Senators went ahead Saturday and passed a $4.4 billion general revenue budget bill that includes provisions for income tax cuts and pay raises for public employees.
“It’s substantial,” said Senate Finance Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam.
To do so, senators suspended constitutional rules that require bills to be read on three consecutive days. The Senate’s version of the budget bill was just rolled out on Friday afternoon in a Senate Finance Committee meeting.
The House of Delegates still gets a crack at the budget before its final passage, too.
In addition to the $4.4 billion in general revenue spending, the Senate also proposes more than a billion dollars in surplus appropriations, which would be funded if the fiscal year concludes with revenues exceeding estimates.
Gov. Jim Justice at the start of this year’s legislative session called for a “relatively flat,” $4.884 billion budget that includes pay raises for most state employees and some increased financial support for the Public Employees Insurance Agency.
State officials have been aiming for flat budgets even as state revenue figures continue to set records. The most recent monthly financial figures for the state show West Virginia is already about a billion dollars above estimates for this fiscal year.
Right now, West Virginia is running a budget surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars. But that’s based on several factors, including high energy prices that have produced high-performing severance tax returns and the likely stimulus of federal dollars. Revenue projections have also been held artificially low, keeping the base budget under control but leading to more reliance on surplus spending.
Earlier Saturday, senators passed a tax cut package estimated at about $750 million. The headline item in the tax package is a 21.25 personal income tax cut across all brackets.
Senators also advanced $2,300 pay raises for state employees. The trick is that handling those raises will require a few methods. One, Senate Bill 423, was passed Saturday by senators. That bill applies the pay raise to State Police and teachers, who have pay scales set in state code.
Raises for other state workers will be addressed more generally through the state budgeting process.
Senator Mike Caputo, D-Marion, wanted to clarify that distinction during a back-and-forth with Tarr on the Senate floor.
“We say that the $2,300 pay raise is for all state employees — but not all state employees are in code, am I correct?” Caputo asked.
Tarr agreed that’s the case.
“Anybody else that’s funded under general revenue is included throughout the budget. The special revenue, like the federal funding that would come to DOH, Corrections and those things — those funds come down through special revenue would have to come in, we’ve had conversations with executive officers, they understand that to provide those raises they’ll have to do it through the revenue sources they have,” Tarr said.
Caputo continued, “I want to be clear and I’m going to ask you point blank because I’m going to get it, we’re all going to get it when we go home. It always happens. Do you feel confident that every state employee will get a $2,300 across-the-board raise whether they are a teacher or whether they drive the snow plow truck.”
Tarr responded, “I have confidence that every one of them is getting a pay raise. Those agencies come back, and it’s up to them whether they go $2,300.”