Dear lawmakers,
On behalf of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia, and our activists across the state, I urge you to Oppose HB 4001, Creating TEAM-WV Corporation. This vote may be scored on our 2026 legislative scorecard.
To be clear, corporate cronyism is not within the proper role of government. Economic growth is not a government program to be implemented. To achieve the kind of prosperity West Virginians deserve, lawmakers must focus on the fundamentals—policies that are proven to create the conditions for investment for all, instead of a select few connected corporations. With billions in private sector investment already announced this year alone, the roadmap to growth is clear: lowering taxes to better compete with surrounding states, cutting needless red tape standing in the way of job creation, and making government live within its means.
HB 4001 significantly undermines those key priorities—and does so with the explicit goal of circumventing the fundamental transparency that West Virginians deserve.
While corporate welfare is bad policy, when policymakers do choose to pick economic winners and losers with government handouts that make the playing field uneven, there should at least be transparency and oversight involved. HB 4001 would create a dedicated funding stream for corporate welfare that will, statutorily, take place behind closed doors with little-to-no direct oversight from taxpayers or lawmakers. Instead of having economic development deals thoroughly vetted through the legislative process in collaboration with the executive branch, allowing citizens the opportunity to engage in the policymaking process by making their voices heard through their elected representatives, HB 4001 will allow for the arbitrary picking of winners and losers inside a black box devoid of accountability or sunlight.
At its core, this legislation forfeits policymakers’ duty to wisely steward economic development funds by delegating this constitutionally necessary oversight function to a government-created non-profit overseen by a board of unelected bureaucrats.
The bill fails to provide lawmakers with sufficient means by which to intervene in the non-profit’s decision making, allowing a non-governmental entity to put West Virginia taxpayers on the hook for deals lawmakers have never examined. While proponents of the bill claim it will “depoliticize” economic development, they will likely never know the extent to which business conducted by this entity was or was not politically motivated, due to minimal, after-the-fact reporting requirements. And neither will taxpayers.
This new non-profit will largely be left to police itself without any ethical constraints outside of that which the board may or may not apply. There is little doubt that this entity will quickly devolve into a self-fulfilling prophecy that is incentivized to propagandize purported returns on investment with deliberately asymmetric information relative to that which policymakers have at hand.
The fact is, relative to our surrounding states, West Virginia does not have enough money in state coffers to successfully engage at scale in the “race-to-the-bottom” that corporate welfare represents. But, as recently demonstrated with the announcement of the state’s first high-impact intelligence center, when policymakers commit to bold, transformational red tape reduction that gives the Mountain State a true competitive advantage on the basics, we can accomplish historic private sector investment—all without big government cash handouts.
While lawmakers should reject this legislation outright, at minimum, HB 4001 should be amended to subject the non-profit to the same open-meetings laws as other government entities—giving citizens and legislators sunlight on its activities. Further, this legislation should include a sunset provision to afford lawmakers the opportunity to comprehensively review the entity’s work while giving the non-profit real skin in the game, as opposed to an open license to rent seek. Business conducted by the entity should come before the legislature for a vote.
Instead of handing tens of millions of tax dollars to a government-created corporate welfare machine that exhibits little-to-no ability for taxpayer or legislative oversight, lawmakers should, instead, leverage those dollars to enact policies we know are proven to create prosperity for everyone. It is for these reasons we ask you to Oppose HB 4001, Creating TEAM-WV Corporation.
Sincerely,
Jason Huffman
West Virginia State Director
Americans for Prosperity
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