BECKLEY, W.Va. — West Virginia is almost certainly the only state in the nation where you can walk into a coliseum, watch the governor coach basketball, shake his hand after the game and ask a few questions about his plans for where the state is headed.
So I did.
Jim Justice wrapped up his second week as governor Friday night by coaching his Greenbrier East Spartans in the Big Atlantic Classic, a Beckley tournament that he helped start and where he serves on the board. With Justice sitting along the sideline on a green, rolling desk chair, the Spartans maintained a small lead throughout the game and edged Washington, out of Jefferson County, 73-65.
For the most part, Justice remained seated and calm. On occasion, he’d rise to his feet and give an earful to a referee or chastise his team for a mental lapse. At least once, in frustration, he buried his head in his hands and mussed his white hair. He’s likely to feel that way about the state budget, if he doesn’t already.
It’s a huge week for Justice. His Greenbrier East boys and girls teams both played games Saturday in the Big Atlantic Classic (both losing to Parkersburg High squads.) The boys team plays again tonight at home against Indepedence, the girls play Tuesday against Princeton and — oh, by the way, Justice gives the State of the State speech in the House of Delegates chambers Wednesday evening at the state Capitol.
When Friday night’s game was over, Justice wheeled the green desk chair into a hallway of the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center and spent about 10 minutes discussing basketball, the state’s estimated $500 million budget hole and a flurry of recent action on the state school board. “Born to be Wild” played in the background as two teams warmed up for the next game.
“I’m looking forward to the State of the State,” Justice said. “I’m first and foremost the governor, and that’s not hogwash. I had to make that decision way back when. I’ve got assistant coaches, and they can handle this if need be. I’ll be in Charleston on Monday, I’ll be in Charleston on Tuesday and I’ll be ready to go on Wednesday.”
When he does deliver his first State of the State on Wednesday, it will be up against the backdrop of the worst budget gap the state has seen in years. The previous administration of Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin estimated that it will be about $500 million. A week ago, Justice’s chief of staff, Nick Casey, said he’s preparing budget scenarios with cuts between $390 and $606 million for the governor to choose among.
In addition to the big speech Wednesday night, Justice’s administration will also present a proposed budget to the Legislature.
The Republican majorities in the Legislature want to make significant cuts and indicate they would be extremely reluctant to embrace any sort of tax increase. The Republicans have embraced some of Justice’s comments that indicate West Virginians can’t bear any more tax burden. But the governor himself hasn’t specified how he’ll propose balancing the budget.
That was true again when asked about the issue Friday night. He expressed willingness to realign West Virginia’s bureaucracy but, using a metaphor about an engine with mechanical problems, described worry over what cutting too much might do to West Virginia’s fragile economic recovery.
“It’s going to take all of us as West Virginians knowing we’re all in this together,” he said. “If what we try to do is just cut ourselves up so badly that we slow, if not stop, the engine, we’ll die. We’ll just die. We have to have some ability to come up with some really new and big ideas and move towards getting there.
“It’s as simple as this: If you take ay kind of entity, you strip the equipment out of it, you take the money out of it, you take all of its means to survive as a patient and recover, you’re gonna ultimately die.”
The Legislature struggled to balance the budget last year, needing several weeks of a special session to resolve a budget gap of $270 million. State leaders finally raised $100 million with a tobacco tax increase and relying heavily on money from the Rainy Day Fund.
Over the next few months, bond rating agencies downgraded West Virginia, resulting in less advantageous borrowing rates for projects that need bonding.
From the hallway at the coliseum, Justice said the state can’t continue that cycle.
“And we’ve lived off the Rainy Day Fund; we’re teetering on our bonds being de-rated even more,” he said. “We’ve got to have somebody who can put things in front of our people and say this is what this is genuinely going to take, and that’s what I’m going to do in the State of the State.”
Justice went on to say, “The easy, wasteful stuff we’ve already taken advantage of too. The low-hanging fruit is gone. So, you know, there you are. At some point in time, you’re starting to cut really deep it to the bone. And when you do that, you’ve got to really be careful or you’ll slow the engine so much that you’re going to do. There’s absolutely no easy choices.”
