Nearly a month ago, I wrote about how the legislatures of the State of West Virginia were putting the state perilously close to government shutdown, which would spell doom for many groups, such as state workers. Finally, however, they were able to settle the issues and passed a budget, averting another shutdown and saving the state. Sort of.
One of the major parts of the battle was that, since the coal severance tax, something that the state so heavily depends on, shrunk once again, the legislatures were trying to scrounge up the deficit by proposing a multitude of different approaches. One was cutting the PROMISE program, something that many students need in order to go to college in West Virginia, to a percent tax raise on tobacco products, which inevitably passed. However, alongside that, they also made a large amount of cuts to programs in the state itself, and one that hurts us the most, tourism.
Tourism has always been a large component of revenue for the state of West Virginia due to the beautiful natural attractions inside its borders. A lot of people also go camping at some of the major campgrounds around the state, and the State Parks are visited daily by out of towners and West Virginians alike. However, in this new budget, a lot of services were cut. Pools in some state parks were closed down or their operation time was cut short, and a lot of activities, such as horseback riding, were cut completely. The State Parks are fairly beautiful, and they can make money from the lodging they provide, but providing activities is one of the real money makers for State Parks. And not being able to experience riding a horse up to the top of Seneca Rocks or go White Water Rafting down the New River is a travesty.
However, like most politicians, the legislators and governor made sure that their money was still intact by cutting a portion of the greyhound racing and horse racing funds from the budget. Tomblin’s family operates a dog kennel in Logan County.
I feel like West Virginia is in this never-ending cycle where we try to stop hurting our state by putting on small band aids (short term fixes) and by removing them from parts that are not as bad as the rest. However, in doing so, they make other areas worse in the long run. By attempting to replace the coal severance tax with cuts to tourism, they basically made sure that the wound is still bleeding and that we will never be able to make enough to recover from the short fall.
