Wyoming legislative leaders will be looking at budget cuts and using reserve funds after receiving a report that state revenues have declined substantially.
The Consensus Revenue Estimating Group or CREG said that falling energy prices will lead to a decline of 617 million dollars in revenue from July first of this year through June of 2018. Senate Appropriations Chairman Tony Ross said they will need to look at targeted cuts and use some reserve funding to get through the next two years. He said lawmakers have planned for this day and that will help.
“We’ve been a very conservative state and planning for these things, so different than the 90’s…we do have some coffee cans we can utilize. The question is how to do that and to use it on what?”
Ross says his biggest concern is three years from now when they will need to make up lost revenue for education.
House Appropriations Chairman Steve Harshman said they need to cut back on spending, because forecasts show that the fiscal downturn may last awhile. But he added that there’s no plan to suddenly stop spending money on building projects.
“You know our infrastructure really deteriorated at the local level, state level, many of these buildings have not been touched in 50 years. We want to try to do the best we can and continue this investment that we’ve got going. So that’s it, I don’t think you can just say cut cap con and that’s gonna fix all of our problems. I don’t think that’s gonna be the case I think you will see a reduction in probably all parts of the budget.”
Harshman and Ross say that savings and limited spending should allow the state to handle this fiscal downturn better than it did in the 90’s. The Governor will use the projections to craft his budget and the JAC will holding budget hearings in December.
