DSC_1873 sos
GOVERNOR TOMBLIN Delivers Point out OF THE State Deal with
Address highlights top priorities and key items of laws
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (January 13, 2016) – Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin right now shipped the 2016 Condition of the Point out Deal with in the House Chamber at the Point out Capitol Intricate.
Gov. Tomblin’s remarks included an overview of new packages and initiatives associated to his leading priorities as governor, as nicely as a quantity of new parts of legislation he strategies to introduce in the course of the 2016 Legislative Session.
Since turning into governor in November 2010, Gov. Tomblin has concentrated on troubles such as workforce development, combatting substance abuse, liable fiscal policies and work creation. Following are highlights from the State of the Condition speech and other legislative initiatives of Gov. Tomblin.
Financial Growth
Gov. Tomblin has worked to develop a good enterprise weather now and for many years to appear, and he stays fully commited to functioning with organization and sector leaders from a range of industries to develop new investments and provide employment to West Virginia. Firms from across the nation and around the planet are noticing the modifications the state has produced, and nationally and internationally recognized firms – such as Macy’s Amazon, Quad Graphics, Hino Motors, Diamond Electric powered, Toyota and Procter and Gamble – have decided on to track down, expand and make investments in West Virginia.
Tonight, Gov. Tomblin extra one more organization to the list of those that have dedicated to West Virginia. Throughout the address, Gov. Tomblin declared polymer additive company Addivant has made the decision to continue to be and increase operations in Morgantown, preserving practically a hundred work and including at minimum $12 million in new investments and extra options for employment.
While these huge investments are a vital component of West Virginia’s prolonged-phrase achievement, Gov. Tomblin is also dedicated to making sure small company proprietors have a likelihood to excel and expand. Tonight, Gov. Tomblin released the Self-Employment Guidance Act, made to make it less difficult for unemployed West Virginians to get the aid they require to open a enterprise. The act enables business owners to keep on obtaining unemployment positive aspects while creating their new business. This aids proprietors reinvest in their new venture and workers, although also providing a regular source of economic support for their people.
WORKFORCE Improvement
In doing work to bring new investments and develop jobs, Gov. Tomblin has also produced it a prime priority to guarantee these employment are loaded by competent and properly-skilled West Virginians. With the assist of his Workforce Arranging Council, Gov. Tomblin has recognized new workforce growth plans and strengthened existing initiatives to meet the requirements of enterprise and industry working listed here. The state has obtained much more than $forty million in federal grant funding to support Workforce West Virginia operations across the condition, helping coal miners, their families, and those who have exhausted their unemployment advantages uncover careers in developing industries.
Through a collaborative partnership amongst enterprise, industry, education and labor leaders, Gov. Tomblin has established a new Regional Occupation Matching Database, an on-line source for both instructional software listings and work options offered near to people’s homes. This database will help match pupils with education applications in essential needs areas and connect them with companies in search of individuals same skills.
In addition, Gov. Tomblin also plans to introduce laws that will broaden the West Virginia Department of Wellness and Human Resources’ (WVDHHR) Short term Support to Want Households (TANF) pilot software. Via a partnership with the WVDHHR and Southern West Virginia Community and Complex College, the pilot program was developed to support West Virginians previously obtaining TANF advantages enroll in higher education classes, get access to fiscal aid and operate with advisors to begin a new job route to assist on their own and their households. With this program enlargement, more West Virginians will receive the aid and assistance they require to become effective, effective members of their neighborhood communities.
STRENGTHENING SOUTHERN WEST VIRGINIA
Gov. Tomblin has committed considerably of his public services to supporting West Virginia’s coal miners and their people. In current several years, both the point out and country have knowledgeable unprecedented downturns in this business, adversely affecting regional operations and devastating the life of a lot of hardworking West Virginians.
