Some lawmakers wore red jackets on the third day of the Joint Appropriations Committee’s two-week marathon of hearings on the state budget.
Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette), former chair of the further-right Freedom Caucus, said it was to bring public awareness to what he called a trend toward an increase in spending without an increase in revenue.
“When we first started as appropriators a little over a year ago or almost a year ago, we did the long term forecast and at that time, four years out, education funding and school foundation program looked to be about $686 million in the hole in the red. And we're looking at where we're at today with [public school funding] recalibration and increased expenditures, not increasing revenues, and now we're looking at a four year out forecast being $800 million in the hole,” he said. “We don't want to put ourselves into a fiscal issue four years down the road. So we'll be working very diligently through this budget and every other piece of work that the Appropriations Committee does in order to get us into the black, and then we will be able to get rid of these red jackets.”
Joining Bear in wearing red were Rep. Bill Allemand (R-Midwest), Rep. Scott Smith (R-Lingle), and Rep. Trey Sherwood (D-Laramie). Rep. Abby Angelos (R-Gillette) was not dressed in red attire, despite wearing one in a previous committee meeting.
Enterprise Technology Services
The committee heard first from Enterprise Technology Services (ETS), which acts as the state’s digital services and support agency.
ETS is asking for $15.7 million on top of the roughly $130 million needed to run the agency. The biggest bucket of the extra request money is to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, meaning the agency will update state webpages with assistive services like screen readers, keyboard navigators and captions.
ETS is also asking for funds to make systems more secure. One example: maintain its “statewide messaging system.” That’s a communication network used by 30 agencies to relay public updates, road closures and committee hearings.
ETS also wants to see more state agencies adopt the Centralized Citizen Authorization System, a single secure credentials system, as opposed to each agency having its own login system. Currently, only the Wyoming Department of Transportation uses the system as a part of its MAX software.
Perhaps most routinely, ETS also requested $198,877 to continue payments for services like Microsoft Excel, Google Workspace and other common office programs. Bear asked to see a report on cost saving and consolidation efforts in the interest of agencies using one main office program before the budget session begins.
ETS Director Jeff Klein also advocated for his agency to take on a more active role in helping different levels of government work across agency lines. He requested funding to standardise GIS maps for counties and to reclassify three positions to executive or senior level as “business relation management service,” though he said more work could be done with “like 5 or 6”.
“We're not having intentional strategic technology discussions on a regular basis with agencies, and this is very much so a passion project of mine,” Klein said.
“I view it more as a utility, almost like you guys are a utility to help the agencies with their digital platforms and digital work. So my question is, do you believe that that scope is still fully protected and in play, or is there some creep?” Rep. Jeremey Haroldson (R-Wheatland) asked.
Klein said he still sees ETS as a service for other agencies.
“Agencies still can own their technical environment and things like that. We'll take the administrative burden of dealing with the contractual, the RFP [request for proposal] and stuff like that. So … is that growing that, taking that responsibility from the agencies? I like to look at it as trying to take some of the technical administrative burden off of the agencies,” Klein said.
Department of Administration and Information
The committee spent much of the afternoon meeting talking with the Department of Public Administration and Information (A&I), which is requesting an added $191.6 million to its nearly $967 million standard budget.
“Our primary function is to support all the agencies,” said A&I Director Patricia Bach. “We're similar to budget Enterprise Technology. We're an enterprise system.”
In that similar vein, many of A&I’s budget requests are to maintain operations and responsibilities. This includes funding to keep the Capitol building open once a day on the weekend, upgrading the department’s billing system, acquiring Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certification for trades work, and technology replacement requests for items like microphones used in state buildings.
Lawmakers had few questions for the more routine requests and upgrades. Instead, their focus was directed toward work conditions and pay tables.
Sen. Tim Salazar (R-Riverton) and Rep. Bear spent time broadly questioning what kind of impact telework, or work from home positions, have had on the state. Salazar asked Bach if the state saves money through telework. Bach said the answer wasn’t straightforward.
One potential benefit is saving money on the number of buildings leased by the state, but Bach added political changes can have an impact.
“The concern there is what happens if the tide turns and you need to bring people back,” said Bach. “There's nowhere to put them. So that's why you don't make as much up in leasing as you would hope.”
Bear asked about turnover data, adding “turnover is a measurable thing. If you've improved morale, it should affect turnover. You've been doing this [telework] since 2021.”
“We were nearing the highest turnover rates I've seen in the 26 years of my career with the state of Wyoming,” said A&I’s Erin Williams. “We hit our peak highest in 2021 to 2022, which was 24.8% … 2023 to 2024, that was the lowest our turnover's been in many years, down to 16.3%. We're now kind of seeing it trend back up.”
Williams added other states and competition in the job market were a threat to retaining talent.
“We were starting to see in our exit interviews that employees were leaving from Department of Audit here in Wyoming. They were going to work for the Department of Audit in the state of South Dakota or the state of California, making more money – not just strictly because of teleworking. That was a piece of it, but it was also the lower salaries we had. So we've really used that combination of the phase 1, phase 2, phase 3 raises that the Legislature have helped us to get compensation back up,” Williams said.
A&I suggested moving off the 2022 paytables to the 2024 paytables so public sector employees would be offered more competitive pay. According to A&I, using the 2022 rates means state employees for highway patrol and criminal investigation lag 12.5% behind the 2024 rate, nursing pay is 21.2% behind, and attorney pay is 17.9% behind.
“If we were to obtain the approval on this increase that we're asking for, it would greatly benefit our entry level, lower level employees coming into the state,” said Williams. “But, as you're all aware, driving down the street, McDonald's is offering $17, $18, $19 an hour … Bottom line, we're still pretty far behind on our salaries.”
Bach told Bear that in the private sector, companies like Meta, Google and Oracle were taking blue collar jobs away from public sector employment.
“They're taking all our trades guys for a lot of money. They're not taking IT, because IT is working from Silicon Valley. They're teleworking into Meta. So what they are taking are trades folks, custodians, you know, half of my agency,” Bach said.
The Joint Appropriations Committee will continue hearing budget requests from state departments on Thursday, hearing from the Department of Corrections, the Wyoming Business Council and the Wyoming Retirement System.
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.
