From The Charleston Gazette-Mail:
While trading barbs with each other, both major party nominees for governor agreed in their first debate that West Virginia faces some grim problems:
- The drug epidemic “threatens to wipe out a generation,” Republican Bill Cole said. It’s so severe that “we don’t have a quality work force,” Democrat Jim Justice added.
- Lack of broadband Internet service hinders growth of modern businesses.
- Loss of coal and gas revenue — added to $300 million in past reductions in business taxes — puts state and county governments deeply into the red. Underpaid teachers are leaving. State-owned colleges and universities have been slashed cruelly. Cole said new estimates imply that the next Legislature might face a $350 million budget gap.
While seeing troubles clearly, neither candidate offered many solutions, other than generalized pledges to work intelligently for answers. Justice did suggest that West Virginia’s hardwood forests could spur more furniture-making, and tourism could be expanded.
How will the looming 2017 budget deficit — around one-third of a billion dollars — be fixed? Many conservative legislators signed no-new-taxes pledges, meaning that they won’t provide any new revenue to help West Virginia. They declare only that they will slash government waste — which they cannot find.
“We’ve cut about all we can cut,” Justice remarked. “We’ve got to grow our way out of this mess. You can’t cut your way out of this mess.”
Legalizing and taxing marijuana could bring a flood of new revenue — but both candidates shunned that idea. Each said he would support medical marijuana to ease suffering of the sick, but neither advocated wide-open statewide growing.
The televised event gave West Virginians a chance to see and hear the candidates, for what that was worth. Another such chance will come in a second debate next Tuesday.