Published: March 9, 2016 |

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People in West Virginia’s coal mining communities have been feeling the decline of the coal industry for a few years now, but now some said it could get worse because of a bill the Senate passed.

Coal mining counties get a coal severance tax — money companies pay for mining in a certain area.

For decades, those county commissions have been able to run their county on that money, but it’s been getting lower and lower over the last few years and after a Senate vote to lower the tax from 5 percent to 3 percent, people in Boone County are worrying things might get even worse.

Sherry Smith owns Accents and Gifts in Boone County and has for 14 years. When Smith heard that the West Virginia Senate voted to lower the coal severance tax by 3 percent over the next two years, she was surprised.

“If you lower that for the mines that are running, that means less money for the county, so it’s going to hurt us,” Smith said.

Supporters of this bill said it’s going to help coal companies in a tough economy, making the overheard cost of running a mine lower, but Smith said overhead isn’t the reason the coal industry is dying.

“All the regulations that are put down, that’s the reason these coal mines went out of business is because of the regulations,” Smith said.

Through two quarters of their fiscal year in 2009, Boone County got almost $3.5 million from coal the severance tax. Through two quarters of this fiscal year, the county has only received about $650,000.

“There’s a lot of benefits that coal severance funds, vital projects within the county that we won’t be able to have and we’ve had to cut them already,” Boone County Commissioner Mickey Brown said.

Brown said he is up in the air on whether or not this cut would be good for the county. He said on the one hand it could reopen some mines, but Brown said if it doesn’t, things could get even worse, something Smith said can’t happen.

“These people just don’t have the money to spend on things that they want; it’s mainly for the things that they need,” Smith said.

Some coal owners said the move isn’t going to bring back any more jobs, it’s only going to put more money back into their own pockets.

The bill passed the Senate 19 to 15. It’s in the House Finance Committee right now.

Source: (March 3, 2016) WCHS

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