alcohol
and foods that have too much fat in them,” he said.
Lawmakers will have to come up with
an estimated more than $180 million to balance the budget, a requirement of
state law.
Governor Earl Ray Tomblin has
proposed a balanced budget that’s based on a combination of cuts in spending
and passage of six bills to sweep a number of state accounts.
Kessler said there is “no appetite”
to take $13 million from the Road Fund, which pays for road construction and
maintenance, as Tomblin has proposed.
He said there is also little
support for another Tomblin proposal to remove $39 million from lottery
profits designated for cities and counties along with thoroughbred and
greyhound breeders.
Tomblin proposed taking $83 million
from the Rainy Day Fund to add to those numbers and make the budget numbers
work. But now, some lawmakers are saying a much larger amount, around
$200 million, may have to be taken from the Rainy Day Fund.
The Rainy Day Fund, which is
designated for emergencies, now stands at $920 million. Up to now, it has
not been used to balance the state’s budget. The ratio of the reserve
compared with the state’s general fund determines West Virginia
Kessler said he would not support
taking more than 20 percent from the Rainy Day Fund. “If we don’t do the
other (raise the cigarette tax), there is no choice other than to take it out
of the Rainy Day Fund and I think that would be disastrous for us to raid
that,” he said.
House Democrats were meeting in
caucus on Thursday morning to discuss the possible support on that side of the
State Capitol for the proposed cigarette tax increase.
The 2014 Regular Legislative
Session ends on Saturday, March 8 followed by a one week session focused on
passage work.
