West Virginia will introduce additional spending cuts after an error overinflated some revenue estimates, Gov. Jim Justice’s office announced Wednesday.
When Justice first announced the error during a Wednesday afternoon news conference, the governor was working with the bank and other state officials to solve the confusion. Later in the day, the governor’s office announced a discrepancy in the budget numbers occurred because a state payroll withholding tax of nearly $2 million was tagged for fiscal year 2021 when it should have been tagged for fiscal year 2020, which caused an inflation in prospective money for 2020.
After the numbers were adjusted, West Virginia had a prospective $800,000 net deficit, but the governor’s office said the budget still will be balanced through additional cuts.
“The State Auditor’s Office has come up with a solution to the problem by allowing balance to be achieved through additional spending authorization reductions,” a statement from the governor’s office read. “The State will be able to balance the final equation through additional Fiscal Year 2020 spending authorization reductions of $1 million in funds that would otherwise expire at the end of July. The State will end the Fiscal Year 2020 budget year with a small surplus to be determined by the final close of books after July 31, 2020.”
During the news conference, Justice said this is a small error when dealing with a multibillion annual budget.
Justice also said in the news conference that West Virginia has tested about 10 percent of its population for COVID-19. He said West Virginia is mostly open and will continue with its fairs, festivals and amusement parks, but he wants residents to take responsible precautions to prevent future problems.
“I ask you over and over to remember all the guidelines that we’ve got out there for you, and we really want you to be smart, and we want you to be safe, and we want you to wear your mask,” Justice said. “And so at the end of the day we can continue to keep West Virginia moving and moving in a positive way and with your life as close to normal as we can possibly get it. We do not want to regress and end up with more of a catastrophic problem on our hands.”
Justice said other parts of the country, such as Nashville, Tenn., have faced such problems.
