The West Virginia state budget is a fascinating Rorschach Test for former Governor Jim Justice and new Governor Patrick Morrisey.
When Justice looked at the ink blot of the state’s finances he saw sunbeams and unicorns. When Ogden Newspaper reporter Steven Allen Adams asked Justice back in December about a possible upcoming budget shortfall, Justice brushed off the possibility.
“Today, we’ve got over $2 billion in accounts sitting all over the place. Do you think… with over $2 billion in accounts right now that we’ve got a hole for 2026? Come on, I don’t see it,” Justice said.
As far as Justice was concerned, the state was continuing along his much talked about “rocket ship ride” of economic prosperity and tax cuts. If the state were going to have a financial problem in the future, well, that would be up to the legislature and Patrick Morrisey.
“For all I know, we do not have a hole for (fiscal year) 2026 at all,” Justice said. “The next budget will surely depend on decisions that are made by the next folks that come in and the Legislature and on and on and on.”
Morrisey and his financial team have studied the giant ink blot of the state budget, and they have reached a very different conclusion. He is predicting a $400 million shortfall for the 2026 fiscal year budget beginning July 1 of this year.
Morrisey has talked about the budget challenges ahead more than any other issue since taking office. He does not mention Justice by name, but it is clear where he places the blame. “This is what we’ve inherited. This is where we are, day one of the new administration,” Morrisey said.
Morrisey maintains that Justice used one-time money to pay ongoing expenses and cut taxes without reducing spending. “When they were cutting the taxes, I said, ‘Please continue to cut the taxes, but we must pay for them.’ The taxes have not been paid for,” the new governor said.
The huge budget surpluses of the last couple of budget years are long gone. The just-released revenue figures for January show the state fell short of estimates by $14 million. The state is still running about $28 million ahead of estimates seven months into the fiscal year, but that’s roughly a break-even pace for the year.
Just last week Morrisey detailed pending funding shortfalls in Medicaid, PEIA, public education, higher ed, corrections and even tourism, agencies he maintains have been supplemented with one-time money. “If you keep just paying bills from one-shot money, what happens? You run out of one-shot money, and you’re left with a big deficit,” Morrisey said.
So, back to Justice’s response to Adams’ question in December about a possible budget shortfall, where Justice stated adamantly, “I don’t see it.” According to Morrisey’s analysis, Justice either wasn’t looking very hard or he simply ignored the obvious.