Feb. 9—CHEYENNE — The Wyoming Legislature is about to head into its budget session, and lawmakers won’t have a safety net of one-time federal dollars to fund services and programs as they did in the previous budget cycle.

Legislators will walk the line between additional savings and allocating money for services and programs such as health care and education.

As happens every year, the Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) and Gov. Mark Gordon didn’t see eye to eye on every line item in the budget. Members of the JAC finalized their markups of the budget on Tuesday, and Rep. Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs, said the final budget reduced the governor’s proposals by more than $100 million.

However, Stith also said the budget allocates “very generous funding” to the Department of Health and puts $45 million more into savings than what the governor suggested. The budget bill, as proposed by the JAC, puts more than $300 million into general fund savings and an additional $210 million into education savings.

“There’s a lot of vision in this budget,” Stith told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on Friday.

The JAC also set aside $200 million from the Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account (LSRA) to fund large energy projects.

“This budget does reflect quite a bit of trust that we have placed in the governor to use those funds in a prudent way,” Stith said, adding that the governor has the authority on his signature alone to spend that money, without needing action from the Legislature.

Because the governor has kept his word on signing onto energy projects that provide good return on investment, members of the JAC are willing to allocate money for Gordon to continue working on these projects.

“For Wyoming, $200 million really is a lot of money,” Stith said.

Gordon hosted a workshop in Denver this week centered around his Western Governors’ Association (WGA) initiative called Decarbonizing the West. There are large industrial companies that are exploring methods of carbon capture and sequestration, or injecting carbon dioxide into the ground, in an effort to reduce the release of CO2 into the atmosphere. Stith said there’s a proposed carbon capture and sequestration project in Campbell County that could benefit from these funds.

The $200 million includes eight additional positions in the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality to ensure the approval of air quality permits for large industrial projects, making sure these projects aren’t delayed.

Additional amounts would go toward research and development projects through the University of Wyoming.

Overall, the main priorities of the budget are maintaining health care services, funding K-12 and higher education, investing in large energy projects and expanding the property tax refund program.

The size of the budget, Stith added, is just over $300 million less than the current biennium budget. Nothing was put into savings in March 2020, he said, which was the last budget session right before the pandemic hit — the last “normal” budget the Legislature had passed.

Although the total general fund spending for this budget totals $3.5 billion (compared to $2.97 billion in 2020 for general fund spending), increased rates of inflation over the past four years mean this year’s budget has relatively the same amount of purchasing power.

Gordon’s priorities

Each year at the beginning of the legislative session, Gordon gives his annual State of the State speech to highlight his priorities for the upcoming session. Communications Director Michael Pearlman, who works in the Governor’s Office, said Gordon’s top priority this year is to encourage the Legislature to pass the budget.

“A lot of his priorities are tied into budget requests,” Pearlman told the WTE. “To move the state forward, the most critical thing that the Legislature needs to address and deal with is passing the budget.”

Wyoming’s economy is “strong, but fragile,” Pearlman said. A report by the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division shows that the Cowboy State’s economy continues to rebound since the pandemic but remains a little behind the U.S. average.

The state’s job market and gross domestic product numbers have increased, but pressure from the federal government’s environmental policies poses a threat to Wyoming’s natural resource production, he said. Because a significant portion of Wyoming’s budget still depends on coal production, Gordon stresses the importance of putting more money into the state’s savings accounts.

“All of our energy development dropped in 2020,” Pearlman said. “We were facing massive budget cuts because we were worried (about that) revenue.”

The other major factor impacting this year’s budget is the absence of one-time federal dollars that saved programs and services from being cut in the past. This was an issue noted by Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, during a JAC meeting in January, when discussing funds for the Department of Health.

Gordon’s specific priorities for the budget include funding for the property tax relief program, Wyoming Innovation Partnership (WIP) and fully funding Mineral Royalty Grants.

WIP is a passion project of Gordon’s that “specifically targets the state’s economic future.” Gordon is asking the Legislature to fund $30 million for the third phase of this program, which he said is essential for the program’s “sustainability and solidification.”

Priorities of the Democratic Caucus

There are seven Democrats among Wyoming’s 93 state lawmakers. The Democratic Caucus released its own set of priorities for the upcoming budget session earlier this week. They include education, job training, improving health care access, property tax relief and protecting public lands.

“Wyoming is a great state, but we’ve struggled to figure out how to diversify our economy for the next generation,” said Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, in a news release. “The Legislature’s Democrats are ready to work hard in 2024 to give our constituents what they need and demand right now, and also to build a better future.”

Yin serves as the House Minority Floor Leader, and his counterpart in the Senate is Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie. In the same news release, Rothfuss said it is time for lawmakers to address these priorities with a better sense of civility and cooperation.

“The level of bickering and dishonesty is really at an all-time high in politics, and the Wyoming Legislature is, unfortunately, not immune to that,” Rothfuss wrote in the news release. “But as Democrats, we believe strongly that the people of Wyoming can get together as neighbors and find solutions to take part in that kind of thing. We will always put what’s best for Wyoming first.”

Democratic lawmakers called on their colleagues in the Legislature to quit “hiding away” money into the state’s savings accounts and “give Wyoming taxpayer money back to the people.”

“We need to be honest about our tax structure and what some of the proposals on the table right now would do to education, law enforcement, local hospitals and local government if they passed,” Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, said in the release. “We have a shared responsibility to ensure Wyoming remains a place where hardworking people can afford to raise a family, where our children can succeed, and future generations can thrive.”

The Republican caucus did not respond to a Wyoming Tribune Eagle request for comment on its budget priorities.

Wyoming’s 20-day budget session begins on Monday, after the governor’s State of the State speech.

Hannah Shields is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s state government reporter. She can be reached at 307-633-3167 or hshields@wyomingnews.com. You can follow her on X @happyfeet004.