Proposed Budget Highlights
The fiscal 2025 proposed budget marks the sixth year of an essentially flat budget. The governor’s priorities, many outlined in his State of the State address, include creating jobs, enhancing schools, and lifting communities.
Tax Changes
- The budget includes $49.7 million in tax cuts, including exclusion of all Social Security benefits from the state income tax, creation of a child and dependent-care tax credit, and expansion of the senior citizen homestead tax credit.
Investing in Employees and Government
- $123.0 million for across-the-board state employee pay raises of five percent.
- $100.0 million to match federal funds for earmarks and for costs of floods not eligible for FEMA benefits.
- $42.0 million for the Public Employees Insurance Agency.
Health and Human Services
- $50.0 million for contract nursing services at state facilities.
- $21.0 million for Medicaid administrative costs.
- $4.6 million for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Budgetary Adjustments
- $30.0 million for tourism.
- $21.0 million for the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
- Supplemental appropriations, utilizing carryover funds from previous years:
- $200.0 million for the School Building Authority.
- $53.0 million for state mental health facilities.
- $30.0 million for the Nursing Workforce Expansion Program.
- $10.0 million for the Posey Perry Emergency Food Fund.
- $5.0 million for charter school seed funding.
State of the State Speech Initiatives
- $20.0 million for senior centers.
- $15.0 million for state parks.
- $10.0 million for the EMS Answer the Call program.
- $2.0 million for state veterans homes.
- $1.6 million additional funding for dual enrollment programs.
Potential Items Contingent on a Fiscal 2025 Surplus
- $100.0 million for rural hospitals.
- $50.0 million for an agricultural laboratory on the campus of West Virginia State University.
- $40.6 million for the Department of Human Services.
- $5.0 million for the Military Ascend program to recruit veterans and military service members and their families to move to the state.
- $1.0 million to establish a state military hall of fame.