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CHARLESTON -- Making good on a campaign promise, a bill by State Treasurer Riley Moore to help West Virginians wishing to enter the trades made it through the House Education Committee on Thursday.
The committee substitute for House Bill 2001, the West Virginia Jumpstart Savings Program, was adopted Thursday afternoon, making it one of the first bills to head to the full House of Delegates.
The Jumpstart Savings Plan, similar to the State Treasurer's Office SMART529 college savings program and the WVABLE program for West Virginians with disabilities, would allow residents planning to enter a vocational program or trade to save money. The Jumpstart plan would allow a person to use their money saved through the program to cover the costs of work equipment, occupational licensing, certifications, and startup costs.
Moore, a former Republican House member representing Jefferson County from 2017 to 2019, defeated six-term Democratic State Treasurer John Perdue in the November 2020 election. Creating the Jumpstart program was a part of Moore's campaign platform.
"What we want is to try to minimize and reduce that risk, so the young people here -- our working population -- can make a better assessment of how they can do that with our help and incentivizing them to not see it as much of a risk, but as an opportunity," Moore said during testimony Thursday.
Before entering politics, Moore worked as a welder, earning an apprenticeship certificate from the C.S. Monroe Technology Center in Virginia. Moore related his experiences to committee members.
"At one point I was working in an open-pit mine operation where we're doing taconite and I would maintenance a lot of the mining equipment, whether it was front-end loaders, dump trucks, vents, things like that," Moore said. "I wanted to go off and start my own mobile welding business, where I could perhaps go from different mining locations or manufacturing facilities and have my own truck, my own rig, and go do that. It was really cost prohibitive."
Moore said no other state is offering anything similar to the Jumpstart program. Combined with the West Virginia Invests last-dollar-in certificate and two-year college degree program passed by the Legislature two years ago, Moore said Jumpstart could help incentivize a new generation of workers and entrepreneurs.
"We've talked to a number of national organizations and vetted this through them and there is no other state currently even contemplating something like this, but it's gotten a lot of interest," Moore said. "We've talked about it and we feel very strongly that this would be a real model in terms of how state government could help incentivize labor and small business growth and really the working individuals of not only our state, but our country. It's actually a really exciting opportunity."
HB 2001 was introduced on behalf of the State Treasurer's Office by House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay. Co-sponsors include Delegates Ben Queen, R-Harrison; Jason Barrett, R-Berkeley; Guy Ward, R-Marion; John Hott, R-Grant; Zack Maynard, R-Lincoln; Jeffrey Pack, R-Raleigh; Clay Riley, R-Harrison; Larry Pack, R-Kanawha; Ruth Rowan, R-Hampshire; and Steve Westfall, R-Jackson.