Night 8 00 eastern on cspan. West Virginia Governor jim justice delivered his first state of the state address to a joint meeting of the state legislature in charleston. Hes a billionaire whos a republican and turned democrat shortly before running for governor, he says he needs taxes and fees to pay for infrastructure, job, and education system. His speech is about an hour. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, its my pleasure and honor to introduce to you the governor of the great state of West Virginia, the honorable jim justice. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Unless yall are wanting to be here all night you got to quit this clapping so much. Thats all there is to it. So m. Speaker armstead, president carmichael, members of the board of public works, justices of the Supreme Court of appeals, Senate Minority leader and president oso, how about that, i got that first time, president good, roman said i did pretty good with that. House minority lead er and all our great legislature, tonight, really important night. You know, i want, before we get into the meat and potatoes of what i have to say, i want to recognize a couple of people. These four people came with our great speaker armstead. These four people are principals that suffered through a thousand year flood. You know, i first hand know what the flood was all about. And it was beyond belief terrible. I dont know where they are, but if they could stand, mike kelly, the principal of herbert hoover, missy lovejoy, the principal of elk view middle, cindy cummings, the principal of bridge elementary, and vanessa brown, the principal of quentin elementary. [ applause ] your courage goes way, way, way beyond being unnoticed. You know, it took wisdom, strength, courage, to some way, some how, battle back. We got a long ways to go, but thats what we do. There is another group here, it is called kvc health systems. And there is a ceo that is a national ceo, his name is jason hoover. And let me tell you what theyre doing. Theyre going to bring a college, basically for foster kids, to montgomery. A place that really needs us, needs our jobs, needs hope, the great gordon e. And wvu have been terribly instrumental in this. Wherever you are, jason, and your team, please stand as well. [ applause ] now, stay with me. Isnt this place reverent . Hallowed ground. Tonight, im going to do the best in my ability to deliver a speech that i think is phenomenally important. There is no question there has been speech after speech delivered here. I am telling you i cant possibly imagine that there is a time as dire and a time as important as tonight. Now, let me tell you, there is no question we have been 50th forever more. Were gett ebetter than that. Now, like it or not like it, were dying 50th. This is the most difficult and the biggest depression that we could ever possibly imagine. The biggest of the biggest. Now, let me tell you this, on a little bit of light humor, but there is a fellow, his name is ricky mokel, hes a comedian. He said as a child he was hyper and his dad gave him a shovel and he used to love to dig. And he would dig and dig and dig and dig and dig and dig and dig to the point in time where he couldnt get out of the hole. And then he said whats the use . Theres no point in digging anymore, is there . Well, he says it to be funny. Because then he turned and he said, he and his dad had a password at that point in time, and when he would get to where there was no way he could get out of that hole, he would go, help, help. And his dad would come and get him. Trust me, we got to quit digging. We are such in the hole that we got to quit digging. We have to some way hold hands with each other and run across the finish line together. We got to have new ideas. Ill get to those in a few minutes. The other thing is just this, you honored me beyond belief, you elected me as your governor, a person that had never been a politician, in the wake of me running as a democrat at a time when donald trump won our state by 17 thousand million percent. Now, there had to be a reason. And the reason is just this simple. And if i make some people mad, i just make them mad. But the people knew that it didnt matter to me. It didnt matter if you were a democrat, republican, independent. All that mattered to me was one thing, and that was that youre West Virginiaens and im a West Virginian and i just want goodness for our state. Ive said it over and over and over. There will be somebody that will be on some witchhunt to try to beat on me about something. But i want to again announce to the world in every way, i, nor my family, want anything from this other than goodness for you and our state. Now, let me tell you, you trusted me with your vote. I absolutely need you now to trust me with your voice. Now, you dont see any teleprompters here. A lot of news media said, you know, hes folksy. I dont know that i know how to spell that. But there is sure no teleprompters. But you see, my definition of that would be plain talk. And thats what i think West Virginians want to hear. Now, the truth is, it is time for gigantic decisions. The past four years, no matter how hard we tried, we have lived off rainy day and we lived off the low hanging fruit that we could cut away. We have. We have cut probably 600 million of waste, and we cut the Rainy Day Fund into half. Now, this year, right now, youre going to have to cut the Rainy Day Fund 123 million more. No way around it. Right now. What are you going to have . 