Tonight, Gov. Tomblin highlighted ongoing attempts to support and bolster all individuals influenced by the downturn in the coal industry. The state has submitted an application to the Nationwide Disaster Resilience Opposition (NDRC), in search of much more than $140 million in funding from the United States Section of Housing and Urban Advancement. This competition has the likely to assist Boone, Lincoln, Logan, Mingo, McDowell and Wyoming counties change, adapt and progress their communities. If productive, funding will be allocated to support repair and rebuild growing older infrastructure, advertise land use organizing and hazard reduction initiatives and promote housing and financial advancement in the region.
Gov. Tomblin tonight also announced plans to build of the biggest industrial internet site in West Virginia heritage – the previous Hobet surface area mine in Boone and Lincoln counties. At twelve,000 acres, this house is big sufficient to match every single significant economic development project in recent heritage – with hundreds of acres left in excess of. The condition is working in partnership with neighborhood landowners, Marshall College, West Virginia University and the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund to find methods to re-create this internet site and diversify southern West Virginia’s economic system.
Vitality
In operating to make certain West Virginia’s power sector is robust and varied, Gov. Tomblin has also worked difficult to assist growth of West Virginia’s abundant Marcellus, Utica and Rogersville shale formations. Tonight, Gov. Tomblin stressed the need to produce the processing and pipeline infrastructure required to ensure this industry’s continued expansion now and for a long time to occur, highlighting key expenditure tasks these kinds of as the Columbia Gas Mountaineer Xpress pipeline.
Gov. Tomblin also announced that although the Division of Environmental Protection proceeds to operate on a feasibility review connected to the state’s Clean Power Strategy Submission, it truly is likely that strategy will consist of items these kinds of as reforestation and alternative of boilers to increase the effectiveness of existing coal-fired electrical power plans.
TACKLING Material ABUSE
Gov. Tomblin has produced combatting the state’s substance abuse epidemic a top precedence of his administration. As communities and people across West Virginia keep on to struggle compound abuse from a variety of fronts, Gov. Tomblin has invested a considerable volume of time and funding to improve community-based treatment method options and plans to give people battling hope and get them on the road to restoration.
Tonight, Gov. Tomblin introduced laws to assistance ongoing material abuse attempts. He introduced new licensing requirements for Suboxone and Methadone clinics, demanding medicine-assisted treatment facilities to give complete therapies in coordination with medicine to aid to handle the root leads to behind addictions, rather than merely supplying a brief-term resolve.
In addition, Gov. Tomblin introduced laws to expand the Opioid Antagonist Act of 2015, making opioid antagonists, this sort of as Narcan, obtainable to any West Virginian without having a prescription. This new legislation needs pharmacists to practice people who acquire this drug on how to administer opioid antagonists and assists the condition observe these acquiring Narcan to aid better focus state sources in locations hardest strike by opioid overdoses.
JUVENILE JUSTICE
Gov. Tomblin’s juvenile justice reforms have also manufactured a important influence on our state’s youth, as he has worked to increase outcomes for people at the moment in the juvenile justice program and supply early-intervention care to at-danger college students to maintain them in the classroom and out of the courtroom. For the duration of his tackle, Gov. Tomblin touted the good results of 2015’s Juvenile Justice Reform, particularly highlighting positive benefits of the truancy diversion system.
He also announced the Division of Juvenile Services has decreased the amount of children currently being sent to out-of-house placements by more than one particular-3rd and reduced the variety of detention beds by more than forty %. So much the state has saved $6 million, and the Division of Juvenile Providers is confident West Virginia can double that cost savings in coming several years.
Education and learning
Ensuring students continue being in the classroom for 180 days of finding out is just one of Gov. Tomblin’s schooling priorities, as he is equally fully commited to making certain West Virginia’s training technique stands prepared to offer pupils with the extensive and productive schooling they deserve. In addition, they must obtain new finding out possibilities that source the capabilities and fingers-on expertise they require obtain long-expression accomplishment in West Virginia.
To improve on West Virginia’s academic choices, Gov. Tomblin has designed the Innovation in Schooling Grant Software, which will not only supply college students with particular abilities and hands-on education, but will also give them the prospect to contend among their peers on a national and entire world-vast scale. This new software is designed to reward teachers and educational institutions in West Virginia for innovation and creative imagination in the classroom. The reallocation of $two.eight million in current West Virginia Department of Training cash will assist new classroom offerings that are created to support students create and obtain these expertise in substantial-desire fields, this kind of as science, technologies, engineering, math and entrepreneurship.
