CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — The West Virginia General Assembly returned for the first day of a special session on Monday, but will not return to the Capitol until Sunday.
The House and Senate adjourned from Monday afternoon until 6 p.m. Sunday.Although they rushed through several additional spending bills on Monday, some of the hot-button items, such as the 5% income tax cut and the child care tax credit, It has now been abolished. It will be featured next week.
Sen. Jack David Woodrum (R-Summers) explained that adjourning until Sunday allows the chamber to accommodate an already scheduled interim session in October.
“Every day we are here costs taxpayers a significant amount of money, so we try to do it during meetings that are already scheduled and come back on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I'm going to come,” Woodrum said.
The House and Senate passed six spending bills Monday that designate funding for:
-$10 million for school communities.
-Spending authority for DOH to use $150 million already allocated.
-$1.2 million to the State Veterans Home in Barboursville.
-$375,000 to West Virginia State Police
-Donation of $2 million in West Virginia University general administrative funds to the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute
-$380,000 to the Department of Education's Exceptional Children Program for salary increases that were omitted from the budget proposal.
Those bills were read and passed three times, but the remaining 21 bills called for by the governor, including tax cuts and child care tax credits, will receive more attention next week.
Representative Mike Pushkin and House Democrats explained at a press conference on Monday that they had tried to push the bill through Republicans by suspending rules on the tax cut bill and holding it for a vote on Monday, but the vote had been halted.
“They're a little bit scared, as you can see in that roll call. They don't want it, but I would say for good reason, we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on supplements. They're scared because they're spending money,'' said Rep. John Williams, D-Monongalia. “Meanwhile, we have a tax cut bill being introduced. When we think about this, I think we need to think about all the important services that we provide to our people, whether it's childbirth through age three or Medicaid services. Whether it's road repair, we need to think about it.”
Lawmakers appear to support some form of income tax cut. House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Chriss (R-Wood) said in calling the special session that the income tax cut could be “up to 5%” and that there was still room for negotiation.
“I'm 100 percent in favor of it in some form or another. I have no problem trying to get money back to the people,” Chris said. Governments can and should do this. ”
Lawmakers in the House and Senate say the extra days next week will give them more opportunity to understand the breakdown of the state's finances and, in particular, whether they can afford a 5% cut on top of the 4% cut. . This is due to last year's income tax cut.
“If the math says 3% or 4%, that's what we need to do. We can't push the bubble up to 5% just because we want to,” Woodrum said. Everyone wants to do that, but I think we need to be very careful and very conservative in how we approach it. ”
The House and Senate will reconvene Sunday at 6 p.m., with committee meetings scheduled before then.
