Week two of the budget session is when all lawmakers get their first chance to weigh in on how much, and on what, the state will spend over the next two years. Until this point, only a small group has shaped the budget.
WyoFile's Maggie Mullen and Wyoming Public Radio's Chris Clements break down the process, from the Senate's Big Beautiful Amendment to the House's late nights and tense debates. They've got the latest on Checkgate, too.
Maggie Mullen: This is the Cheyenne Roundup, a weekly look at Wyoming’s legislative session, from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile.
Chris Clements: I’m Chris Clements with WPR, and you are Maggie Mullen of WyoFile.
MM: Last I checked. And we’re here in Cheyenne on Friday and it's around 10 in the morning. The House and Senate each started working their respective versions of the state budget bill this week and they’re landing pretty far apart.
CC: We’ll get into the drama in a minute, but the TL;DR [too long; didn’t read] is that the House is sticking closer to the stripped-down bill the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) sent them, while the Senate brought back a lot of funding [that] agencies had requested and the governor had recommended.
MM: The Senate made quick work, at least on second reading on Tuesday. But the House’s debate dragged into the wee hours a couple nights this week.
CC: Things got weird. Representatives were singing and square-dancing on the House floor at one point. Folks were incorporating sound effects in their debates on the budget. Lack of sleep does something to you. And me. I’m barely upright.
MM: You’re telling me. But before we wade too much further into the budget, let’s update everyone on Checkgate.
Last week, Jasmine Hall from the Jackson Hole News&Guide and I broke the news that a conservative activist from Teton County hand-delivered checks from another donor to at least one lawmaker on the House floor after they’d adjourned for the day.
Since then, the House and Senate have launched their own inquiries into what happened, and the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office launched a criminal investigation.
CC: These inquiries have really thrown a wrench in each chamber’s schedules. But lawmakers are taking action to prevent what happened from recurring.
The Senate banned campaign contributions in their chamber. The governor banned it in the areas controlled by the executive branch. And the House banned it, too. They call that a rules trifecta, Maggie. Consider the pot stirred.
MM: Then there was Wednesday night. That’s when Speaker of the House Chip Neiman revealed for the first time his involvement in the controversy.
Here’s what he told the chamber: Rebecca Bextel, a conservative Jackson activist, called Neiman in January and told him that a Teton County donor appreciated his voting record and wanted to financially support Neiman in his reelection campaign. Neiman said he welcomed the support and expected Bextel to mail the check.
Then on day one of the session, Neiman said Bextel walked into his speaker’s office a few feet from the House floor and handed him a check for $1,500. Neiman said it wasn’t a bribe and he, nor any other lawmaker who accepted a check from Bextel, did nothing wrong.
Chip Neiman: Now there it is. That’s the whole story. You got the motive. You got who did it. You got where I was standing. We were not on the floor. We were in my office. Some would say, ‘Oh, that’s worse yet.’ Show me in the rules. Show me the law that was broken.
CC: Neiman’s remarks really reveal he knew about the checks from day one, even as he challenged a Democratic lawmaker who broached the subject of the checks on the House floor.
MM: It also raises questions about whether Neiman should have recused himself from selecting the seven-person committee now charged with investigating him and other lawmakers.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Art Washut, is a former police officer, and he asked to pause the committee's inquiry because he wanted to avoid interfering with law enforcement. But Neiman and 37 other lawmakers voted against it.
CC: That committee is likely to start meeting soon. We’ll both continue to report more on this story as more information becomes available.
MM: But let’s get back to the budget.
CC: Until this week, only a small group of lawmakers on the Joint Appropriations Committee have been able to touch this bill. Second reading is the first time all lawmakers have a chance to weigh in. So it’s a big process. There’s a lot of different ideas about what needs to be funded and by how much.
MM: Lawmakers rely on the amendment process to revise the budget bill. One by one, amendments get presented, debated and either voted up or down. Those amendments can vary in size and scope.
For example, in the Senate, 16 lawmakers sponsored a single sweeping amendment that Sen. Ogden Driskill dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Amendment,” an apparent nod to the Trump administration’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.
CC: It restored most of the governor’s recommendations, so $253 million back to the budget. That means more funding for the University of Wyoming, bringing back the Wyoming Business Council and setting money aside for litigation over the overtapped Colorado River Basin. Those negotiations aren’t finding an agreement amid a snow drought.
MM: That’s pressing, because as my colleague Dustin Bleizeffer reported, the states that rely on the river just missed a deadline to come up with some kind of agreement on shared water cuts.
CC: Although Gov. Mark Gordon said he and others are still holding out hope for a compromise, others say federal intervention is more likely, which will lead to a mess of litigation.