FISCAL Obligation
Throughout his administration, Gov. Tomblin has produced sure to enact and uphold fiscally responsible policies. He understands the condition is going through important funds problems, but stays committed to creating challenging options now that will support guarantee West Virginia has a vibrant future now and for many years to come.
Gov. Tomblin tonight launched laws to pay off West Virginia’s outdated workers’ payment personal debt more than a 10 years forward of timetable. This also will take away added severance taxes on coal and natural gas industries previously than anticipated, offering much-required reduction for power businesses battling with lower costs.
In aiding to ensure West Virginia’s tax foundation is the two steady and varied, Gov. Tomblin tonight also proposed increasing the state’s tobacco tax by forty five cents to a overall of $1 a pack. This improve will not only support discourage West Virginians from smoking or employing tobacco merchandise, it will also offer $71.5 million yearly to help overall health-connected charges. $forty three million of this earnings will aid fund PEIA, ensuring public staff do not see the extraordinary reward reductions to begin with proposed.
Gov. Tomblin also proposed laws to get rid of a sale tax exemption that will deliver our state’s telecommunications tax in line with forty one other states across the region. This laws will spot the exact same 6 percent product sales tax on cell phone and telephone line use and create $sixty million yearly.
With these proposed modifications, the 2017 funds Gov. Tomblin introduced utilizes no income from the state’s Rainy Working day Fund and in truth predicts surpluses commencing in 2019.
Gov. Tomblin will also introduce the following items of legislation:
Workforce Innovation & Chance Act (WIOA) Reporting Update
Updates recent West Virginia code to mirror 2014 federal law for compliance and continuation of federal funding from the U.S. Division of Labor.
Authorizes data sharing by Workforce West Virginia with the point out agencies responsible for vocational rehabilitation, work and coaching to much better align the workforce method with education and learning and financial growth in an work to generate a collective reaction to economic and labor industry challenges on the national, point out and local levels.
West Virginia Workforce Growth Board Updates
Updates the composition of the West Virginia Workforce Investment Council and modifications its title to the West Virginia Workforce Growth Board to comply with WIOA.
Borrowing from Rainy Day for Unemployment Payment Fund
Authorizes borrowing in quantity up to $twenty five million to provide added funds for unemployment compensation.
Controlled Substances Monitoring Plan (CSMP) Update Monthly bill:
Demands practitioners (medical professionals, pharmacists and other folks) to sign up for the CSMP to obtain or renew a license.
Generates an administrative fantastic of $1,000 for failure to sign up for the CSMP, as effectively as an administrative fantastic of $500 for failure to access the CSMP as required.
Certificate of Want Exemption for Out-Patient Behavioral Wellness Neighborhood-Primarily based Providers
Exempts community-primarily based behavioral wellness care amenities, applications or companies from the certificate of require procedure contained in W.Va. Code sixteen-2nd-1 et seq.
811 – 1 Get in touch with Technique
Helps make underground pipelines of 4" in diameter and greater subject to "call prior to you dig" reporting if not in any other case necessary by condition or federal regulation. Applies to fuel, oil or any harmful substance pipelines.
Membership in 811 requires an entity to supply mapping information indicating in which their underground pipelines are positioned and to reply in the specified time durations when notified by the 811 administrator and be capable to mark its underground pipes.
fifteen Minutes Rule
Needs that drilling, production and pipeline pursuits are matter to the state’s 15-minute crisis notification regulation (WV Code fifteen-5B-3a (b)(one)).
Provisions apply to unexpected emergency events that require a dying or critical injuries, unplanned ignitions, fires or explosions and comparable critical unexpected emergency activities (confirmed emergencies) at drilling, production and pipeline web sites.
