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Coal extracted a steep price, now gas is taking WV down same path
Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold
1/ West Virginia's headlong race to embrace the boom in its natural gas industry is taking our state down the same path that it's been on for generations,
Link to tweet
Coal extracted a steep price, now gas is taking WV down same path
By Ken Ward Jr. Staff writer 7 hrs ago
Editor's Note
This article was produced in partnership with the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. ProPublica is supporting seven local and regional newsrooms this year, including the Gazette-Mail, as they work on important investigative projects affecting their communities.
It was a warm Monday afternoon in late February. Thousands of teachers, public school employees and supporters rallied on the steps of West Virginia’s Capitol building, on the banks of the Kanawha River in Charleston. ... Schools in all 55 counties were closed again. Teachers, cooks and janitors were in the third day of a strike. They wanted pay raises and a fix to the skyrocketing cost of their health insurance.
On the other end of the state, at a town hall meeting with teachers in Wheeling, Gov. Jim Justice tossed out a possible solution: Fund the pay raises with an increase in taxes on the state’s booming natural gas industry. ... West Virginia “benefited from the extraction of coal and we benefited from the extraction of timber, but we were still dead last in everything,” said Justice, whose family made its fortune in coal. “And now we have this gas situation and we’re on fire, and we have a real opportunity again.” If the state doesn’t pass a gas-tax hike, the governor said, “we’re going to be left holding the bag again.”
But what seemed like a stunning change of direction proved to be little more than a feint. Gas industry lobbyists strongly criticized the proposal and the governor’s tax hike idea quickly faded. ... West Virginia has been here before.
Sixty-five years ago, then-Gov. William Marland, the son of a mine superintendent, shocked state lawmakers by proposing a new tax on coal to upgrade schools and roads. ... “Let’s use this equitable source of revenue, because whether we like it or not, West Virginia’s hills will be stripped, the bowels of the earth will be mined and the refuse strewn across our valleys and our mountains in the form of burning slate dumps,” Marland told a joint session of the Legislature in February 1953. ... Marland’s proposal was soundly defeated following an onslaught of criticism. One biographer called it “political suicide.”
....
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702, or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.
By Ken Ward Jr. Staff writer 7 hrs ago
Editor's Note
This article was produced in partnership with the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. ProPublica is supporting seven local and regional newsrooms this year, including the Gazette-Mail, as they work on important investigative projects affecting their communities.
It was a warm Monday afternoon in late February. Thousands of teachers, public school employees and supporters rallied on the steps of West Virginia’s Capitol building, on the banks of the Kanawha River in Charleston. ... Schools in all 55 counties were closed again. Teachers, cooks and janitors were in the third day of a strike. They wanted pay raises and a fix to the skyrocketing cost of their health insurance.
On the other end of the state, at a town hall meeting with teachers in Wheeling, Gov. Jim Justice tossed out a possible solution: Fund the pay raises with an increase in taxes on the state’s booming natural gas industry. ... West Virginia “benefited from the extraction of coal and we benefited from the extraction of timber, but we were still dead last in everything,” said Justice, whose family made its fortune in coal. “And now we have this gas situation and we’re on fire, and we have a real opportunity again.” If the state doesn’t pass a gas-tax hike, the governor said, “we’re going to be left holding the bag again.”
But what seemed like a stunning change of direction proved to be little more than a feint. Gas industry lobbyists strongly criticized the proposal and the governor’s tax hike idea quickly faded. ... West Virginia has been here before.
Sixty-five years ago, then-Gov. William Marland, the son of a mine superintendent, shocked state lawmakers by proposing a new tax on coal to upgrade schools and roads. ... “Let’s use this equitable source of revenue, because whether we like it or not, West Virginia’s hills will be stripped, the bowels of the earth will be mined and the refuse strewn across our valleys and our mountains in the form of burning slate dumps,” Marland told a joint session of the Legislature in February 1953. ... Marland’s proposal was soundly defeated following an onslaught of criticism. One biographer called it “political suicide.”
....
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702, or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.