By West Virginia State Treasurer Larry Pack

For eighty plus years, West Virginia’s leaders ignored innovation and ingenuity as the U.S. economy moved into the 21st Century. By taking an approach that gave preference to the status quo, our leaders failed to forecast necessary policy changes that could modernize West Virginia’s economy. All the while our neighbors focused on new opportunities allowing them to rocket past the Mountain State. These failures have created many of the issues that continue to hold our economy back.

Since the Republican takeover ten years ago, we have seen the Legislature and the Executive branch put us on a pathway that focuses on pro-growth policies that welcomes businesses and innovation to West Virginia. We have been able to attract billions of investments to the Mountain State by shrinking the tax burden, getting rid of unnecessary red tape, reforming our judicial system, and injecting innovation into education. If we keep this momentum up, we can double-down on those efforts by focusing on three things: taxes, teachers and term limits.

Years of out-of-control spending in Washington have led to record levels of inflation which has increased the cost-of-living and put strain on families across the United States. While Congress continues to create trillions of additional national debt, the one thing local entities can do is provide relief in the form of tax cuts for working people. This is increasingly important, as we see states around us continue to lower their tax obligations. That means we must do everything in our power to stay competitive. We can follow the lead of President Donald J. Trump by eliminating the state income tax on tips and overtime which will provide relief to hard-working West Virginians. Let’s pass a workers’ tax cut.

As we leverage additional options for parents and students around the state through educational freedom, it is vital we continue to invest in our public education system. The key is to continue to put students first, through individualized learning that better suits their unique needs. We can do just that in our public schools by offering competitive wages that attract and retain quality teachers. Governor Huckabee Sanders understood this in Arkansas and that is why she championed a policy that made the bare minimum salary for teachers in her state $50,000. We want to follow her lead by creating that same minimum salary for teachers and offering a $2,000 raise for any teacher making over $50,000. West Virginia can no longer be last in teacher pay. Let’s get another teacher pay raise done.

We’ve seen newly elected constitutional officers, the Attorney General, Commissioner of Agriculture Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Auditor, bring fresh ideas to modernize and reform their offices to better serve the citizens of our state. This is the first step in fulfilling that promise to restore more power back to the people. When politicians overstay their welcome, they become stagnant and less likely to adopt new ideas. Term limits give you a shorter amount of time to get things done and encourages politicians to enact bold, transformative policies right out of the gate. When you run for elected office, it is meant to serve the people, not create a career. Let’s extend term limits that we already have for Governor and county sheriffs to the Board of Public Works.

With the Legislative session right around the corner, it is crucial we continue to focus on policies that will make a lasting impact on our state and its citizens. Anyone that has been around politics for a while knows what those issues are; more money in our citizens’ pockets, quality education for their children and politicians that work for us, not themselves. Lawmakers will deal with thousands of bills during this next session, but we believe they should focus on taxes, teachers and term-limits. Let’s get to work.