Ferns responds to Justice ‘poodle’ comment, talks budget on MetroNews “Talkline”

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The majority leader in the West Virginia Senate sees no need for Governor Jim Justice’s “Save Our State” Tour to promote his budget proposal which includes $450 million in revenue measures, largely tax hikes, and $27 million in spending cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Ryan Ferns (R-Ohio, 01)

“He’s got his secretaries of his departments out running around the entire state, promoting his plan, trying to scare people, quite frankly, into supporting his plan,” said Senate Majority Leader Ryan Ferns (R-Ohio, 01).

“They really ought to be back here in Charleston trying to figure out where they can eliminate waste from their budgets.”

Governor Justice launched the “Save Our State” tour in Raleigh County earlier this month.

This coming Wednesday, Bill Crouch, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Resources, is scheduled to be in Parkersburg to highlight what additional budget cuts could look like for the Aged and Disabled Waiver program.

Last week, he talked about the possible effects on the IDD Waiver program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Huntington.

In Ferns’ view, Crouch and others in similar cabinet roles should return to Charleston.

“They need to be back here working, not going around the state promoting a budget that I don’t the Democrats, most of them, will support,” he said.

Justice’s proposed budget is balanced largely with a .5 percent increase to the existing consumer sales tax and a new B&O tax — what he’s called a “Commercial Activities Tax.”

A third of this year’s Regular Legislative Session is already behind lawmakers with multiple budget versions being developed in both the state Senate and state House of Delegates as alternatives to Justice’s proposal.

“The governor and myself included and everyone else in the Legislature were elected to solve problems, to solve this problem especially,” Ferns said of the budget work ahead in the remaining 40 days of the session.

He was a guest on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline” to, in part, address a grizzly bear-poodle metaphor Justice used to describe Ferns during a radio town hall on last Friday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”

Governor Justice said the following on the air, likening Ferns to a poodle:

“It’s almost like a grizzly bear walking through the woods and a poodle walking behind him, just barking and nipping and all this kind of stuff for nothing,” he said. “Basically, at some point in time, if I’m the poodle, I’m concerned that the grizzly bear’s, at some point in time, just going to get tired of the tweeting and the little crap that’s going on and turn around and eat your a**.”

Over the weekend, Ferns said he heard from many people who were “embarrassed” a West Virginia governor would talk that way about a state senator.

“I think the ‘folksy’ has worn itself out a little bit at this point,” Ferns told Hoppy Kercheval on Monday.

“When media outlets are reporting on it and people are genuinely embarrassed, I think the ‘folksy’ routine needs to come to an end.”





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