West Virginia’s Senate passed its version of the state general revenue budget more than a week before the finale of this year’s regular legislative session.
But there will still be plenty of back-and-forth between the Senate and the House of Delegates over the budget because there are some differences to work out. Both bills include an average 5 percent pay raise for state workers.
“This is a starting point for the final product that will be a combination of both the Senate’s and the House’s proposed budgets,” Senate Finance Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said while explaining the budget bill today.
The budget bill easily passed the full Senate this morning, with no debate, 32-0 with two absences. Senators will need to vote on the budget again once differences are worked out with the House of Delegates.
The general revenue portion of the Senate’s budget is $4.645 billion, which mirrors what Gov. Jim Justice originally submitted, with some adjustments up and down for specific line items.
Governor Justice proposed a generally flat, $4.6 billion general revenue budget — with the significant exception of the average 5 percent pay raise for state workers.
There hasn’t been much budget drama so far. The state isn’t in a budget crisis, so there’s no urgency to slash spending. And a variety of tax cuts favored by different legislative entities seemed to come into conflict with each other.
The House of Delegates is advancing its own version of a budget with at least one significant difference.
The biggest difference in the version delegates are considering is a $96 million personal income tax reduction that reflects a bill already passed by the House. The House budget accounts for that money by shifting anticipated surplus.
So far, counterparts in the state Senate have not shown signs of interest in passing that income tax cut this year.
One senator, Robert Karnes, has been making a daily floor speech for weeks about the need to consider the House’s income tax cut bill. “The best thing we can possibly do is put House Bill 4007 on the agenda in Finance,” Karnes, R-Randolph, said at the end of a Thursday evening floor session.