Pressed about the choices he’s going to have to make, though, Justice didn’t specify. He said the details of his difficult budget will be revealed Wednesday.
“I think it’s going to be a lot of different things,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot of innovative things as far as our education and our education departments and our education in general being the centerpiece of what I’ve said all along that we really need to be. It’s going to be job creation beyond belief. It’s going to be instantaneous, the ability to instantly grow,” he said.
“But it’s going to be sprinkled with… there’s going to be a little bit of hurt. Anything that is wasteful and counterproductive needs to go. We all know that. We all know that.”
One of Justice’s potential initiatives was described during the campaign as a way to borrow enough money to bridge the gap during tough times. The idea changed a little big when Justice described it during his inaugural address as a way to take about $225 million from a source that wasn’t fully fleshed out, get investment from Wall Street and then come out with a billion dollars or more for infrastructure spending.
Justice said West Virginians will get more answers about what he means during this Wednesday’s speech.
“Give me Wednesday night. Give me Wednesday night and I’ll explain it so slowly that everyone can understand what we’re going to do,” he said. “There is a pathway to really aggressively getting after highway construction, creating lots of jobs, creating payroll taxes and a lot of things.”
In just two weeks on the job, Justice has already made waves in West Virginia’s education system, naming four members to the nine voting members of the state school board — and still having a fifth spot to name. There were two vacancies already, and Justice created another when he named board member Bill White to lead the state Office of Minority Affairs.
Then, last Tuesday, board president Mike Green and vice president Lloyd Jackson resigned together, creating two more openings. A day later, Justice filled one of the openings. Then the newly-constituted board voted for Tom Campbell, who had been a member of Justice’s transition team, to be president.
That all gives Justice leverage on the bureaucracy and top-heavy structure that he has described. He is also no fan of the A through F grading system for schools that the state put in place just last fall.
“I can’t say why Mike and Lloyd decided what they decided. I’m surely not in their head,” Justice said. “At the end of the day, we’ve proven how to be dead last in education. We’ve proven it. We’ve got to do something. Our teachers are unhappy. They’re good people, they want to teach; we’re in their way a lot. I personally believe we test our kids too totally to death. There are methodologies that are better than what we’re doing.”
He said that means dumping the A through F grading system for schools, meant to be a way to hold schools accountable and to communicate, at a glance, how schools are performing.
“I’m a real believer, we’ve got to market our state,” he said. “When we start grading our schools A through F on a bell curve, that means only a sprinkle of ‘em are getting A’s and a sprinkle of ‘em are getting Fs and we’re telling the world the majority of our schools are C’s. Well, I mean, what’s that doing to us? And they aren’t Cs, they aren’t Cs. We’ve just got to change. That’s all there is to it.”
He said parents who are involved with local schools come to know how well the schools are doing. But he agreed that some form of accountability needs to be in place — just not the one the state most recently selected.
“I think you as a parent want your child to be taught well, you want a safe place for your kid to go to school, a good, wholesome atmosphere. How your kid is graded should be an indicator to you how things are going,” Justice said.
“I agree we need parameters that we can see that this school is failing and that his school is not failing. We’re going to have those within the system. But the bottom line of the whole system is just this: Over and over we come up dead last in so may different ways and we have layered in bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy, and we’ve taken control out of the local hands, layered in bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy. I would be the first to say if that works I would applaud it, but we’re dead last. So let’s change. What have we got to lose? Let’s change. I think we’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
One of Justice’s new state school board appointees, longtime Raleigh County educator Miller Hall, was in the audience at Friday night’s game. Hall said he wasn’t necessarily in the house to see Justice. Woodrow Wilson High School, where Hall served as a principal, had the next game and Hall wanted to show his support.
But Hall said he likes to see the governor coaching young basketball players.
“Jim, he has a lot of love for kids. He’s been coaching basketball for a long, long time. So I think it’s something to just relieve his stress,” Hall said. “I just think it’s time he needs away from his job. It’s just so he can relax and get ready for (Wednesday’s) big event.”