The 68th Wyoming Legislature begins its budget session on Monday, Feb. 9. Lawmakers' main duty: Passing a balanced budget for the next two years. But that's a task easier said than done.
In the fourth season of Cheyenne Roundup, WyoFile's Maggie Mullen and Wyoming Public Radio's Chris Clements are back to review how this fast-paced lawmaking process works.
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Maggie Mullen: This is the Cheyenne Roundup, a weekly look at Wyoming’s legislative session from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile.
Chris Clements: Maggie! Like a phoenix from the ashes, you and I are back at it for the 68th Legislature’s budget session!
MM: That we are Chris, and we’re expecting it to be a bit of a showdown. It’s Wednesday morning, Feb. 4, and we’re here in the Wyoming Public Media studio.
CC: Yes, the belly of the beast, if you will. Before you and I make the trek over to Cheyenne for the legislative session, we wanted to give everyone an overview of what to expect, both in terms of how a budget session works and the big themes we’re expecting to see this year.
MM: But first, Chris, you actually did some digging into the origins of Wyoming’s budget process.
CC: That's right. I talked to Brian Farmer about that in December. He's a former research analyst for the Legislature's nonpartisan staff, and he's a school board lobbyist.
He told me we have to have a balanced budget here in Wyoming, which means that whatever revenue the state makes is what can be spent. In other words, we can't run on a deficit.
After the Civil War, the man who'd later go on to be our first territorial governor, John Campbell, helped rebuild Virginia, and during that time, he saw Southern states go into debt because of the war.
Brian Farmer: So Wyoming's budgeting process is created in that timeframe and with that mindset of: How can we be fiscally conservative? So creating the two-year process, in the beginning, literally was that the Legislature's only gonna meet once every two years. And so by not meeting frequently, they can't spend money that much.
CC: Later, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution. It allowed the Legislature to meet every year, with a budget session every even-numbered year like this year.
And I should say, unlike those Reconstruction-era Southern states, we are not in a fiscal crisis — we have a revenue surplus. Thanks, investment income.
MM: All right, very interesting, Chris. Before we go any further, how about a quick recap of how we got to this point in the budget process?
So back in November, Gov. Mark Gordon released his budget recommendations, and those effectively work to kick off the process and as a blueprint for lawmakers. Those recommendations are based on discussions the governor has with state agencies, and those agencies also get the opportunity to make their own case to lawmakers.
CC: And I think that brings us right to December, when the Joint Appropriations Committee, otherwise known as the JAC, began its budget hearings.
MM: So, that panel of lawmakers is the Legislature's primary budgeting arm, and it's the committee's job to make a budget bill for the full Legislature to consider.
For three weeks, the committee gathered in Cheyenne to hear presentations by state agencies, and that's where things got really interesting, isn't that right, Chris?
CC: I think that's where we all started to see some sparks flying, once the JAC started to mark up Gordon's proposal.
MM: We saw the committee strike funding for the Wyoming Business Council, the state's economic development agency, and forward a bill to the session that would dismantle it.
CC: We also saw the University of Wyoming's block grant request to be reduced by $40 million, which a provost told me could mean roughly 160 employees will lose their jobs if the budget passes in its current form.
And I should say Wyoming Public Radio is on track to be defunded from that block grant if the current budget bill becomes law.
But keep in mind, as I said before, the state is not in a fiscal crisis.
MM: That's right. In fact, Gordon recommended lawmakers stash $250 million in excess revenue in one of the state's permanent savings accounts.
CC: Right, and Wyoming Freedom Caucus lawmakers who sit on the JAC have said they want to bring the state budget “to a pre-COVID level of spending.”
Anywho, next, the draft budget will go to the Legislature and get even more input. During that process, if you want to weigh in on the budget, you can still contact your lawmaker.
MM: From there, the budget bill goes to both the House and the Senate, so it starts in both chambers as an identical bill and then gets worked simultaneously over the course of three days. Any lawmaker can suggest any amendment to the budget. So, as you can imagine, it doesn't take long for the two chambers to have very different-looking budgets.
That's where [joint] conference committees (JCC) come in. That's where lawmakers from both the House and Senate meet to negotiate a single version of the budget. If they're able to compromise, they then return to their respective chambers and put it to a vote by their colleagues. If that works out, the budget goes to the governor's desk.
CC: Maggie, you have a way of making it all sound so simple.
MM: Yeah, it's a total piece of cake.
No, it's really not. Things move really fast. They [lawmakers] often have these deliberations that go late into the night and the devil is really in the details.
CC: A big Freedom Caucus goal that we've heard as journalists has been that they want to drastically reduce state spending. But they've been vague about a specific target beyond pre-COVID spending, right?
