CHEYENNE—In an unprecedented move, Senate leadership announced Wednesday night that the upper chamber would not pass a supplemental budget during the 2025 general session.
“After weeks of diligent consideration, the Wyoming Senate has concluded that now is not the time to increase spending needlessly,” Senate leaders said in a joint statement.
The decision raises questions about the future of disaster recovery funding after a historic year for wildfires in Wyoming, among other appropriations. It could also prevent more severe cuts being pushed by House leadership.
Several longtime lawmakers told WyoFile they were unaware of another time legislators had declined to pass a supplemental budget. By his own account, Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, said it may very well be the first time since the Legislature began crafting supplemental budgets in 1975.
In even-numbered years, lawmakers craft the state’s upcoming two-year budget, also known as a biennium budget. In odd-numbered years, as lawmakers have been doing this session, the Legislature works on the supplemental budget — which, as the name implies, supplements the financial plan already in effect.
This year, however, Senate leadership says it’s inessential.
“The 2025-2026 biennium budget provides the necessary funding to run the state, with only eight months until budget discussions begin, now is not the time for this supplemental agreement,” according to the press release.
In his budget recommendations, Gov. Mark Gordon asked lawmakers to prioritize funds for wildfire recovery, energy projects, emergency funds for local governments and reimbursement rates for maternity and mental health care.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus-stacked Joint Appropriations Committee responded by cutting approximately $235 million from his recommendations.
And after the House and the Senate completed their separate deliberations, the upper chamber had approximately $109 million more in spending than the lower chamber. The split paled in comparison to last year’s billion-dollar divide, but highlighted several philosophical differences that would have likely been difficult for the two chambers to reconcile.
As lawmakers developed a supplemental budget, they also advanced several bills to cut residential property taxes — each with a varying risk of drying up revenue for local governments. Property taxes fund local services including K-12 education, law enforcement and community colleges. And the risk of cutting off revenues prompted debate about whether or to what degree the state should reimburse those dollars.
Two chambers worked on their own versions of the budget independently, and the House lurched ahead of the Senate, promptly completing its budget presentations and appointing members to a committee to reconcile the budget bill differences. The Senate, meanwhile, only finished those tasks this week.
While the decision was not made lightly, Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, said in a statement that his chamber “determined that we need to hold off on the budget until we know what the impact of historic property tax cuts and the successful rightsizing of the federal bureaucracy by the new administration.”
Funding for certain items would be “covered in stand-alone legislation without adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the budget,” according to a press release.
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, echoed that thought to WyoFile late Wednesday.
“But at the same time, it’s certainly appropriate for the governor, if he chooses, to have a special session to address wildfire funding,” Rothfuss said, since Gordon is permitted to hold a single-topic special session.
Last year’s historic wildfires, which burned more than 810,000 acres, completely wiped out the state’s firefighting coffers.
Rothfuss also pointed out that the external cost adjustment for education, for example, is already in another bill. Education funding came into sharp focus Wednesday when a judge ruled Wyoming unconstitutionally underfunds schools and ordered lawmakers to address the issue.
“We’ll be OK without [the supplemental budget],” Rothfuss said. And Senate leadership’s decision “is a rational approach as an alternative to just trying to dramatically cut the budget.”
Harshman, who among other lawmakers has raised concerns about the Legislature depleting the state’s savings and education funding, told WyoFile late Wednesday that while the move to hold off on a supplemental budget is unusual, it may be prudent.
“We should probably push pause to make sure this is what the people of Wyoming want,” Harshman said.
This is a breaking news story and may be updated.
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