Gov. Justice, legislative leaders address members of Chamber of Commerce

PROGRESS CITED — Gov. Jim Justice lists positive economic progress in West Virginia at the state Chamber of Commerce annual meeting at the Greenbrier Resort. -- Photo Courtesy/WV Chamber of Commerce
CHARLESTON — Gov. Jim Justice and the top Republican majority leadership of the West Virginia Legislature went before the state’s business owners Thursday touting economic successes over the last six years and laying out new visions for the future of the state.
Justice was the opening keynote speaker at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Meeting and Business Summit. The 85th annual event takes place at the end of summer at the Justice-owned Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs. The event was live-streamed over the chamber’s YouTube account.
“I truly believe this state has made incredible strides,” Justice said. “In rolling up our sleeves, the good Lord gave us some great ideas, like the Roads to Prosperity program, and being proud of what we are by committing real dollars to tourism. Along the way, we continued to help our vets, we helped our teaching community and made educations our centerpiece. With all that, we continued to take off and West Virginia started to grab ahold of itself and really go.”
Justice said the major thing he tried to accomplish during his first term as governor is changing the state’s image to make it more welcoming to business. Those efforts helped result in the recruitment of companies, such as Virgin Hyperloop and DataRobot, as well as Brad Smith’s Ascend program which announced its first recruits who will move to and work in West Virginia in exchange for incentives.
“We changed the image of the outside world and how they looked at West Virginia,” Justice said. “That’s what took us off. At the end of the day, especially right now, the outside world looks at West Virginia as the diamond they missed. They don’t look at West Virginia as the backward, dark, poor place anymore.”
Despite announcing a list of positives, including weathering the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, record tax collections and surpluses, increases in tourism, Justice listed several regrets, including the 3,117 COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
“Whether you believe it or not believe it, we’ve got to continue to push in every way to be vaccinated,” Justice said. “We’ve got to be able to push that, because that is our only way out. No matter what anybody says, that is our only way out.”
Justice also expressed regret a majority of the Legislature and the state Chamber of Commerce came out against his plan to phase out the personal income tax and create a tiered coal and natural gas severance tax that would have increased rates when production was high.
“I was a real proponent of getting rid of the personal income tax,” Justice said. “I know many here maybe weren’t, but nevertheless one challenge we have … is our growth continues to decline. It was an opportunity beyond belief. With surplus after surplus after surplus, I hope to goodness we’ll be open-minded enough to revisit it, because it is the very thing that carries with it sex appeal to bring real people to our state.”
Following Justice’s speech, attendees heard presentations from Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley; Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha; House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay; and House Majority Leader Amy Summer, R-Taylor.
Blair presented a 678-page book to Chamber President Steve Roberts highlighting laws passed by the Legislature since the Republicans became the majority party in the House of Delegates and state Senate in 2015.
“Since 2015, this here is all the things we’ve done in the West Virginia Legislature … to make it so we can do business better in the State of West Virginia,” Blair said. “This state is poised to be the greatest state in the union. We can do it, and do it together.”
Summers said the legislative highlights from the 2021 session last winter include improving telehealth, reducing the price of certain prescription drugs, and the Hope Scholarship education savings account program. Summers said other states are looking as West Virginia’s legislation to use as a model.
“We, as the Legislature in the State of West Virginia, are starting to gain national attention,” Summers said. “In the past, we’ve always been trying to catch up, trying to pass things to make as equal with another state.”
Hanshaw said he wants to the Legislature to continue working on education reform but focusing on improving reading levels at the elementary school-level, including writing a budget that puts an assistant teacher in every first, second, and third grade classroom in the state.
“The data tells us if a student hasn’t achieved grade-level reading ability by the third grade, there is a single-digit percentage that that person is ever going to catch up in his or her lifetime,” Hanshaw said. “We’ve spent a lot of time and effort the last three sessions working on public education. We’ve largely focused at the secondary level. I think it’s time we turned our attention to the other end of the bell curve, and that’s the very young children we have in our school system.”
Takubo said the state has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve access to high-speed broadband internet for all West Virginians.
“Whether you’re talking about the business sector, the healthcare sector or etcetera, we’re going to have to be able to communicate and have to do it quickly and be competitive,” Takubo said. “West Virginia has a lot of advantages … however, you’ve got to have everything that is able to communicate with one another and the rest of the world in order to be successful.”