CHARLESTON -- A bill that would exempt state employees from paying municipal service fees has cities on edge.
The House Political Subdivisions Committee layed over House Bill 2256 on Wednesday, expecting to take the bill up again in seven days.
HB 2256 - introduced by Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh - prohibits cities from imposing user fees on employees of West Virginia government agencies. It also prohibits the State Auditor's Office and state agencies from withholding compensation from paychecks for user fees.
State code allows municipalities to charge user fees to those who work within a city or town to cover city services, such as police and fire protection, parking, city recreational facilities and parks, sewage and trash disposal, and other services.
According to the West Virginia Municipal League, Weirton, Chester, Fairmont, Charleston, Huntington, Romney, Parkersburg, Wheeling and Morgantown have municipal user fees ranging from $2 to $5. Del. Jason Barrett, R-Berkeley, said he was unfamiliar with the user fee.
"Until yesterday, I had no idea municipalities had the ability to charge such fees," Barrett said. "I'm really surprised that is allowed."
The City of Weirton instituted its $2 municipal service fee in 2004, with funds directed by ordinance toward public works projects, street department operations, street maintenance, capital projects and public health and safety.
According to a copy of the 2020-21 fiscal budget available on the city's website, $925,000 was expected to be raised through the fee for the current fiscal year. Information on how much might be lost as a result of the proposed legislation wasn't immediately available.
Last year, the City of Wheeling approved a $2 city service fee on all full-time, part-time, and self-employed workers who either work at a physical location or work from within city limits. Exempting state employees from Wheeling's user fee would reduce revenue by $29,368 per year.
Wheeling Mayor Glen Elliot said HB 2256 is another example of state lawmakers professing the need for local control on one hand, while trying to interfere with city laws on the other hand.
"City service fees are fees for municipal services -- in the case of Wheeling's fee, half goes towards new facilities for our police and fire departments, and half goes towards municipal infrastructure projects," Elliot said.
"If you are a state employee working in Wheeling, you benefit from these services just as any other employee does. To me, legislation like this is just one more way for politicians in Charleston to tell Wheeling what it can and cannot do in one breath while extolling the virtues of decentralized government in another."
The City of Parkersburg charges a $2.50 per week user fee for workers inside the city limits. The fee generates more than $2 million per year since it was first enacted in 2010, going towards police, fire and street expenses. In fiscal year 2020, payments from state employees accounted for $55,540 of user fee collections.
The city saw first-hand in 2018 what losing a category of workers could do to user fee revenue. The city saw a $60,000 decrease in user fee revenue when the federal Bureau of Fiscal Service stopped collecting the fee for 300 of its employees who worked from home.
Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce said the bill flies in the face of legislation two years ago creating a permanent Home Rule program for municipalities and could affect other forms of revenue collection, such as municipal sales taxes.
"I have problems … with the Legislature stripping local control from cities," Joyce said. "The city has been able to tear down more houses and pave more roads in recent years because of the financial shape it's in.
"(It seems like) some in the Legislature are looking at the home rule and saying, 'The cities are doing pretty good. Where can we nickel and dime them?"' Joyce continued. "If this is going to be a trend, then at some point, other fees are going to have to be increased."
Charleston, the largest city in the state and the seat of state government, would take a $1.03 million hit by exempting state employees from paying its $3 user fee. Morgantown would be hardest hit, due to the number of state employees of West Virginia University.
Morgantown collects more than $4 million annually through its user fee that funds street improvements and law enforcement. Numbers submitted by the city show that the legislation would reduce revenue from the fee by $1.3 million by exempting state employees from paying the user fee. Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, asked why lawmakers wanted to "defund the police."
"That's split 50/50 between roads and police, so with that number, this bill would defund the police of Morgantown by roughly $650,000," Hansen said. "That's seven police officers."
Reporters Evan Bevins in Parkersburg and Eric Ayres in Wheeling contributed to this story.