By Phil Kabler, Charleston Gazette-Mail
This week’s special session should never have happened.
All it has accomplished (so far) is to waste $35,000, with legislators no closer to approving Gov. Jim Justice’s 5% income tax cut than when he first proposed it in July.
Special sessions are intended to do one of three things: Take up consensus bills from the regular session that were lost in the session’s final moments, to make supplemental appropriations using surplus funds from the previous fiscal year, or to address emergencies or other critical issues that occur in the off-season.
While 23 of the 28 bills on Justice’s special session call are supplemental appropriations, all could have been addressed after the fiscal 2023-24 budget surplus was finalized back in July, or could have been taken up post-election or in the 2025 regular session.