MM: That's right. Plus, those reductions are expected to pass in the House, and that's because that's the chamber where the Freedom Caucus has a majority. It could be an entirely different story in the Senate. That chamber is a lot less homogeneous than the House, meaning you can't always predict how the body is going to vote on any given bill.
And as we learned in the 2025 session and some of the negotiations they had over property taxes, for example, the Senate doesn't take marching orders from the House. We also saw that in 2024 during the budget session.
CC: That's right. Back in 2024, the first Joint Conference Committee that was created to negotiate the budget failed to come to an agreement. Then House and Senate leadership created a whole new JCC to iron out differences with all new members.
Don Richards, the [Legislative Service Office's] budget administrator, told me that's pretty rare. He said that the last time that happened was in 1999.
MM: Yeah, it was quite the showdown just two years ago. Ultimately, the budget passed in the Senate by just two votes, and did so only after Gov. Mark Gordon urged lawmakers to get the job done. That's actually one thing I'll be watching this session.
I'm interested to see how the governor navigates what has already turned into a pretty controversial budget process. He usually declines to comment on legislation while lawmakers are doing their thing, but his office has indicated they have some pretty serious concerns with some of these cuts.
CC: That's right, and I've been wondering to what degree Gordon can put a stop to some of these cuts to the budget. Once the budget bill reaches his desk, he can line-item veto appropriations, but he can't add money back in.
So Maggie, something that's been on my mind, and I've been talking to lawmakers about this, is what happens if they don't pass a budget.
MM: If they don't pass a budget, we are looking at a special session. I think that's actually the biggest question going into this session. Will lawmakers be able to fulfill their one constitutionally obligated job?
What exactly a special session would look like remains to be seen. It would depend on a few things, but one possibility is that legislators would have to work within the usual parameters and start from square one.
CC: The whole Legislature doesn't necessarily need to stick around in Cheyenne to figure out a new budget. Don Richards told me about one other possibility.
Don Richards: You could have a newly created select committee on budget resolutions or something like that. It doesn't have to be the Joint Appropriations Committee, you know, the same group of members. You could send it to Management Council. You could send it to a select committee.
CC: Then once there's an agreement on the budget, the whole Legislature could reconvene for a short amount of time to pass it.
MM: And let's not forget about all the other non-budget bills. Lawmakers have those to deal with, too.
CC: That's right. We have, as of this recording, some 170 bills that have been filed for introduction. Remember, they need that two-thirds majority to even get introduced.
MM: One other thing to mention about that two-thirds requirement, the dynamics around that this year will be interesting to watch, particularly in the House. That's because while the Freedom Caucus has a simple majority, they don't have two-thirds. They're going to need to whip votes to get their bills past introduction.
CC: That's a really great point, actually. Just to mention a few of the bills that we've been hearing thrown around:
One would sell off state trust land for housing.
A whole passel of them would make big changes to elections and taxes.
And we've got some priorities from the Freedom Caucus about libraries, parental rights and the judicial branch.
Finally, we've got a bill that would put a constitutional amendment out to voters about when abortion is allowed.
MM: One other thing about abortion is how lawmakers immediately responded to the Wyoming Supreme Court's ruling in January.
The day of the decision, the JAC held a closed-door meeting to discuss shrinking the Wyoming Supreme Court from five justices to three.
Ultimately, the committee didn't take action, but we'll be keeping an eye on that and whatever else is to come in the 2026 budget session.
CC: Lawmakers will convene from all across the state on Monday and are tentatively scheduled to wrap up on March 11.
But Maggie, you and I live in Laramie and we'll be heading over to Cheyenne soon. What are you looking forward to over there?
MM: The session in a lot of ways is a culmination of both of our jobs. This is when we get to move out from behind our desks and our computers, and we get to be in the field. We get to spend four weeks in the Capitol. There's a lot of buzz in the Capitol and you also get to see your peers in journalism, so you get to spend time with the press corps, and that's something that I always look forward to.
CC: Absolutely, I feel like I don't get to see those people enough.
I'm also really looking forward to being able to interview lawmakers in person, and get coffee with folks and really find out what motivates them to do what they do.
MM: Yes, it's an exciting time.
Thanks for listening to the Cheyenne Roundup, your weekly look at what lawmakers are up to during the 2026 legislative session, from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile.
New episodes drop every Friday throughout the session.
CC: Make sure to like this episode and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
MM: Editing and producing by Tennessee Watson, Nicky Ouellet and Anna Rader.
Follow our ongoing legislative coverage at wyomingpublicmedia.org and wyofile.com. Thanks for listening.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
