The Legislature and Governor Jim Justice have come a long way since 2017.
This time three years ago, Justice and lawmakers were locked in a battle over the state’s budget. In April 2017, Justice famously called a news conference to veto the budget bill where he lifted a silver lid to reveal a pile of cow manure.
“We don’t have a nothing burger today, and we don’t have a mayonnaise sandwich,” Justice said in reference to his previous analogies for Republican budgets (Justice was a Democrat at the time). “What we have is nothing more than a bunch of political bull you-know-what.”
The battle that year would last for two more months before Justice, with the start of the new fiscal approaching and the possibility of a government shutdown, allowed the budget to become law without his signature.
Fast forward to last week and the closing days of the regular session of the 2020 Legislature. Compared to 2017, debate over the budget hardly caused a ripple.
Notably, there were no tax increases, pay raises or substantial additional spending in the budget the Governor originally proposed because revenues for FY 2021 are projected to be flat. There was a general acceptance among most lawmakers—Republican and Democrat—that with a static budget, there really wasn’t much to fight about.
The proposed $17 million to increase the per diem funding to foster care families was an exception. The House included the money in its budget, while the Senate did not, and time in the regular session was running out.
However, the state lucked into a significant windfall.
For years now the state has been putting an extra $20 million from excess Lottery revenue into a special State Debt Reduction Fund to catch up on payments to the state Teacher’s Retirement System. The state fulfilled that obligation this fiscal year and the practical effect was another $20 million for the FY 2021 budget.
That was just enough—plus a few million extra—to cover the cost of the increased per diem payments to foster families. That solved the difference between the House and the Senate.
Budgets are tricky. If there’s a lot of extra money, all hands are out for new spending. If there is a significant revenue shortfall, there are pitched battles over what to cut or what taxes to raise.
But when there’s just enough money, including an unexpected windfall to solve a brewing battle, the process of developing a consensus on a spending plan for the state gets much easier…
…and less malodorous.