We are just a few days away from the planned start of a special legislative session called by Governor Jim Justice and there is still no consensus among the Justice administration and legislators for cutting taxes.
Larry Pack, the state Revenue Secretary and a senior advisor to Justice on the tax issue, said on Talkline Wednesday after meeting with lawmakers, “I think there’s agreement to try to get there.”
So, you’re telling me there’s a chance.
Pack, who is an unfailing optimist, believes legislative leaders are coming around to Justice’s desire to cut income tax rates by another five percent. “We believe they want to get to yes,” he said.
There is no question that the Republican-led legislature wants to continue lowering the income tax rates beyond the 25.25 percent already reduced. The standard answer from these lawmakers is that they want the state to continue on a path of reduction that will eventually lead to no state income tax.
However, there is always a “but,” and that is whether the state can responsibly trim another $110 million from spending to make up for the lost revenue from the cut, and whether an additional tax reduction will put the state in a spending crunch in the not too distant future.
Justice will be out of office in a few months, but most of these lawmakers plan to be around for a while. They don’t want to be stuck with red ink a couple of years from now. A few legislators have been around long enough to remember budget shortfalls and spending freezes and they don’t want to go back to that.
Lawmakers also question the timing of the special session, with the election just a few weeks away. Pack says as long as Justice is the Governor, he wants to act.
“Governor Justice was elected to a four-year term, not a three-year-and-three-quarters term,” Pack said. “We’ve got a hundred days to go. We’re going to continue to move West Virginia forward. We don’t see any reason why the State of West Virginia, our citizens, would want us to take the next 100 days off.”
That’s a fair point. Justice would be open to criticism, and justifiably, if he spent the last three months of his term mailing it in.
However, it remains evident that legislative leaders and the Justice administration still have work to do to reach consensus on the tax cut, and the special session starts next week. Again, Pack is hopeful. “It’s been really good discussions, and I think by the time we get together next Monday, we’ll be able to move forward.”
There is no way to responsibly predict what will happen because lawmakers themselves do not know. Normally that is not a good sign for the fate of legislation. We will all find out together next week.