photo by: Steven Allen Adams

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss provides an explanation of House Bill 2026, the budget bill, to the House of Delegates Friday morning prior to passage.

CHARLESTON — With just over a week until the end of the 2025 legislative session next Saturday, The West Virginia House of Delegates passed its version of the general revenue budget for the next fiscal year.

The House passed House Bill 2026, the budget bill, in a 80-17 vote Friday morning, sending the bill to the state Senate, which is expected to amend it with their version of the budget next week and set up a compromise between the two bodies.

The House adopted a general revenue budget for fiscal year 2026 beginning on July 1 of $5.115 billion, which was nearly 4% less than the budget bill presented to lawmakers on day one of the 60-day legislative session by Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who presented a balanced general revenue fund of $5.323 billion.

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, went through HB 2026 line by line, explaining the House’s version of the budget which veered away from tradition this year.

“Unlike typical years, House Bill 2026 was built off the fiscal year 2025 budget rather than the governor’s introduced budget,” Criss said. “The fiscal year 2026 budget increases general revenue spending by $117,452,433 from the fiscal year 2025 but spends approximately $210 million less than the governor’s introduced budget.”

Criss said the House version of the budget takes into account $40 million due to the state’s increased share in Public Employees Insurance Agency health care. The budget includes a 2% personnel services cut in some areas of the budget to account for vacant positions, or about an $8 million cut.

“There continues to be what seems like permanent vacancies we’re funding throughout the budget,” Criss said. “One of the things we found as we went through that the personnel reduction really only amounted to about $8 million in permanent vacancies that were not being funded.”

The budget also reflects the mergers of the Department of Arts, Culture and History with the Department of Tourism, and the Department of Economic Development back into the Department of Commerce. The House version also explains expanded line items that were collapsed in the governor’s version of the budget.

“He also collapsed all the line items, which takes away our job of making sure that we are watching the dollars, and we appropriate the dollars. That is our job,” Criss said. “When we got his budget…it was useless because we needed to take his numbers and then drive back to the numbers that we had in the (fiscal year) 25 budget and start looking at the numbers that way so we could come forward with the budget we have today, making sure that the line items continued the best way we knew how.”

Other increases include $30 million for the Divisions of Corrections and Rehabilitation and $90 million for the Department of Human Services.

Unlike Morrisey’s version of the budget that doesn’t rely on one-time expenditures and balances to zero, the House version of the budget includes $128.8 million in spending in the back of the budget should there be available surplus dollars at the end of the current fiscal year on June 30.

Surplus items in the back of the budget, which would be paid out in order based on available surplus collections, include $100 million for the state road fund for paving projects, $10 million. For Victims of Crime Act funding, $10 million for the Water Development Authority for water infrastructure projects, $250,000 for the Cabell County Commission, $1.5 million for the proposed Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship at West Virginia University, and $7 million for the Department of Tourism.

Subtracting the back of the budget surplus spend, the House version of the budget leaves more than $81.1 million in unappropriated monies.

“The governor’s budget was going to spend every dollar and not have any reserves,” Criss said.

Two amendments to HB 2026 were adopted Friday. A successful amendment offered by Del. Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, moved $2 million from the EMS Workers Salary Enhancement Fund to the Office of Emergency Medical Services for EMT and paramedic training, recertification, and mental health issues.

“I don’t know if you believe there are angels on earth, but we do have angels on earth that watch out for us every day when we don’t think they’re watching for us. And I am talking about the human angels that are out there,” Statler said. “I can tell you that we all hope that we never need them, and we hope we never need them in our communities. But when we do need them, we need them equipped, we need them to be mentally stable and able, and physically trained to do their jobs.”

Another successful amendment offered by Del. Michael Hite, R-Berkeley, allows for remaining funds after each fiscal year in the state’s Medicaid waiver programs (aged and disabled, children with serious emotional disorder, intellectual and developmentally disabled, and traumatic brain injury) to roll over, and to prohibit using monies in those funds from being used for other purposes.

Members of the nine-member House Democratic caucus presented nine amendments to the budget bill that were rejected, including amendments to restore Medicaid waiver funding to the governor’s recommended numbers, to fund the yet-unfunded flood resiliency fund, to increase funding for the state child care subsidy program, to create a specific line item for the Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs, to restore the now-defunct Governor’s Summer Work Program for teenagers, for additional clean water infrastructure funding, and restoring some funding to WVU and West Virginia State University.

House Finance Committee Minority Vice Chairman John Williams, D-Monongalia, was critical of the House for continuing to rely on flat budgeting when the costs of critical services continue to increase.

“My fear in the way that we continue to budget is that we brag about a flat budget when, again, we know that a flat budget is not a flat budget. It’s a negative budget,” Williams said. “The state budget isn’t like the federal budget. There aren’t huge items of waste. It’s services for our people. It’s health care. It’s food. It’s lifelines. And I’m just really scared that we aren’t providing the services that we used to. I believe in fiscal responsibility…but I also believe in social responsibility. And I don’t know that this budget does that.”