photo by: Steven Allen Adams

State Treasurer Larry Pack takes questions Monday regarding his office’s legislative agenda during a press conference at the State Capitol Building.

CHARLESTON — The State Treasurer’s Office may have a limited role in West Virginia government, but that didn’t stop the state’s chief financial officer from calling for a legislative agenda including tax cuts for workers and recommending additional education spending.

State Treasurer Larry Pack held a press conference Monday morning at his offices in the east wing of the State Capitol Building to lay out a legislative agenda for the 2026 regular session beginning at noon Wednesday, Jan. 14.

“We take our responsibility as chief financial officer for the State of West Virginia very, very seriously,” Pack said. “We think we have a duty to advise the governor, to advise the Legislature, and really all West Virginia taxpayers and citizens on sound conservative and sound policy for the State of West Virginia.”

At the top of Pack’s priority list is defending the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program as it gets ready to open up to all eligible public, private, and homeschool students beginning July 1, 2026. Pack said he would fight any attempt by the Legislature to limit, cap or restrict the program.

“We believe it is crucial that the Legislature and the governor resist any temptation to roll back universal eligibility,” Pack said. “There’s been a dynamic shift in our country where money is now following students, and it empowers the parents and children alike to find the right education that fits their needs. It’s been a great win for West Virginia.”

For the current fiscal year, the Hope Scholarship provided students up to $5,267.38 – the equivalent of the per-pupil expenditure made available to counties through the state school aid formula. Approximately 15,000 students were approved for 100% funding through the Hope Scholarship program for the current school year.

Only students leaving the public school system are eligible for the Hope Scholarship this fiscal year, which was allotted $110 million for the current fiscal year – up from $45 million in the previous fiscal year. The program’s cost was estimated to balloon to more than $300 million in the next fiscal year when Hope opens up to all students, though an updated estimate by the State Treasurer’s Office places the cost next fiscal year closer to $244.6 million.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey is a vocal supporter of the Hope Scholarship and the idea of universal school choice. But some Republican lawmakers began questioning the growing costs of the program on the floor of the House of Delegates at the end of the 2025 legislative session last April.

Other legislative priorities dealing with the functions of the State Treasurer’s Office include an unclaimed property consumer protection bill to protect owners of unclaimed property from being scammed by out-of-state companies; and another attempt at term limits for elected members of the Board of Public Works, which include the state treasurer, state auditor, attorney general, and agriculture commissioner. While the governor is limited to two four-year terms, Board of Public Works members have no term limits.

However, other items on Pack’s legislative wish list were outside of the scope of his office. Pack again called for the temporary elimination of state income tax collections on tips and overtime, mirroring Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now called the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. At the end of September, Pack called for a special session before the end of the year to pass a tips/overtime tax cut package.

Also, as part of a plan to help the state’s 55-county public school systems, Pack called for loosening of timelines and requirements on reduction in force decisions and transfer of personnel between schools to allow counties to make needed decisions on budgets as enrollment numbers continue to shrink across the state. Pack called for changes to the state school aid formula and how schools can use those funds, including increasing state funding for special education students.

Lastly, Pack called for additional state funding for teacher pay, with minimum teacher salaries beginning at $50,000 per year, with teachers already making $50,000 receiving a $2,000 increase to their base pay effective on July 1, 2026. Pack said he was following a similar model put in place in Arkansas.

“Our revenues are up this year,” Pack said. “We’ll be in good shape as long as we hold the other parts of the budget down and so forth. So, we’re in good shape to do that. But even if we have to go back and revisit some of the other things that we thought were priorities back in the day, there’s no bigger priority than the education of our children.”

While the State Treasurer’s Office has no direct role in setting tax policy or education funding, Pack said he believes his position provides him with an advisory role to both Morrisey and lawmakers.

“As a state chief financial officer, I feel like it’s my responsibility to really speak on anything related to a dollar sign in West Virginia government,” Pack said. “We think it’s our responsibility to talk about things that other people are not talking about and try to raise the profile of certain issues. These are issues we think are important.”