West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy

09/02/2026

Over the past few weeks, we’ve shared a vision where every West Virginian has the opportunity to thrive.

A state that invests in families and children.
A state that keeps neighborhood schools open and builds and maintains the infrastructure our communities depend on.
A state that invests in health care, housing, good jobs, and the conditions that help people thrive.
A state that reduces our reliance on incarceration and invests in communities instead.

Turning this vision into reality requires more than good ideas. It requires choices about who and what we choose to invest in.

West Virginia has the resources to build a stronger future. The question is whether we’re willing to make the choices necessary to put those resources toward the people and communities that make our state home.

That’s the vision behind our Putting People First report, a West Virginia where our shared resources create shared prosperity, not just more for those who already have the most.

This is about more than any one policy.

It’s about what kind of West Virginia we want to build and putting people at the center of that future.

Read the full Putting People First report and lets build a more prosperous, equitable West Virginia:https://wvpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Putting-People-First-Digital.pdf

09/01/2026

As Labor Day approaches, our new blog highlights the labor of West Virginians incarcerated in our state prisons in their own words.

In some ways, work behind bars is similar to work for the rest of us. People were grateful for the chance to ease the financial burden on their families. Others described feeling pride and a sense of purpose. But unlike work in the free world, incarcerated people are denied protections that most of us take for granted.

Read more:

More than a quarter century ago, scholar Angela Davis wrote, “Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” This “feat of magic” means that most West Virginians have no idea about day-to-day life in prisons. The lack of transparency is baked into the design: facilit...

08/27/2026

Communities in West Virginia and across the country are grappling with the costs versus benefits of data centers locating in their communities. Polling shows that Americans worry data centers are bad for the environment, home energy costs, and quality of life nearby, while they feel more positively about the potential of data centers to bring local jobs and local tax revenue.

But West Virginia provides massive tax breaks to data center developers that could cost West Virginia billions of dollars in tax revenue in upcoming years, wiping out most of the state and local tax benefits.

Read more:

Communities in West Virginia and across the country are grappling with the costs versus benefits of data centers locating in their communities. Polling shows that Americans worry data centers are bad for the environment, home energy costs, and quality of life nearby, while they feel more positively....

08/26/2026

Making life more affordable starts with investing in people and communities. West Virginia families are working hard, but too many are still struggling to afford the basics like housing, health care, child care, food, and the other costs of raising a family.

That is not a failure of families. It’s a sign that our policies aren’t doing enough to support them.

Our Putting People First report lays out a different path to invest in the things families need to thrive.

That means adequately funding child care, creating a refundable child tax credit, investing in affordable housing, protecting Medicaid and CHIP, and strengthening the supports that help families stay together and economically secure.

When we invest in families, we’re not just helping people get by—we’re strengthening our communities and our economy along the way. West Virginia can choose policies that put people first.

Learn more in the full report here: https://tinyurl.com/yjsb4459

08/25/2026

The Hope Scholarship is growing rapidly. But who is it really benefiting?

As the Hope Scholarship enters its fifth year, participation has grown more than 10 times from roughly 2,300 students in the first year to more than 26,000 applicants this year.

The program is on track to cost hundreds of millions of public dollars while public schools across the state are facing closures, staff layoffs, and persistent gaps in special education and student support funding.

Our latest analysis looks at who is participating, where participation is concentrated, and what the data reveals about the program’s quick growth.

The questions lawmakers should be asking are straightforward:
- Who is benefiting from the Hope Scholarship?
- Are there sufficient guardrails to ensure public dollars are being used effectively?
- What are we giving up when we prioritize vouchers over our public schools?

West Virginia can diverge from the path we’re on. We can strengthen our public school funding formula, support special education, and reinvest public dollars in the schools that serve all students.

Public dollars should serve the public good.

Learn more here: https://tinyurl.com/2739zewe

08/24/2026

At the WVCBP, we envision a prosperous West Virginia where everyone has a meaningful opportunity to thrive with equitable access to health care, education, jobs, housing, and safe communities.

Check out our 2025 Annual Report to learn about our work over the last year! https://tinyurl.com/fy32b8as

08/20/2026

ICYMI: "The United Mine Workers of America and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy are calling on state lawmakers to act now to halt a wave of school closures across the state.

"Over the past year, 14 schools have been approved for closure because of funding concerns, with the majority located in the southern coalfields.

"While the state has experienced declining coal severance tax revenues, the UMWA argues the state budget has placed too much emphasis on funding private education at the expense of public school students.

“'As coal production declines and energy policies shift, our counties lose vital tax dollars that help fund our public schools,' said UMWA International President Brian Sanson. 'At the same time, hundreds of millions of public tax dollars are being directed toward private school vouchers.'