500 million. What are you going to do . What are you going to do . Youre faced with a 500 million hole in the bucket. And the next year it is a 700 million hole in the bucket. If you cut rainy day more, the rain holders, the people that create our race for our bonds, are going to torpedo us. We got issues. We got real problems. So i want to tell you this, i dont mean this in a bad way, because im the one that signed up to run for governor. But we got an 18 carat dog mess, dont we . We do. I didnt create the dog mess. I have inherited the dogs mess. And im telling you, you have to have real direction and real ideas and real cooperation together to be able to get out of this. Now, there is two ways two ways you can get there. And you got to forgive me, im not nervous, but i just sweat a lot. A lot. And i got a bad knee, and man does it hurt. But theres two ways you can get out of it, or a combination of ways. The first way is to just cut more. Cut more. Well, let me tell you just this. Just think about this just for a second. Are you willing are you willing to eliminate all of our state parks . Are you willing to eliminate all of our colleges and universities other than marshall and wvu . Shut them down . Are you really willing to close our tracks, to not have dogs, and to not have horses . Are you really truly willing to gut our seniors . Are you willing to turn our backs on our vets . I cant get there. I cant get you there. Because you know why . Because at the end of what ive just said, youre halfway home. What then are you going to do . What is West Virginia going to become . A Nuclear Waste site . Is it going to become the place where our nation sends all of its prisoners all of the time. Are we not better than that . Now, let me give you just this scenario. Heres an analogy. You got a factory. Were the factory. Youve got a factory. The factory has got a 100 million in the bank. The factory is 200 million upside down. Think about it. How we going to fix it . Here is what we can do. Take the hundred million away from the factory just like that. We got a hundred Million Dollars upsidedown. Then i tell you whats lets do next. Lets cut 25 of the people off. And then i tell you what else lets do. Lets cut the wages of everybody else there by 20 . And youre still not there. So i tell you what lets do, lets sell 75 of the equipment out of the factory. And then, we in here will go home and say, we did it. We balanced the budget. And you know what will happen . The sun will come up tomorrow, and well say holy horse whatever, the factory is dead. The factory is gone. So, thats where you are. Now, im a business guy. And i know this stuff. Now, let me just do this. Let me just tell you this. I truly believe that any cuts that are out there that somebody can bring me thats not going to just stifle us as a patient, im for. I am delivering to you 30 million worth of cuts. It wont hardly move the needle. I am telling you our decisions are not tough decisions, theyre catastrophic decisions. Now, i really want you to pay close attention, because i truly from the bottom of my heart hate tax increases. Hate them. I really do. But i want to show you the most painless way that i think you can get out of this mess. Now im going to come around here and write. Heres what you gotta do. You gotta cut all that we can possibly cut. Ive got to have everybody in this state pay a half of a penny in additional sales tax. There is no way around it. Ive got to have you pay instead of 30 in dmv fees, ive got to have you pay 50. The other thing is this, in trying to be fair, in trying to just be fair the people are here. Here is your people. Heres your people. Heres your businesses. Ive got to have our businesses theres lots of different ways to look at this pay 0. 2 of 1 in a tax that would be equivalent to a b o tax. It is a tax that ohio charges 25 or 0. 25. We would charge 20. And the other last thing i will talk to you about is ive got to have ten cents a gallon on gasoline. Now, im telling you, if you dont do this, youre dead. Youre dead beyond belief. Now, let me go back over here and come back well, before i go, im going to stay with you a second. On these two right here, this one and this one, i want to sunset them. Three years. I think if you do what i am trying to propose to you to do, you can get rid of this, and you can get rid of this in three years. Now, this deals with your roads. And this does too. Now, let me tell you this. I said a minute ago, i am adamantly against raising your taxes. We have got to find a way to not completely kill the patient. Now, look what happens. Three years, this goes away. Three years, this goes away. Ill tell you about this in just one second. I want to tell you one last thing. My goal jim justices goal as your governor is to do one thing, and that is to be the eighth state in this country with no income tax. None. [ applause ] 4 now, thats my goal. I hate like crazy to deliver to you what you have to do. Thats my goal. Now, remember, i said what i said about a half a penny. What would you rather do . Would you rather have your school plummeted even more. Your seniors just for gotten. Your vets forgotten. Your parks closed. Fairmont state shut down. On and on and on. Or would you be willing as a peoples to say, im willing to pay a half penny more. And im willing as a business to step up and pay 0. 2 of 1 . Because i love West Virginia. And were going somewhere. Now, listen here. If you pay ten cents more for gasoline and a little bit more on your dmv fees, thats going to turn into this. Heres what its going to do. It will turn into 2. 8 billion. Now, just stay with me. I have four wonderful people back here. And i want you to understand wholeheartedly what your ten cents and almost nothing in dmv fees that havent been raised fees, think about it. Almost nothing. I am asking you to do, to turn into that. And then let me show you what we can do. Yall bring this on down. Now, with us tonight is kevin coll, andy estep, brooke rumbaugh, and cody webb. Brooke and cody are students studying engineering at marshall and wvu. And andy and kevin already work with us in highways. If youll do this. You see those jobs. You see em . We can let every single road job that is on the books for one to three, and three to five years, tomorrow. We can let them all tomorrow. Think what this would do. Just imagine what it will do. Ill tell you what it will do. It will create 48,000 jobs in our state. 