By james art 
The newly elected governor Patrick Morrisi launches his Backyard Brawl initiative through an enforcement order. It is promised to improve the economic ranking of West Virginia by overtaking the neighboring countries.
Through his initiative, Morrisi swore to continue to reduce the tax on state income. He also said that his administration would review government expenses and reduce the provisions that he believes will make the state more attractive to the business.
While enterprises decide where to find, they also look at the infrastructure, workforce, education and quality of life of workers, said Heather Stevens, director of the Regional Research Institute at the University of West Virginia.
“When we are thinking of being economically competitive, we need to think more about the things that the business is interested in,” she said.
At a press conference on Thursday, Morrisi said he wanted to focus on three key initiatives: energy policy, infrastructure improvements, and increasing the state’s economic competitiveness to attract business.
“I want to make sure we win compared to all the countries we touch,” he said. “I want to start seeing our standard of living rises and expanding the base of tax revenue so that each individual citizen in the country has lower taxes and more home pay.”
MorRisey’s competitive rhetoric may be new, but reducing taxes to attract business is an old idea. Previous governors from both countries have talked about the urgency of improving Western Virginia economy to support tax reduction.
At the end of the 2000s, democratic governor Joe Mancin supported the reduction of business taxes to create jobs and to develop the country’s economy. Legislators eliminated the business franchise tax and reduced the corporate income tax.
Proponents of the abbreviations say that redundancies will encourage economic development and make the state more competitive than neighboring countries to attract business. In 2015, tax reductions cost $ 205 million lost revenue, according to the State Department of Revenue.
About a decade later, Republican governor Jim justice insisted on reducing the tax on personal income to stimulate job growth and bring people to Western Virginia. He justified the reduction of taxes by pointing to the budget surpluses of the state, partly conditioned by dollars of federal pandemic reliefs and record prices of energy.
Justice also uses budget surpluses to fund economic incentives for companies that decide to find in the country. But Morrisi inherits a budget deficit of $ 400 million next year and has charged his administration to review all major funding solutions.
“We are reducing taxes over and over and over,” said the Justice Government during his goodbye this month. “We reduce taxes 27 times.”
Compared to neighboring countries such as Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the property tax and the income tax of Western Virginia are already competitive, said Sean O’Liri, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Budget and Policy of the Western Virginia.
“If the most income tax is the key to being the most prosperous condition, it should already happen,” he said.
Western Virginia is still poorly ranked compared to other states in areas such as education, workplace growth and workforce participation according to a job report published by the Western Virginia Chamber of Commerce. The group supports business leaders in the country and recommends ways to deal with these barriers.
State business leaders said earlier this month that they are optimistic about the Morrisi administration and the problems of Western Virginia for Western Virginia’s workforce should be resolved. The low percentage of workforce in the country also remains a challenge for business.
During the press conference on Thursday, Morrisi said that the state should recruit and train traders with blue collars as electricians, contractors and plumbers. But reducing taxes and provisions is the path to economic success.
“Increasing the workforce involvement is the number one problem we need to handle,” Morrisi said. “One of the ways we do this is to do better with the basics in terms of taxation and regulation. If we do things more attractive, we will have more people to come to our country. “