Gov. Morrisey targets Virginia businesses with West Virginia tax pitch

TABLER STATION, West Virginia — Virginia’s move toward higher taxes and new regulations is sparking an interstate economic “fight” as West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey moves to lure businesses and workers across the border.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has promoted an “affordability agenda,” but a wave of proposed tax increases and regulatory changes from Democratic lawmakers has opened an opportunity for neighboring states to compete for businesses and residents.

Even though some of these proposals never reached Spanberger’s desk or sought his signature, the political climate prompted West Virginia officials to actively target Virginia’s workforce and employers, proposing lower taxes and fewer regulations as a competitive alternative.

Speaking to Fox News Digital, Morrisey said he plans to bring this speech directly to Virginia communities, including Loudoun County, to attract businesses and workers to West Virginia.

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Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger responds to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. (Steve Helber/Reuters)

“We will be spending time in Loudoun County and throughout Virginia to lay the groundwork and compare the direction West Virginia is moving. [and] the direction Virginia is going,” Morrisey told Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the announcement of a new 275-acre commercial tax district that he said will bring $200 million in economic investment to the three-county Eastern Panhandle region.

“The battle for our state’s future is won both at the kitchen table and in the marketplace,” Morrisey said, noting that the Tabler Station project he unveiled is just one of many similar action plans across the state.

The area is home to West Virginia’s nationally widespread apple industry, so much so that the local high school team is called the “Musselman Applemen.” The area is also home to major industrial facilities, including a major Clorox facility that advertises job openings to passersby on Interstate 81.

“While Virginia chooses to impose higher taxes on its citizens and job creators, West Virginia chooses freedom, fiscal responsibility and a tax climate that makes our state more competitive for business than our neighbor.”

Morrisey said he and his allies in Charleston’s large Republican majority are making all of West Virginia “open for business.”

He added that Berkeley and neighboring Jefferson County — which border both Loudoun County in Virginia and high-tax Washington County in Maryland — should be a model for what regional business and tourism should look like.

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Country roads bring West Virginians home across the Virginia state line near Charles Town, West Virginia. (Charlie Creitz/Fox News)

The governor also alluded to a growing trend of Washington, D.C.-area workers moving to West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, despite long commutes and limited rail service.

“The difference between Virginia and West Virginia couldn’t be clearer,” he said. “West Virginia is home to a large number of businesses that would normally locate in Virginia.”

Fox News Digital has contacted Spanberger for comment.

The Democratic governor said she did not sign several proposed tax measures that never reached her desk, although she did approve an increase in the minimum wage and higher employee contributions for family leave.

State Sen. Jason Barrett, R-Martinsburg — who developed the economic development plans that earned Morrisey’s signature — said more people are already coming to his area along the Virginia line to “spend money, support local businesses and actually contribute to economic development.”

Barrett’s new law includes a framework for the state to create special taxing districts in which a portion of state revenue is redirected to counties — because only the Legislature has the authority to implement tax structures. He promulgates

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The law states that redirected taxes cannot “have a negative effect” on the state budget. Barrett’s Law creates additional economic districts in Harpers Ferry, Henderson, Bridgeport, Princeton, Beckley and Wheeling.

West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey, left; Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, right. (Allison Joyce/Getty Images; Mike Kropf/Getty Images)

With the new residents and a larger tax base, Morrisey said he hopes areas like Berkeley and Jefferson will increase their visibility as a “travel destination” and for youth sporting events that Tabler Station District revenues would be used to create — generating even more financial benefits for West Virginians.

As Richmond sought to raise taxes, Morrisey signed a 5 percent across-the-board income tax cut in April and aligned Charleston’s tax code with President Donald Trump’s federal tax cut provisions.

Morrisey told the crowd at Tabler Station that this would not be his last visit to Virginia’s borderlands on the economic development front, separately adding to Fox News Digital that he predicted that statewide, 12,000 new jobs would have been created in the past six months, out of a total of $12.5 billion in private sector investment.

Spanberger, meanwhile, announced Monday that she would be taking her own “economic development” tour of Virginia, saying in a statement that “since day one, my goal has been to build an economy that works for every Virginian and delivers real results for families, businesses and communities.”

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Spanberger said his administration has already held visits to Harrisonburg and Fairfax to promote “bringing people together to shape a clear, forward-looking plan.”

While parts of West Virginia, particularly in the South, continue to struggle with long-term changes in the energy sector, the state’s population growth and rising revenues have enabled broad tax cuts, sharpening the contrast with neighboring Virginia’s push for new taxes and regulations.