CHEYENNE—The Senate was considering whether to approve changes the House made to a property tax cut bill Thursday when the upper chamber’s longest serving member asked his colleagues to delay their decision by a day.
“It seems to me there’s a good deal of confusion over the facts of what was actually done [in the House,]” Casper Republican Rep. Charles Scott said.
When Scott and his colleagues sent Senate File 69, “Homeowner property tax exemption” to the lower chamber earlier this month, the bill proposed a two-year tax break by exempting 50% of every single-family home’s first $1 million of assessed value.
The House went on to consider 35 separate amendments to the bill, approving 10. Some of the amendments made sweeping changes. Others negated each other. Altogether, the work of the House left the bill clear as mud to some members of the Senate.
“Let’s start the discussion. Let’s go. We have many options. I will tell the members, we can do better. I think we will do better and I’ll leave it at that,” Senate Vice President Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, said on the floor. “But I think we should vote today — nonconcur.”
That’s just what the Senate did in a 6-25 vote.
While the decision was a rejection of the House’s work, it effectively advanced the bill and further separated it from a thick pack of legislation aimed at cutting residential property taxes.
It’s now up to a Joint Conference Committee to reconcile the Senate and the House’s differences and to bring a unified version of the bill back to both bodies for approval.
What the House changed
On Wednesday alone, House lawmakers filed 21 amendments to SF 69, forcing representatives to devote the afternoon and early evening to the bill.
“We are kind of flailing a little bit,” House Minority Floor Leader Rep. Mike Yin said on the floor as the day grew long.
Lawmakers were in the midst of reversing course after the House had significantly altered the bill just a few days prior. Twenty-one amendments is a high number for a non-budget bill, and even more unusual on third reading after the bill has already passed in its original chamber.
“So do we have a strong vision on where we want to see property tax relief go?” Yin, D-Jackson, asked. “I would argue that frankly we don’t.”
Less than a week earlier, the House was working with a very different version of the bill. An amendment brought by Rep. Ken Clouston, R-Gillette, and approved by a voice vote of the entire chamber on second reading took the Senate’s flat 50% exemption of a home’s value, and changed it to a 50% exemption on how much a home’s value increased between 2019 and 2024.
The change came after first responders, community colleges and special districts called for more targeted relief for homeowners in place of blanket cuts they say will compromise local services. And it earned the support of several Freedom Caucus members and allies, who hold the majority in the lower chamber.
By Wednesday of this week, however, they’d changed their minds.
“I stood up and spoke in favor of [Clouston’s amendment] and then the more research that I did on it, the less intrigued and the less enamored with it I was,” Rep. Ken Pendergraft said.
The Sheridan Republican brought an amendment to strip the Clouston amendment and largely revert the bill back to the Senate’s version.
Pendergraft said he’d come up with “a plan” and that he’d “shared that plan with some of my friends.”
But that didn’t sit well with several non-Freedom Caucus members, who’d picked up on this arrangement earlier in the evening. They included Rep. J.T. Larson, R-Rock Springs, who said “it kind of seems like half of the room already has the plan.
“And the rest of us are left guessing,” he said.
Others felt caught off guard by the reversal.
“I don’t know if I’m the only one but it sure seems like I’m getting yanked around a lot, and I get whiplash,” Rep. Rob Geringer, R-Cheyenne, said. “I’m not sure where we’re at with this bill.”
Ultimately, Pendergraft’s amendment stuck, as did two additional amendments from other Freedom Caucus lawmakers.
Rep. Tony Locke, R-Casper, added language to provide $225 million “backfill” to reimburse local governments for lost revenue for the next two years.
At the same time, Locke said alarms over dried up revenue for local services were overblown.
“The hyperbole about ‘oh my goodness, we’re going to cut our budgets at our local levels by 50%,’ that’s not anywhere near accurate,” Locke said.
Locke’s amendment funded the backfill with $100 million from the Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account — also known as the state’s rainy day fund — and $125 million from the general fund, which essentially acts as the main account for state programs and services.
The other amendment to stick came from Rep. Jayme Lien, a first-term Republican from Casper who was endorsed by the Freedom Caucus in August. Her amendment removed the bill’s sunset date. That way, Lien said, an exemption would remain on the books even if voters reject a 2026 ballot initiative.
Rep. Cody Wylie, R-Rock Springs, spoke against that idea.
“It’s going to be on the ballot. The people are going to decide. And now we’re saying, ‘OK, if you decide against it, we’re still gonna force feed this down your throat.’”
Earlier in the debate, Clouston had brought an amendment to reduce the $100 million portion of the backfill from the state’s rainy day account.
“Do we want to take $100 million out of that fund and help pay for backfill or are we going to put this responsibility on our counties and cities, and have them manage their budgets?” Clouston said.
“I’m in favor of this amendment, I don’t want to take money from my kids or grandkids,” he said.
Lien pushed back.
“I like firefighters and I like policemen and I like community colleges,” Lien said. “And this is just one way to make sure those all stay surely funded.”
Laramie Democrat Rep. Karlee Provenza said it’s more complicated than that.
“You can say that you like firefighters and police and all of our other services. I do, too. But liking them doesn’t give them jobs in a few years when our backfill is gone and our savings are spent,” she said.
The House voted 42-19 with one excused to pass the bill as amended, sending it back to the Senate.
What now?
Speaker of the House Chip Neiman appointed Reps. Locke, Scott Heiner, R-Green River, and Chris Knapp, R-Gillette, to the Joint Conference Committee that will negotiate the measure’s ultimate make-up.
All three are members of Freedom Caucus, which laid out its demands in a Wednesday night Facebook post.
The group said it would support a property bill if it included a 50% exemption for residential homeowners up to $1 million in value, and a 50% backfill to local governments.
“The people of Wyoming deserve tax relief, and they shouldn’t be made to suffer for it — especially then the Legislature stashed away $700 million into savings just last year,” it wrote.
Property taxes do not go to the state. Instead, those taxes fund local services. But lawmakers sometimes conflate state revenue streams, like the $709 million saved last year, with local revenue streams, like property taxes.
Meanwhile, Senate President Bo Biteman appointed Sens. Salazar, Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, and Mike Gierau, D-Jackson to negotiate on behalf of the upper chamber.
In a meeting with reporters Thursday, Biteman and Salazar both refrained from making any demands of the House.
“We are talking. And I would like to leave it at that,” Salazar said. “I think I’m very I’m hopeful that we will reach an agreement, but we’re at a point where I would just rather not discuss it.”
Both, however, reiterated their previous opposition to backfill.
“It’s not sustainable,” Biteman said. “It’s creating a new entitlement to local governments, and it’s coming out of our savings account, and it’s hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and it’s creating dependency on that money. We want to create less dependency on the state government, not more.”
The Joint Conference Committee had not scheduled its first meeting by press time, but Salazar said he expected there to be “some news” as early as Monday.
If lawmakers want the opportunity to override a gubernatorial veto, they’ll need to get the bill passed in both chambers by the end of the month.
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