Wyoming Governor Matt Mead says the state will have to live with some 53 million dollars in cuts to Wyoming’s share of mineral royalties.
By law the state is guaranteed 50 percent of the revenues from mineral leasing on federal lands in the state. But federal officials ruled that those funds are subject to being sequestered.
“Does not look like we are going to have any legal recourse to stop that sequestration of those dollars. So our best hope, it looks like, is what the congressional delegation can do.”
The governor says Senator Mike Enzi is trying to get some of that money restored. Mead says the random nature of the sequester cuts and some other proposed budget cuts makes it difficult for the state to plan for the future.
“Cuts are needed at the federal level, it is the process that they went through, unlike the process that we went through here in Wyoming where it was planned out, we discussed it, and we made the decisions to avoid disruption…the sequestration seems to be maximizing on disruption and minimizing on good planning to me.”
Mead said that it is especially difficult to craft a new state budget without knowing what other federal money the state may lose.