48,000 jobs. It will complete the network that we have got to do. It will make tourism explode in this state. Honest to pete. This is the 800pound gorilla in the room. Not me. [ applause ] now, theres two other things i want to do. And im going to sit because im sweating too much. I want to bid every one of these road jobs specifically labor intensive. And you know what i want to do from that . I want it to be our training ground. I want it to be our apprenticeship program. I want it to be something that will absolutely put our displaced miners that find a job here, or our young people that learn how to do something here. Thats an opportunity. Now, let me tell you what else i want to do. For all the successful bidders, i want to charge them a 5 construction severance, whatever tax that may be, whatever you want to call it, to the successful bidder only. And my bet is, people, like me in business, will sharpen our pencils like crazy and it wont cost us 5 , it may cost us 1 . And then you know what i want to do . I want to pool that money. That money right there is 2. 4 billion. If i could let every job tomorrow, it would amount to 120 million of 5 pool that i would have. And then you know what i want to do with it . I want to fix the drug problem. If we dont fix the drug problem in this state, it will cannibalize you. We have to have stiffer laws. Theres no question whatsoever, a drug pusher that rolls in here for you guys can roll. A drug pusher that rolls in here from detroit selling drugs, he ought to know that this isnt going to be a fun program if we catch him. We absolutely have to have a pathway to get our people that are hooked on these terrible drugs back into the community of the workforce. We have to do something with all the prescription drugs. No question whatsoever about that. But we have to have Treatment Facilities too. I would propose today if we do this, and those dollars flow, i would propose immediately building a facility in charleston, one in the eastern panhandle, and i know the veterans are waiting on the dollars to come from the fireworks tax and everything to build their facility in beckley. And i would like to skim off some of this money to help them be able to get that facility built. [ applause ] let me go to education. Guys, im a coach. Im in the school all the time. Weve proven how to be dead last. If you had gone around me and had these round Table Discussions and listened just listened. You see, thats what i did. And i just listened. You got a bunch of really, really sad unhappy campers. So i think we need gigantic education reform. Heres what i would do. I would submit a bill, and i will immediately, to eliminate any of the unnecessary bureaucracies that we have. We have got to return education back as much as we possibly can to a local level. I have put in my budget a 2 raise for all classroom teachers, and im ashamed im ashamed that i cant do more. Now, as far as testing, we are testing our kids totally to death. For what . I mean, heres the bottom line. Think about it. If we were knocking it out of the park you see im all results oriented. If we were knocking it out of the park, you could argue with me were doing the right thing. But for crying out loud, were dead last. It doesnt take a Rocket Scientist to figure this out. We got to be doing something wrong. Thats all there is to it. As far as the testing goes, i am going to propose we throw smarter balance in the trash can and we go to a. C. T. Testing. [ applause ] let me show you this. Think about a through f for our schools. We do it on a bell curve. Think about this. Who in the world comes up with this stuff . These get an a. These get an f. All the big meat and potatoes get a c. And we call out to the world and say come to West Virginia. Our schools are mostly all cs. I dont get it. Thats got to go. A through f is gone. Now, there is a beautiful lady here somewhere. Her name is toni poling. Shes our teacher of the year. If she would stand. She teaches at fairmont state. Now, also, wherever they are, the beautiful lady leah curry, who is the West Virginia president of toyota, and the gentleman, jim fawcett of highmark is here somewhere, that made all that possible as well. Thank you. Let me tell you this, i said throughout the campaign, i said, education can be a revenue producer for us, and everybody looks at me, well how in the world . Theres no way. Theres no way. Everybody wants to go where your kids are going to be educated the best. Businesses want to go where your kids are going to be educated the best. Weve got good teachers. Weve got low crime. Weve got good people. For crying out loud, we handcuff them every way coming and going. We got to stop that. And listen here. Maybe its a twist of words on revenue producers, but if we could create an education mecca in West Virginia, honest to pete, people would come and you couldnt beat them away. It would be a revenue producer. Now, i have to say, jim justice is no fan of consolidation. [ applause ] again, ill just tell you this. And ill ask you, are we this bad . Are we this desperate. You know, tell you what we could do. We could close every school in the state to save us some money, except we could have one. And we could have just one somewhere close to charleston. And well bus every kid four hours, no more than four hours one way. Were not that bad. We just have to have ideas. And weve got to have hope. Now, i truly mean this, one of the flood ravaged towns that i truly believe is coming back, and i can see it just like i can see it tomorrow. I hope and pray that we end up with a school in richwood. Now, let me tell you this. Our veterans are phenomenally important. Theyve given everything to us, havent they . Everything. Do we really take care of them . I mean, for crying out loud, we cant even maintain their cemetery. Weve got to do better. We have to do better. Now, ill be asking the legislature to approve the increasing of our garvee capacity. And this one before you go, oh, no, i want you to listen. Ill be asking the legislature to raise our tolls on the turnpike a dollar. Now, before you go crazy shooting at me, let me just say this i want i want, through your dmv fees, i want to charge everybody within our state eight bucks. Eight dollars. Then i want you to drive on the turnpike or whatever road that we would choose to toll for free. So i want you to pay eight bucks, and i want you to drive on our turnpike, wherever it may be, for free. Or whatever road we toll for free. You see, 77 of our money is coming from out of state. If we could raise it and make yours as West Virginians free, other than eight bucks now you may live in the eastern panhandle and i would say to you, we need you to come and visit princeton some point in time. Now, if you come, for y