Airplanes and Helicopters

Increases in taxes, budget surpluses and now the WV Dept of Administration is requesting bids to purchase or lease new airplanes, a King Air and a Caravan. The state is also seeking to purchase 2 new helicopters. While there may be justification for all of this in terms of usefulness, the question becomes: how can we raise taxes in front of a $300 million budget surplus, than go out and purchase new airplanes.

We have a $300 million surplus, but we are going to have a special secession with tax sequences to give state employee’s raises. Perhaps the employees deserve a raise and there appears to be money available to make that happen. Why then, is there so much talk of more tax increases. If we can afford million of dollars for new airplanes, maybe we are not getting the whole story.