Notification should be provided within 15 minutes to the West Virginia Division of Homeland Stability and Emergency Management and include preliminary data regarding the nature and extent of the crisis occasion, any existence or non-existence of threats to public health, substances associated or introduced and designated principal contact details.
Transportation Community Company Bill (TNC) – Uber/Lyft
Authorizes TNCs to operate in West Virginia by getting a permit from DMV.
Needs auto insurance and uninsured and underinsured motorist protection.
Needs a zero tolerance for drug and alcoholic beverages plan.
Calls for TNCs to have a nondiscrimination coverage and comply with nondiscrimination legal guidelines.
Business office of Coalfield Neighborhood Growth Monthly bill
Proceeds the Office of Coalfield Group Improvement in Commerce (beforehand in Division of Power)
Air Ambulance Invoice
Supplies air transportation or relevant unexpected emergency or remedy companies vendors operating in West Virginia from collecting much more for support from PEIA covered folks than the presently allowable Medicare reimbursement fee.
Repeal Behavioral Wellness Severance & Privilege Tax
Gets rid of the behavioral health severance and privilege tax and limits the product sales tax exemption on tough medical goods to those purchased for home use only.
The adjust is considered to be earnings neutral and will help make certain continued federal matching cash for Medicaid and Medicare.
Decrease Required Once-a-year Severance Tax Deposit to Infrastructure Bond Fund
Decreases the sum of severance tax proceeds deposited into the West Virginia Infrastructure Standard Obligation Credit card debt Provider Fund for payment of credit card debt service on this sort of bonds from $22.5 million yearly to an quantity equivalent to once-a-year debt support, not to exceed $22.25 million every year.
Private Income Tax update
Updates the Personal Revenue Tax code to be in compliance with federal tax rules
CNIT Update & Revised Submitting Date
Updates the Company Web Earnings Tax code to be in compliance with federal tax regulations.
Intermodal
Terminates funding of the Unique Railroad and Intermodal Enhancement Fund starting January one, 2016. The source of funding is company internet income taxes.
Racetrack and Historic Resort Modernization Funds Cessation
Ends the Licensed Racetrack Modernization Fund and Historic Resort Modernization Fund and moves all resources at the moment in such resources to the General Profits Fund.
Cessation of Deposit into Road Fund from Product sales Tax for FY2016
Eradicates for fiscal yr 2016 the deposit of revenue tax proceeds into the State Highway Fund from product sales of development and servicing materials obtained by a second party for use in the construction or maintenance of a freeway project.
This kind of sales tax proceeds will be deposited into the Common Revenue Fund in lieu of the State Highway Fund.
Condition Support System Changes
Removes the Expansion County College Services Act, which allowed development county boards of training to designate general fund revenues from new building (escalating property taxes) for placement in a growth county university services act fund.
Adjusts the formulation for the foundation allowance for each professional educators and support personnel.
Adjusts and eradicates certain changes to the foundation allowance for transportation costs (escalating bus life from twelve to fifteen a long time and mileage from one hundred eighty,000 to 225,000 miles).
Adjusts the calculation for the foundation allowance to enhance educational plans.
Removes specific restrictions in the computation of the neighborhood share applicable to progress county colleges.
Infrastructure Fund Extra Lottery Deposit Reduction
Decreases the annual deposit of Excess Lottery revenues to the Infrastructure Fund from $forty million to $thirty million for fiscal yr 2017.
Will increase the share of funds that may be disbursed from the Infrastructure Fund in the form of grants from twenty% to 50% for fiscal yr 2017.
SBA Deposit Reduction
Decreases for fiscal 12 months 2017 the yearly deposit of product sales tax proceeds into the School Developing Authority’s College Major Improvement Fund from $5 million to $four million (was lowered for FY16 to $3 million).
Decreases for fiscal yr 2017 the School Developing Authority’s School Development Fund from $27,216,996 to $24,216,996 (was reduced for FY16 to $21,216,996).
Photographs available for media use. All images must be attributed “Photo courtesy of Place of work of the Governor.”
By Governor Earl Ray Tomblin on 2016-01-thirteen 19:19:21