Opinion
If you put a majority of self-described “fiscal conservatives” from the same political party in two rooms at opposite ends of the Wyoming Capitol, shouldn’t they be able to negotiate a reasonable supplemental budget?
In saner times, absolutely. But definitely not this year, during a session when:
- The House is controlled by the hard-line Freedom Caucus, which dictates that its members don’t compromise on any issues.
- The Senate and House are both obsessed with cutting property taxes even if it hurts local governments, schools or special districts.
- More attention is given to debating social wedge issues like who can use public restrooms than adequately funding public schools.
- One-quarter of the legislators have no experience in state government.
Make no mistake, the Legislature’s failure to pass a supplemental budget this year is a disaster, from hurting communities decimated by wildfires to disabled kids.
This is pretty routine stuff, or at least it used to be. After passing a biennial budget in even-numbered years, during odd-numbered years, like this one, the Legislature revisits the budget to adjust for emergencies, including cost overruns and unanticipated spending.
Gov. Mark Gordon and both chambers agreed the state has needs that can’t wait until next year. As usual, their priorities differed.
After reviewing budget requests, Gordon recommended a $692 million supplemental budget. The Freedom Caucus led the Joint Appropriations Committee to pare it to $457 million. Then the House and Senate each looked at the committee’s mirror bills and made their own adjustments. When the dust settled, the Senate spent about $109 million more than the House.
There were major differences, but none that would automatically doom an honest effort to compromise. Still, the Senate shut down the budget process last Wednesday. Both chambers had different ideas about a major property tax relief bill, which hadn’t been settled, but the impact of large tax cuts loomed over the session for weeks.
The Senate and House also disagreed about the best way to recover from 2,000 wildfires that burned more than 850,000 acres last year. Both wanted to spend less than the governor, but the House favored loaning landowners money to assist with rebuilding, while the Senate agreed with Gordon’s grant approach that wouldn’t require fire-impacted residents to pay the money back.
Now the Legislature will consider a bill creating a wildfire management task force that includes $100 million in loans for ranchers and $49 million in grants for conservation districts so both can pursue wildfire restoration projects. If it doesn’t pass, it may result in a costly special session.
The Senate amended its budget to include necessary higher Medicaid reimbursement rates for maternity and mental health care providers. Wyoming has seen four hospital maternity wards close in recent years, and increased Medicaid rates could attract and retain much-needed OB-GYN physicians. Meanwhile, a state that continually has one of the nation’s highest suicide rates needs more behavioral healthcare providers.
But the Freedom Caucus rejected spending for both. It was a potential sticking point in budget talks even though it cost only $2 million.
Compare that loss to the hue and cry from supporters of a $10 million state expenditure for a shooting complex near Cody that also wound up on the budget-cutting floor. Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, tried to stuff the funds into a water omnibus bill, but it lost by one vote.
Others tried to add funds from the now-defunct budget to other bills, even if they were not remotely germane to the bill. The Wyoming Constitution requires that each bill address only one subject, but several last-minute amendments were successful that violated it.
Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, took $550,000 for medical education and added it to a bill to ban diversity, equity and inclusion in all state agencies.
It’s an excellent program that should be funded. State grants would allow five University of Wyoming students per year to receive medical education and training through the University of Utah School of Medicine. But it has nothing to do with the anti-DEI bill.
This Legislature doesn’t worry about the constitutionality of many bills, including giving public dollars to parents to send their kids to private and religious schools.
Lawmakers sent Gordon a bill with $45 million a year in public funds to expand the state’s school voucher program to all students, regardless of family income. A day before the Senate nixed the budget, a Laramie County district judge ruled Wyoming has unconstitutionally underfunded its K-12 public school system.
Pumping state money into private schools is obviously going to hurt our public school system. The Senate reacted to the bombshell court ruling by putting $62.5 million for an external cost adjustment into a school “recalibration” bill, the full amount recommended by Gordon to provide raises for teachers and staff.
After the supplemental budget collapsed, the governor chastised lawmakers for rejecting his “carefully analyzed, well-vetted” budget.
His criticism was appropriately damning. “This Legislature has overlooked emergencies and ignored unanticipated expenses in a quest for political talking points,” Gordon said. “This is what occurs in a ‘no compromise’ environment.”
But the governor was also a factor in the budget’s demise. Gordon made property tax relief one of his pre-session priorities, even though the Legislature approved bills last year that included a 4% cap on annual increases, new exemptions for long-term homeowners, and expanded eligibility for a state refund program.
Those measures should have been reviewed and tweaked before taking more action. Wyoming already has one of the lowest property tax rates in the nation, and property tax increases have returned to historic norms in many counties.
But Gordon knew the Freedom Caucus would bring back a controversial bill he vetoed in 2024 that would have temporarily cut property taxes by 25% on the first $2 million of a property’s fair market value and “backfilled” $220 million in revenue lost to local governments, schools and special districts.
Gordon balked at replacing the funds, which he called unsustainable.
Senate File 69, “Homeowner property tax exemption” originally cut taxes by 50%, with no backfill. Numerous attempts to amend the bill to backfill all or some of the losses showed many legislators worried about the effect the bill would have on the state’s budget, now and in the future.
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, released a statement explaining why his chamber punted on the budget. “As fiscal conservatives, we know that spending hundreds of millions of dollars while debating massive tax cuts is not the conservative thing to do,” Biteman wrote.
The Freedom Caucus finally blinked and compromised with the Senate, approving a 25% cut on the first $1 million of fair market value with no backfill or sunset date, so it could be a permanent reduction.
Local governments and others blasted lawmakers for leaving them without new revenues to provide services like police, firefighters, road repairs, hospital districts and schools. Incredibly, the majority of legislators said cities, counties and special districts can just tough it out and learn to live on a budget.
So here we are, with many of the state’s needs unfunded until at least next year. There’s plenty of blame to go around, starting with the Freedom Caucus for seeing a major property tax cut as a populist move destined to keep it in power. But everything could backfire big-time if local essential services are slashed and voters appropriately direct their anger at the Legislature, not local governments.
The Senate could have negotiated with the House like it always did before and saved many budget items already approved by both chambers. A total of $4 million was earmarked for services for pre-K children with disabilities, but when legislators started scurrying for bills to add the money, none could be found that either body accepted.
There’s no excuse for treating a program to help disabled kids as collateral damage that there wasn’t time to fix. That’s shameful and a prime example of how the Legislature failed to do its job.
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