In WV, people convicted of felony offenses are not eligible to vote until after they have completed their sentence or parole supervision. In our new blog post, Taylor, Kenny, and Amber share how this policy has negatively impacted their lives: wvpolicy.org/no-laws-about-… One out of every 100 West Virginians is disenfranchised due to a felony conviction. This second-class citizenship disproportionately impacts Black West Virginians, who are more than three times as likely as the general population to be ineligible to vote.

As the @wvlegislature considers expanding drug use screening across TANF, @RhonniRogo's new blog post explains how such a policy choice would further stigma, harm vulnerable populations, and contradict public health best practices. wvpolicy.org/tanf-drug-use-… The three-year pilot program in WV that screened drug use among TANF recipients has proven both inefficient and costly.

In FY 2020, the pilot program included 2,221 people. Just seven of them tested positive for any substance.

Our keynote panelists were policymakers Don Hineman & Duane Goossen of Kansas, who were able to provide us a cautionary tale by diving into the repercussions of the Kansas Tax Experiment, the so-called "March to Zero" which sought to eventually eliminate the state's income tax.

https://twitter.com/WVCBP/status/1362065699137552384

From Rep. Hineman: "So how did it [the tax experiment] go? Revenues dropped precipitously, down $700 million in the first year of the experiment, and the budget surplus was soon consumed by the structural imbalance between revenues and expenditures."