"The UMWA said the HOPE Scholarship program, which provides public funds for students to attend private schools and supplements homeschooling, places additional burdens on public education. The union called on working families to urge elected officials to prioritize public school funding."

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The United Mine Workers of America and the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy are calling on state lawmakers to act now to halt a wave

08/19/2026

When someone goes to prison, the sentence is shared with loved ones.

Families lose important income when a loved one can no longer work or care for dependents. They spend money traveling to visit. They pay inflated phone and messaging rates to stay connected. And when their loved one comes home, families are often the ones helping them rebuild their lives.

These costs add up. Families spend an average of $4,200 for every year a loved one is incarcerated. And the impacts can follow children into adulthood, affecting their economic security for years to come.

In West Virginia, at least 1 in 10 children has had a parent behind bars. So when we talk about incarceration, we have to talk about families, too.

We can choose to keep investing billions in a system that punishes people and burdens families—or we can invest in the things that actually make communities safer and stronger.

Learn more about the costs of incarceration for families here: https://tinyurl.com/hj3v42sn and here: https://www.wecantaffordit.us/

Read our Putting People First report here: https://tinyurl.com/yjsb4459

08/18/2026

In the summer of 2025, Congress–including all four members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation–voted to enact HR 1 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), which included the largest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in history, in part to pay for massive tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest households and corporations. While most of the Medicaid provisions are slated to go into effect in January 2027, the SNAP food assistance cuts were near-immediate. As a result, through May 2026, nearly 15,000 fewer West Virginians are receiving SNAP compared to just before the legislation’s passage. Though children were presumably never intended to be a target of the law, new data obtained through public records requests from the West Virginia Department of Human Services show that children make up 28 percent of the enrollment decline statewide.

One critical way SNAP changed as a result of HR 1 is by shifting costs of SNAP benefits onto states for the first time in history, with the state’s cost determined by the its SNAP payment error rate. As a result, state SNAP agencies have been under immense pressure to implement administrative changes intended to reduce their error rates and, by extension, their potential state budget costs. This has created a perverse incentive for states to enact policies that increase barriers to enrollment because disqualifying an eligible applicant or household does not count as an error. It is likely that the rush to implement HR 1 provisions effective upon the law’s passage and to reduce the payment error rate have combined to result in significant SNAP child enrollment losses.

Fifty-two of West Virginia’s 55 counties have experienced overall SNAP enrollment declines since the passage of HR 1. Forty-four of 55 counties have experienced reductions in child enrollment, with 4,010 fewer children receiving SNAP in the state compared with prior to HR 1’s passage.

While some may suggest that SNAP enrollment declines are a result of an improving economy, that is not reflected by employment data in West Virginia. The unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons in West Virginia increased as SNAP enrollment declined.

Review the change in SNAP enrollment over the last year in your county here: https://www.datawrapper.de/_/0JyEc/

Find the full details in our new blog post: https://wvpolicy.org/four-thousand-fewer-wv-children-have-snap-since-passage-of-hr-1/

In the summer of 2025, Congress–including all four members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation–voted to enact HR 1 (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), which included the largest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in history, in part to pay for massive tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest househ...

08/17/2026

ICYMI: "These statements in defense of everyday families are important, as is the growing public support for school clothing vouchers. They recognize the dignity and respect we should afford to all families — no matter their incomes — as well as the state’s role in helping ensure children and families have the basics they need.

"This is not just a moral argument (though I wish we could end there) — it’s also a fiscal one. Research shows programs like cash assistance, health care and food stamps are critical to child welfare, so much so that researchers can see an inverse relationship between state spending on these safety net programs and child maltreatment. In practice, that means when states don’t fund or underfund these safety net programs, they foot an even larger bill down the line — more children in the foster care system, which costs far more than a $200 school clothing voucher or even the state’s share of Medicaid or SNAP.

"Inevitably, cuts to these programs — even ones intended only to impact adults — have consequences for children. Data from states that have broken down the numbers show that nearly half of the people who have lost SNAP food assistance since the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill have been children.

"I urge lawmakers to remember why they support school clothing vouchers when discussions about other programs that help children and families like Medicaid, SNAP and TANF cash assistance arise. They will face critical decisions in the coming months including setting state funding levels for SNAP and Medicaid, deciding how to continue supporting TANF-funded programs when the reserve is exhausted, and whether to adopt flexibilities that make it easier for families to maintain their Medicaid and SNAP benefits, among others.

"It was heartening to see members of the public step up at every turn to demand school clothing vouchers be released, push back against baseless allegations of fraud and challenge their state lawmakers to speak out against these attacks on families. I implore these community members to also step up when Medicaid, SNAP and TANF receive the same treatment. The families that rely on these programs deserve our same support and resolve then."

Read Kelly's full commentary:

Residents and lawmakers have learned much about the state’s school clothing voucher program and most seem to have concluded it’s an important program.