Now that the legislative session is over, I just wanted to quickly take a moment and talk about what did or didn't get accomplished.
Pretty much all of the culture war issues that the Republican majority chose to spend a lot of their time talking about and taking up the news cycle with all of that -- those bills are dead and not happening, At least not this time around.
So that's that's good news, except for the evident dysfunction of the supermajority.
They did manage to get a budget passed also, which is about $5 billion, which is only a slight increase from last year.
And they managed to do that with a 5% pay increase for some public employees, which is good.
It'd be nice if it was all of the public employees.
And they managed to do it with cuts to, really, the most vulnerable groups.
Child welfare programs, assistance for adults and seniors with disabilities and other social services like Medicaid. (That's according to the Mountain State spotlight, and that's relative to the governor's proposal.)
So, again, not… not really great.
And they also managed to get through something about cutting unemployment benefits -- our earned unemployment benefits.
So on balance, what they managed get done is just harmful.
And they're making up for tax cuts that we couldn't afford -- so now they're going to cut services for the most vulnerable people and try to privatize services and really just gut our state.
And you know, they run on this idea that government doesn't work.
I don't know why anyone would expect then them to work in the government to benefit all West Virginians.
Our delegate is not up for reelection here in District 98.
And if I'm elected, I want to hear from all the constituents and I want to put legislation, forward and fight for legislation that promotes the well-being of all West Virginians.
That means, you know, really expanding our services for children and people with disabilities.
And ensuring that when people are unemployed, especially through no fault of their own, that they have the support they need while they find another job to replace the income that they've lost.
Thank you,
Troy N. Miller
Democratic Candidate for WV House of Delegates District 98