Recent editorials from West Virginia newspapers:
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July 14
The Register-Herald of Beckley on the state’s unemployment numbers:
There are too many West Virginians out of work.
The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that as of December 2016, West Virginia’s unemployment rate is 5.9 percent. That’s more than 2 percent higher than the national unemployment rate (4.7 percent), and higher than our neighbors in Kentucky (4.8 percent) and Pennsylvania (5.6 percent).
While that number is too high, it is still an improvement from the 8.8 percent unemployment rate that the Mountain State saw in November 2010.
In order to keep the unemployment rate declining with coal jobs also declining, West Virginians need to be trained to enter other fields as different opportunities come to the state.
The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA) is doing just that, giving coal miners, veterans and others training in different fields, notably pipeline and road work. According to LiUNA’s statistics, it spent 46,102 hours training workers between 2015-16, West Virginia MetroNews reports.
On Tuesday, LiUNA met with Gov. Jim Justice at the state capitol and received strong support.
Justice said this training program could help the state’s economy “take off like a rocket.”
This is a program that deserves our governor’s support, as Justice and officials from LiUNA estimate that it could help promote job opportunities for thousands of workers.
With new job opportunities on the horizon in West Virginia, such as these new roads and pipelines, we need to ensure that these jobs go to the hardworking people of West Virginia, not people who will take their paycheck and spend it over state lines while West Virginians remain out of work.
“Instead of brining out-of-state people in here to take our jobs away from local residents, why not train the people that are right here in the state looking for job opportunities?” LiUNA vice president and Mid-Atlantic regional manager Dennis Martire told West Virginia MetroNews.
“Everybody wants a good job; there is no one out there who doesn’t want a living wage, health care and a pension, and that is what we are providing.”
We applaud the governor for supporting such a program, and we encourage LiUNA to keep doing what it is to help our local residents who are out of work.
As Martire explained, people in the Mountain State want to work; they just need to have the chance to do so.
“People had good jobs, but then the coal industry started to decline. The drug epidemic is rising; poverty is rising because people don’t have a job,” Martire said. “You have this energy boom coming to the state; this is our opportunity.”
With training from LiUNA and support from the state government, hopefully West Virginia can seize that opportunity and get the unemployment rate down.
Online: https://www.register-herald.com/
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July 18
The Inter-Mountain of Elkins on tax increases:
Gov. Jim Justice continues to blast West Virginia legislators for not going along with the big tax increases he demanded earlier this year. Yet state revenue reports at the end of the fiscal year indicate conservative lawmakers were right to reject the governor’s plan.
Some officials saw revenue collections during fiscal 2017, which ended June 30, as a ray of sunshine. It is true that severance tax collections rebounded during the year.
During fiscal 2016, severance taxes netted only about $276.4 million. That prompted legislators and then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to put the source down for only $262.5 million for last year. That was wise.
Good news came from the state Budget Office, however, in the form of a report showing severance taxes actually raked in $321 million, or 22 percent more than expected, during the year.
Don’t break out in a chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again” just yet, however. Other revenue line items shoved a dark cloud in front of the severance tax sunshine.
The general revenue budget bottom line was not good - not at all. It had been hoped collections would total $4.187 billion for the year. The actual number was $4.166 billion.
Leading the retreat were three critical line items that made up more than three-fourths of the entire budget.
Combined, the sales, personal income and corporate income/business franchise taxes brought in just $3.152 billion - more than $184 million less than expected.
As we have pointed out previously, those three revenue sources are an indication of how well Mountain State families and businesses are doing. Not well, it seems.
So, while severance taxes may be rebounding, Justice will have to keep a close eye on other revenue sources during the current fiscal year. If collections begin to lag behind estimates on which the budget was based, Justice should not hesitate to emulate his predecessor and order mid-year spending cuts.
Clearly, the governor is banking on the massive road repair and construction project green-lighted by the Legislature to provide a shot in the arm for the state’s economy. Before that can happen, voters must approve a bond issue this fall, however.
And even if they do, it must be kept in mind that construction jobs are only temporary. They are not a permanent addition to the economy.
That, along with the decrease in critical tax collections, should be kept in mind by legislators next winter when Justice comes back with another request for a massive tax hike - which he is likely to do.
Online: https://www.theintermountain.com/
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July 19
The Charleston Gazette on the supply and demand for essential jobs:
Here’s a question for the future: Where will America get enough firefighters?
A report from back in January describes the difficulty of finding and keeping new volunteer firefighters. The number has been falling for decades, dropping by about 12 percent from 1984 to about 788,000 volunteer firefights in 2014, says the report in Stateline, a publication of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Work and life have changed, the story says. People drive farther to work and have less flexibility to leave when the firebell rings. Firefighters, mostly men, are more involved in child care, and their wives are more often working. Younger people have left rural areas to find work in cities.
The changes are particularly hard on rural areas, which depend on volunteer fire departments. Some states are trying to make the volunteer work more attractive by offering tax breaks.
About 87 percent of U.S. fire departments are run mostly or entirely by volunteers - 96 percent in West Virginia, the report says.
Citing a report from the National Fire Protection Association, the Stateline story says volunteer firefighters are estimated to save local governments $139.8 billion a year in pay, benefits, operating expenses and maintenance.
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported last fall that police departments are loosening up on qualifications such as educational requirements and some prior drug use. The reason is to draw more recruits in a time when interest is down because of low pay, physical demands, danger and intense public scrutiny.
There could be an upside to rethinking those requirements. Responsible police chiefs want departments that look like and communicate well with the populations they protect. It can be tough for some minority applicants to get past a criminal background check because black citizens are more likely to have encounters with the criminal justice system, the report says.
In Baltimore, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis is working to change the rule prohibiting the city from hiring someone who admits to having used marijuana within the previous three years, the top reason applicants are disqualified from the force.
“I don’t want to hire altar boys to be police officers, necessarily,” the article cites Davis as saying in The Baltimore Sun. “I want people of good character, of good moral character, but I want people who have lived a life just like everybody else - a life not unlike the lives of the people who they are going to be interacting with every day.”
Empathy is an important quality in police officers.
Burnout among social workers is nothing new. A combination of low pay and emotionally demanding duties can wear people out. Still, some places, including West Virginia, managed to keep social workers in public and private positions in the past, where they built up institutional knowledge and mentored the next generation.
That has been changing for years. A recent story from Governing magazine highlights the difficulties - and costs - of high turnover among people who do things such as find permanent homes for abused or neglected children or help parents navigate programs to get help, comply with rules and keep their children.
It has gotten so bad in some places that states are trying new things - lowering educational requirements to make the price of preparation more commensurate with the low pay new hires will receive. Some are trying to weed out people who might not be able to handle the emotional toll of the job, and they are shortening and reconfiguring on-the-job training time.
The stakes are high. Social workers develop relationships with the families they are responsible for helping. Conditions that interfere with those relationships erode trust - in individuals and in the programs intended to help.
The report cites one study that found that a child with one caseworker had a 74 percent chance to get a permanent and stable home. But if the child had two caseworkers in a year, the chance dropped to 17 percent, and with three caseworkers, it was only 5 percent.
Getting this stuff wrong costs. It costs states and governments time and money in training and retraining. It costs overburdened employees in stress and lost income when they give up and quit. It costs families and children who, already fragile and vulnerable, need the professionals assigned to helping them to be healthy and capable. Interventions at these moments in people’s lives when they turn to social workers can affect the trajectory of the rest of their lives, for good or bad.
Online: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/
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