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Moundsville Leaders Concerned About Future of West Virginia Home Rule Pilot Program

The coming 2022 legislative session could introduce legislation that may reduce the city's ability to collect taxes going forward.

At Tuesday's meeting of the Moundsville city council, city manager Rick Healy said the West Virginia Municipal League was preparing for the upcoming legislative session. Healy said he'd spoken with Travis Blosser, the executive director of the Municipal League, and that there were concerns about a "substantial movement" in the session.

Concerns within the league, Healy said, focus on potential legislation that could eliminate the West Virginia Home Rule program, which allows cities to, among other things, implement a sales tax. Moundsville currently lays a 1% sales tax, which is used for a variety of new projects and improvements, such as work toward a new municipal building, additional paving, recycling, demolition, parks and recreation and other projects. In the last fiscal year, the sales tax brought in around $1.85 million.

The Home Rule program was made permanent in 2019, but Healy said there were rumors that efforts could be taken to dismantle the program, or to restrict the cities' ability to collect business and occupation taxes, which Healy said is primarily used to pay the city's regular bills.

"They did make it permanent, but what we're hearing ... is that there are efforts to either reverse and eliminate Home Rule, or not allow communities that have home rule to collect business and occupation tax," Healy said Wednesday.. "Our business and occupation tax is about $2.4 million.

"… That's what pays our bills, and always has been. The 1% sales tax allows us to do all that extra stuff."

While the West Virginia Legislature has not yet been called back into session and no legislation to this end has yet been introduced, Healy urged the council members to contact their local representatives - Del. Charlie Reynolds, R-Marshall, State Sens. Mike Maroney, R-Marshall, and Charlie Clements, R-Wetzel.

"We wanted to get out ahead of it with our local legislators," Healy said. "… The Municipal League is aware of it, they do their own lobbying efforts, they're staying on top of it. Their comments to us were, 'You would do well to get ahead of this and talk to your local legislators now.'"

Healy said he'd set up a workshop to discuss the matter on Jan. 4 at 5 p.m., which Reynolds had already agreed to attend.

"These (changes) would be devastating and extremely unfair, and would stop the progress that we in Moundsville have seen, and other cities have been making," Healy told council.