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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Monongaila County legislators are readying to discuss a significant amount of financial legislation ahead of the 2022 West Virginia Legislative Session.
With the session scheduled to begin on January 12, local legislators in both the West Virginia House of Delegates and the State Senate, where discussions regarding state employee pay increases, as well as the discussion of the changing of several state codes, which could affect local municipalities and their ability to collect funds. These will overlap with the discussions over where to spend an approximately $1.6 billion that is expected to come to the state through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and potentially more if the Build Back Better Plan is approved on a federal level.
“There’s going to be a lot of money that we have to spend,” said Monongalia County Delegate John Williams. “And I think the biggest thing that we have to look at is that we want to spend it equitably and responsibly so that everybody gets a fair piece,” he said.
Pay raises for state employees, is expected to be one of the main priorities during the legislative session, which appears to have bipartisan support. According to Williams, Democratic members of the Republican majority state legislature is supportive of what’s expected to be a five percent pay raise for teachers and state employees, this will also include a two and a half percent bonus, in order to fight rising costs of inflation. While Williams himself is supportive of the proposal, he stated there is room for improvement such as a potential cost of living adjustment to be included.
“And the solution to that is to tie these salaires to the consumer price index, so that there’s never years in which West Virginians have lost their purchasing power,” he said.
How local municipalities are able to govern themselves according to state law, also known as “home rule,” is also expected to be a major talking point during the legislative session. While it is not expected to be eliminated entirely, Williams stated that there is a very strong possibility changes on the charter itself is expected to be proposed, with eliminations of the ability to implement fees (Morgantown’s Municipal Service Fee serves as the biggest example) being part of them. Even though there is some agreement about the fees and their “regressive” nature, the hope is that if the fees do get eliminated, some other funding sources are found on a state level.
“So a lot of states, fund their municipalities a lot better, they supply money for their municipalities to go forth and do the people’s work of local government,” said Williams regarding what can be done on a state level. “I think that has to be a consideration in these discussions,” he said.
Even as billions of dolars in funding is expected to come to West Virginia, Williams also implored that the funds coming into the state should be seen as one time only influx of dollars. With a siginificant amount of money coming in to the state from the federal level stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic related ARPA funds, and with Biden’s Build Back Better still on the fence of getting passed by federal legislatures, concerns of overspending are still prevalent even with several bipartisan supported proposals. So as the State Legislative session readies to begin in less than a month, the question is not a matter of how much federal dollars West Virginia will need to spend, but how they’ll do it.
“We need to treat this windfall for what it is, and that’s a windfall,” said Williams, “And we can’t factor that in to our day to day living budget,” he said.