MM: Just to note, the Senate’s amendment also brought back state funding for Wyoming Public Media. But that's not the case in the House. Chris, let's talk about what's happening in the lower chamber.
CC: While Senate lawmakers managed to get through second reading amendments soon after their lunch break, the House went ‘til 1:30 in the morning. I also had dinner delivered to the Capitol and watched them go into the wee hours.
Honestly, I think we’ll need to do a separate podcast on the ghosts of the Capitol, Maggie, because I saw some weird stuff. You ever watch the X Files?
MM: Not yet, but it sounds like I might need to.
CC: That’s what I’m talking about.
Anyways. I counted 122 second reading amendments. That’s the most in either chamber in at least 20 years.
MM: No wonder it took the House so long. One of those amendments was similar to the Senate’s Big Beautiful Amendment. But it failed 35 to 26 with one excused lawmaker.
From there, the House took a piecemeal approach, which is the more common approach to amending the budget.
CC: The debate occasionally got quite passionate in the House, like when Rep. Martha Lawley of Worland talked about the JAC’s process.
Martha Lawley: There's numerous times that they didn't have any conversations with agencies about the cuts they planned, or listened to agencies about the impact. That's what I needed to know. That's the kinds of things for me to evaluate the cuts that I didn't get.
CC: And there was passionate debate about the Business Council, the state’s primary economic development agency. Rep. JD Williams of Lusk talked about stories his constituents shared with him about how important the council was.
JD Williams: All three [stories] were … middle-aged ladies who came to me and described their small business endeavors, their successful small business. [They] related to me how they would never have succeeded without the support of the business council. That's not financial support as much as it is coaching, help making a business plan, entrepreneur advice.
CC: But Rep. Ken Pendergraft of Sheridan, a member of the Freedom Caucus, had a different take.
Ken Pendergraft: When I look at what this agency has become, in light of what I believe it should be, there's virtually nothing salvageable.
MM: Altogether, just 10 out of the House’s 122 amendments stuck. Only a few increased spending, including one to grant a $6 million funding request from the University of Wyoming athletics department. They also approved an amendment for about $296,000 to hire two additional full-time employees for the State Fair.
CC: That brings us to Friday, today. Third reading, the final chance for the two chambers to change their separate versions of the budget. The House was forced to move their third reading back, after second reading spilled into Wednesday.
MM: In response, the Senate laid its budget bill back to try to keep the two chambers on the same schedule. That chamber will consider 51 amendments, which is more than twice the number they had to consider on second reading.
At least a few of these amendments appear to be trying to bring back some of the cuts the JAC had approved. For example, Sen. Dan Laursen has an amendment to cut UW’s funding by about $27 million.
CC: My colleague Jordan Uplinger has been following that, too. He told me a contingent in the Senate spoke up in favor of those JAC cuts, like Sen. Lynn Hutchings of Cheyenne.
Lynn Hutchings: Yes, we have the right to go in and make this budget whatever we want. But we have to remember that the other side [the House] has to agree.
CC: The outcome of that agreement is looking more and more tenuous. Meanwhile, folks like Sen. Tara Nethercott of Cheyenne trumpeted the decision to restore Gov. Mark Gordon’s proposal, at least for now.
Tara Nethercott: The sponsors of that [Driskill’s] amendment, and the people of Wyoming, have spoken. And they said fund our future. And they said fund our only state university. They said these cuts were punitive and retaliatory.
MM: We’ll see if the House can move through budget deliberations a little bit more efficiently than they did on second reading. They’ve still got 119 amendments to get through. House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Bear told lawmakers they should expect to work on the budget Saturday if they can’t get through all those amendments Friday.
CC: Reminder: we’re recording this on Friday, and things might change, but if both chambers get through third reading as planned, the next step could begin. That would be a Joint Conference Committee (JCC), which is made up of members from both chambers. They’ll start ironing out differences between the two different budget bills. And if they can’t come to an agreement, then a new JCC could be appointed, with all new members.
But Legislative Service Office (LSO) staffer Don Richards told me that if, for instance, that first JCC committee fails to come to an agreement this year, [then] —
Don Richards: The second and any successive committee, third, fourth, fifth, have a free committee, which means they can go into any agency, any budget, and make increases or decreases as they see fit in order to come to an overall agreement.
MM: As mentioned, the House might continue its third reading work through Saturday. Obviously, we’re recording this on Friday, so we will cover those deliberations in next week’s episode.
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, Anna Rader and Jordan Uplinger.
Chris: Follow our ongoing legislative coverage at wyomingpublicmedia.org and wyofile.com. Thanks for listening.
