West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey waves to the crowd following his inaugural speech at the state Capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. (Chris Jackson for West Virginia Watch)
In his first week as chief executive, Gov. Patrick Morrisey held not one, but two in-person press conferences.
They both started on time. Thursday’s briefing was over in 30 minutes. He took multiple follow-up questions from reporters.
Morrisey has said he wants the state government to be more efficient, and his briefings have already shown that he’s taking that seriously. We could be entering a new era under the gold dome in Charleston.
Of course, the bar is pretty low.
Still, it’s refreshing to have a governor who is prepared to be questioned, understands the state budget and who speaks articulately. But of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
On his second day in office, he again highlighted the difference between himself and former Gov. Jim Justice by saying he would sign an executive order to allow religious exemptions for school vaccinations. A similar legislative effort failed last year when Justice — to his credit — vetoed it.
At least one of his executive orders looked promising — reviewing spending decisions.
His Thursday briefing focused on the budget, where Morrisey revealed that his administration projects a general fund budget deficit of approximately $400 million for fiscal year 2026, and “that number is projected to grow into the future.”
Sounds like Gov. Jim Justice’s rocket ship ride is heading for a big crash.
Morrisey didn’t blame Justice, saying, “I’m not going to talk about any individuals,” but Justice, the former billionaire turned millionaire now broke, according to Forbes, was handing out money left and right in his last month in office.
Justice presented almost a millions dollars from the governor’s contingency account — which is publicly funded — to Greenbrier East and Greenbrier West high schools for improving athletic facilities.
Greenbrier East High School — where Justice coaches the girls’ basketball team — received $654,568 to replace its basketball court and upgrade the football field’s lighting.
Morrisey’s executive order No. 4-25 states that cabinet secretaries have 45 days from the issuance of the order to “review past, present and future projected spending decisions.”
This seems like a necessary step. Last year it was discovered that millions earmarked for people with disabilities was used on things like in-home COVID-19 tests and contract nurses’ salaries. Then the Legislature gave the Department of Human Services $180 million for disabilities funding, without any mandates on how that money would be spent.
Months later when Justice wanted to give West Virginians another cut to the state personal income tax, the state needed to find the $46 million it would cost to implement — around $27 million came from the Department of Human Services, along with the Department of Health and Department of Health Facilities.
Morrisey said that his administration is going to be looking at all of the different departments for inefficiency, and has already announced the consolidation of a few.
“Yesterday I visited one of the departments and I personally went over there, I’m gonna go over this afternoon,” Morrisey said. “I’m personally gonna go and spend a lot of time because I think the public deserves that. We wanna be active and we wanna make sure that we’re learning about all the problems and also, I wanna have the opportunity to personally thank our state workers. I think our state workers don’t sometimes get the respect that they deserve.”
Clearly, Morrisey is going to be much more hands on than Justice ever was. And that will be beneficial in some instances, like getting the budget on track.
In his inaugural speech, Morrisey said that West Virginia teachers need better pay and that funding for the Public Employees Insurance Agency needs to be addressed — premium rates are scheduled to go up in fiscal year 2026, and the current rates have already caused issues with budgets across the state.
Despite the looming budget deficit, he told reporters on Thursday that his administration still wants to give another personal income tax cut to residents and give pay raises to teachers, and to work on PEIA funding.
“There will need to be some important choices and prioritization to make sure that we’re putting the needs of the citizen first,” Morrisey said. ‘We’re working on it. I promise you as we’re learning more. We’re gonna come to you. We’re gonna provide that information up to you. I know that I remain very optimistic despite a lot of the big spending that’s occurred.”
Morrisey will be cleaning up a lot of messes, but he needs to be careful not to create more as he loosens vaccines restrictions and attempts to rid the state of diversity efforts. While it’s great to have more transparency in the governor’s office, West Virginans will still need to pay close attention to see if Morrisey is listening to them, or acting on what he thinks they want.
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