CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice celebrated a new revenue report that showed collections at $65 million over estimate for the past two months.
“We want good numbers to continue,” said Justice, who was wearing a lei. “We in the state of West Virginia need to be proud of ourselves in every way.”
The numbers are a marked improvement over recent years when mid-year budget cuts became necessary.
Justice and his top revenue officials said August collections were $33.4 million above estimate.
Last month, July, they were $32.4 million above estimate.
Those represented the first two months of this fiscal year. Together, those months put the state 19 percent above the prior year receipts for the same period.
The last time cumulative collections through August were more than 19 percent ahead of prior receipts was August 2010.
State officials attributed the current revenue growth to severance tax, consumer sales tax and personal income tax.
Severance tax collections for August totaled $50.1 million. That was $16.7 million above estimate.
Much of that growth was attributed to coal severance tax revenue.
Consumer sales taxes for August were $119 million. That was $7.2 million above estimate.
And personal income tax collections were $139.2 million for the month. That was $4.2 million above estimate.
LIVE: Revenue Press Conference #WV #WVGov https://t.co/qcinY3uZWH
— Governor Jim Justice (@WVGovernor) September 4, 2018
Justice reflected back on this past spring when, at the height of a statewide teachers strike, he announced that he would increase revenue estimates for the coming fiscal year by $58 million.
“All of it works,” Justice said then.
Skepticism then led lawmakers to opt against using those revenue estimates.
At the time, Senate President Mitch Carmichael expressed concern that the revenue estimates were being raised out of necessity.
“There’s some incredibly troubling inconsistencies with the message,” Carmichael, R-Jackson said right after the governor’s revenue increase announcement in March. “As always, we will from a reasonable, adult perspective evaluate this proposal that he’s put forth.
“But the inconsistencies as it relates to previous statements, previous announcements, previous positions is just incredibly troubling. And so we want to be respectful but be very diligent to evaluate the numbers.”
Today, Revenue Secretary Dave Hardy said he had been skeptical too.
“We’ve really put the governor to the task, challenging these numbers,” Hardy said.
Justice today acknowledged that there was doubt about his projection. “My own people disagreed with me,” he said.
Carmichael today said skepticism was warranted about the projections at the time.
“Always, under the circumstances when you find yourself in the midst of a work stoppage or a strike and then suddenly find money to utilize for teacher pay raises — we were skeptical of it, and we believed that skepticism was warranted,” Carmichael said.
Instead of accepting the updated revenue estimate, lawmakers wound up funding an average 5 percent pay raise for teachers by sacrificing what had been other budget priorities, including additional money for the Tourism and Commerce departments.
“So these budget numbers we’re seeing now, where we have these surpluses are due in large measure to the fact that we did not spend money at the time that we felt we did not have,” Carmichael said.
Asked today if he wants to revisit some of the budget priorities that didn’t make it through, Justice expressed caution.
“We need to crawl before we run just a little bit,” he said. “We are all just goo-goo eyed over these numbers. We need to get a little bit more of the numbers under our belt.”