The State Journal printed an op-ed by West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney in response to the recent report by the Morgantown-based anti-coal group Downstream Strategies, suggesting that the industry costs the state more than it provides.
In his response, Raney took the report to task. “Instead of being a “definitive cost-benefit analysis” of the coal industry, the study actually looks only at the amount of taxes the industry pays versus the author’s “estimates” of what the industry costs the state’s taxpayers. The authors then further restrict their estimates by only looking at some of the taxes paid by the industry (completely ignoring the $90 million in property taxes paid by the industry to the counties) and seriously understating others,” Raney wrote.
Unbelievably, the study also left out the $3.6 billion the industry and its supporting vendors and service companies pay each year in wages. Clearly this report falls far short of providing a thorough look at the economics of the state’s coal industry,” Raney continued. The column has also been submitted to other print publications around the state.