workplThe new year is off to a busy start. I spent the last week traveling around West Virginia talking about my priorities for the 2016 legislative session that begins today. I traveled to Huntington, Bridgeport, Bluefield, Charleston and White Sulphur Springs. I also gave an extensive interview to the Beckley Register-Herald about the need to deal with the budget crisis facing our state, which is my top priority along with passing legislation to help foster economic growth and create more jobs.
With West Virginia facing a $353 million budget deficit, we need to do more than just stabilize the state budget without raising taxes on hard working families and businesses. We must also use this as an opportunity to modernize our state government. The current budget the Legislature passed last March was based on revenue projections of $4.3 billion. Driven largely by dramatically less-than-expected collections from severance taxes, we are currently experiencing a $353 million shortfall -- which only will continue to grow as the ripple effect from a reduction in income and sales taxes are realized throughout the next five months.
I applaud Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin for making the necessary spending cuts to deal with our budget crisis now. However, with our economy on a downward spiral and little relief in sight for the short-term, we must be realistic about revenue projections for the year ahead. The Legislature must work from the proposed projections the Governor provides in his budget, but in reality we are looking at a budget of $3.8 billion -- $500 million less than the current year.
There has been much discussion made of businesses tax reductions the Legislature enacted during the past decade and the elimination of the regressive food tax on our current revenues. Now is not the time to take a step backward and simply raise taxes that will eliminate our opportunity to grow our economy and solve our state budget crisis in the long-term. From 2006 to 2015 the state's general revenue budget grew by $653 million -- a whopping 18 percent. Without a Governor and legislature working together to modernize government and make it work better for the size of population we now have, we will not solve our problems.
In order to increase our revenues, state government must do its part to create an environment for our economy to grow again. My other focus during the session is legislation that seeks to improve our economy with a basic litmus test: Is it good for West Virginia? And, is it good for West Virginians? To this end, I will work with the Legislature -- hopefully in a bi-partisan manner -- to reform our state employment laws including passing a workplace freedom bill, reforming our education system including allowing for Charter Schools in West Virginia, and building the infrastructure of the future by creating a new system for the state to develop the middle mile for broadband in every community.
The next few months are going to be very challenging, but West Virginia is worth fighting for.