Justice asking lawmakers to allocate $250 million in surplus funds By
June 23, 2021 - 8:05 pm
CHARLESTON, W.Va. State lawmakers will gavel into special session at 11 a.m. Thursday to consider the allocation of $250 million in state revenues to various state agencies.
The money comes from current budget year surplus funds.
Governor Jim Justice
“What we’re doing is managing the surplus,” Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, told MetroNews Wednesday.
Lawmakers allocated $150 million in surplus revenue to more than 400 highway projects in a special session earlier this month.
The fiscal year ends June 30. State law requires 50% of any budget surplus carried into the new fiscal year be put into the Rainy Day Fund. Gov. Jim Justice said last week the fund is already at record levels.
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An already unpredictable and sizeable cost for county taxpayers in West Virginia is about to take up even more of county budgets.
The daily rate to incarcerate an inmate in one of the stateâs 10 regional jails increases by almost 14% on July 1.
County commissioners throughout the state learned in the spring the Legislature would not act to keep a cap on the daily rate, commonly referred to as the per diem rate, established in a 2018 law. Come July 1, the daily incarceration rate will increase from $48.25 to $54.88, based on the most recent calculations by the State Budget Office.
âI donât know how some of these counties are going to survive this situation,â said Logan County Commission President Danny Godby. âItâs gotten to be a point to where all youâre going to be able to do is keep the offices open and not provide any activity for the general public . I donât know whatâs going to happen.â
As $677 million in federal relief hits, Justice promises strategic plan and legislative buy-in By
Gov. Jim Justice leads a briefing about the state s pandemic response.
More than $677 million in federal relief funds flowed to West Virginia’s state government today, and Gov. Jim Justice says planning has begun for how to spend it.
“We just got the money in this morning. We’ve done a lot of research into how the money can be used,” Justice said during a briefing today.
The governor didn’t yet have many specifics on that, though, except to say that members of the state Legislature will be involved in allocating the money.