Today begins the third special session of the West Virginia Legislature, as lawmakers gavel in to consider Gov. Jim Justice’s 10% personal income tax cut proposal.

I honestly didn’t think Justice would call this special session. In fact, in the original version of the Mountain State Views podcast episode when I interviewed Senate Minority Leader Stephen Baldwin, D-Greenbrier, we both speculated that a special session likely wouldn’t be called.

We were both wrong. Nearly 30 minutes after we recorded the podcast, Justice issued the official proclamation calling the Legislature into special session and released the draft bill language for his personal income tax cut.

(By the way, you can listen to the full interview with Baldwin on my Mountain State Views podcast, available on nearly all major podcast platforms. We talked about tax reform, the lawsuit over West Virginia’s old abortion law, education reform, and flood mitigation.)

The reason I and other lawmakers I’ve talked to didn’t think the special session would happen is because there still isn’t consensus on the Governor’s plan. As we’ve talked about in this column space, Justice’s proposal is nearly identical to House Bill 4007 that Republicans in the House of Delegates overwhelmingly supported. I gather from my conversations with some Republican House members that they would support the Governor’s proposal.

But Senate Republicans are simply not on board, not because they don’t want to cut personal income taxes but because they are focused on getting voters to support the constitutional amendment that would give lawmakers the authority next year to cut certain personal property taxes, such as the business and inventory tax. They’re already developing plans to replace the funding for counties and county school systems that would be lost with direct state funding, similar to the school aid formula.

Typically, governors do not call special sessions unless they already know they have the votes for their items to pass. Justice doesn’t operate that way, content to drop an idea at the Legislature’s feet and say, “pass or don’t pass.”

According to survey results released last week by Morning Consult, Justice is the fifth most popular governor in the nation. As far as he is concerned, he has the people on his side and the wind at his back. If the Legislature doesn’t pass his plan, it makes lawmakers look bad, not Justice.

But even some of the advocacy class that support tax reform in general are divided on the best way for West Virginia to proceed. Jason Huffman, state director for Americans for Prosperity, said Justice is “absolutely right to pursue taking a first step toward permanent relief for every hardworking Mountaineer.” But Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, said “Trimming the income tax isn’t necessarily incompatible with cutting TPP (tangible personal property) taxes, but there’s only so much capacity, and TPP tax reform will yield much greater economic dividends for the state.”

It’s apparent from past briefings that Justice doesn’t really support eliminating certain personal property taxes and funding counties through the general revenue budget. Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, think that the personal property tax amendment should be the priority and that the Justice/House income tax cut is too small to do much good.

Either idea ultimately returns money back to taxpayers. But this week will determine which idea will win out.

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So, what will Democratic lawmakers do? I thought they had a fairly clever joint statement last week in response to the special session call. Considering that House and Senate Democrats had pushed for a cut in the consumer sales and use tax at the beginning of the 2022 legislative session in January, and considering they supported a 30-day freeze of the state’s 35.7 cent gasoline tax, they basically told Gov. Justice “better late than never.”

But will they support a 10 percent personal income tax cut? More importantly: will they go along with suspending the state constitutional rules that require bills be read on three separate days in order to allow the bill to pass by the end of Tuesday and avoid costing taxpayers $35,000 per day for the special session to continue.

Lawmakers are already in town for July legislative interim meetings, so lawmakers and staff would be in Charleston regardless. But if this goes past Tuesday, it’s going to cost additional money. I think Democratic lawmakers will pump the brakes as much as they can, but I don’t think they will let the session go past Tuesday.

But will they support the bill? Considering all of the nay votes on HB 4007 came from the Democratic House caucus, it’s not likely.