At a press conference on Oct. 30, members of the further-right Wyoming Freedom Caucus said they want to use the upcoming legislative session to bring the state’s billion-dollar budget “to a pre-COVID level of spending.”
By and large, the caucus didn’t mention specifically what parts of the budget they’d like to cut. The biennium budget for 2025 and 2026 contained $3.1 billion in appropriations. This comes as the state Legislature is gearing up for a budget session in February.
“ Theory-wise, there's some things that we're concerned about, and we've been critical of the governor when it comes to corporate welfare,” said Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette), a caucus member who co-chairs the Joint Appropriations Committee. “You're going to see efforts to curb that in our spending. Obviously, the Department of Health is the biggest part of the budget, and what we're doing there is a ground-up approach and so more of a zero-base budgeting [process].”
In August, Rep. Ken Pendergraft (R-Sheridan) motioned to establish a state Department of Health panel under the Appropriations Committee because he said “aggressive legislative oversight and attention [of the agency budget] is warranted.”
Some lawmakers previously described the subcommittee in question to Wyoming Public Radio as having a DOGE-style mission to make the department’s budget, the largest in state government, more efficient.
“ If you're put in a position where you really need to trim things, you have to do it with as much knowledge and as much discretion and as much compassion as is possible,” said Pendergraft. “That, I can assure you, is my goal personally. I'm trying to look at it and say, ‘We pare things down a little bit,’ and say, ‘Okay, now, let's maintain this and let's do it very well.’”
Not all lawmakers agree that there’s a need for the cuts.
Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower) told WPR in late September he didn’t believe there was any way to return state spending to pre-pandemic levels without gutting some programs and agencies that Wyomingites rely on.
“ I challenge them to try to do that,” Driskill, who is not a member or ally of the caucus, said at the time. “It cripples the state government, and we're seeing this in the property tax [cuts] that happened last year, that non-realization that most of this spending and policy was put in place to help our constituents and citizens. We directly hurt them when we do these major cuts. It’s really reprehensible to me.”
In an interview with WPR this week, Gov. Mark Gordon echoed Driskill’s skepticism.
“ The ‘Club No’ folks, as they are trying to figure out how to cut all this stuff, are going to have to figure out who they're going to hurt in that process,” Gordon said. “That's not an easy task.”
At the press conference, Bear said the motivation to make big cuts comes from the fact that he “believes that state spending should not outpace your paycheck.”
“We want our spending policy, our saving policy, our investing policies, all to reflect a healthy economy in the state of Wyoming, as well as addressing the things that are happening at the kitchen table at home,” he said. “So with that, we are going to take this particular budget session, and we're going to do everything we can to limit the growth of government so that it doesn't outpace those paychecks.”
The decision to try and reduce the size of Wyoming’s budget comes during a week when state revenue forecasters delivered good news to legislators: For the first time in the state’s history, revenue earned from investments has outpaced all other income streams.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no need for budget reductions, Bear said.
“ Those things are good, but they are at the expense of taxpayers having to suffer large inflation increases and not seeing any kind of relief coming their way until just this year,” Bear said. “They're getting a little bit of relief from those property tax cuts. So how do we effectuate that in the future?”
As an example of possible property tax reduction legislation that might appear in the upcoming February budget session, Bear pointed to conversations taking place in the Joint Revenue Committee about replacing all taxation on residential property with a consumption tax, “like a sales tax.”
Asked about whether a caucus member would bring a bill in February to provide backfill funding to local governments struggling with reduced property tax revenue, Bear said he didn’t have an answer on that except for “ what we're doing in the Appropriations Committee right now on the sales tax and direct distribution.”
Specifically, the committee is looking into giving a portion of the sales tax that the state collects to cash-strapped local governments, Bear said.
For his part, Gordon said the biennium budget proposal he’s in the process of drafting will be a “lean budget.”
“ We want to make sure people have the tools that they need,” he said. “We want to make sure education is properly funded. We're going to do our best to take the fairly limited resources and make sure they're deployed in the most efficient way.”
Gordon also mentioned contending with the state’s loss of “unprecedented” federal funding provided during the Biden administration.
Towards the end of the press conference, Bear answered a question about how confident he was that the Legislature would be able to pass a biennium budget at all, given the failure of the body to produce a supplemental budget in the last session.
“ That's a legitimate concern, and it is in the back of my mind as well,” he said. “It was in the back of my mind the entire session. But … we have a constitutional responsibility to get that done. We literally can't go home until we get that done.”
WPR asked Gordon a similar question: If he thought lawmakers might call for a special session to address the budget on its own and leave the budget session for committee- and individually-sponsored bills.
“ The way our constitution is crafted, we all have a job,” he said. “The Legislature is supposed to figure out how to appropriate, and the executive executes. I don't have any comment on what the Legislature's going to do.”
Gordon’s proposed budget will come out in November. Lawmakers will hold hearings on it in December and January.
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.
