In opinion editorials, guest columns and social media posts, reactions to the first alterations made to Wyoming lawmakers’ budget bill poured in from across the political spectrum.
The first pass of mark ups made significant reductions to the $11 billion proposal made by Gov. Mark Gordon, notably to the Department of Health, the University of Wyoming and state employee wages.
Politicians air their views
Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette), who co-chairs the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) that drafted the bill, called the budget thus far “a sustainable fiscal path.”
Former House Speaker Albert Sommers wrote it was “a blood bath for Wyoming’s future.”
Another former House speaker, Tom Lubnau, wrote that legislators “voted to take a meat axe to the state budget.”
Gov. Mark Gordon issued a call to action for the state Legislature “to reject this demolition budget” in the upcoming session starting on Feb. 9.
And in response to Gordon’s comments, Rep. Ann Lucas (R-Cheyenne), a member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which has a majority on the JAC, wrote, “Wyoming families and businesses are being asked to tighten their belts amid inflation, rising costs, and economic uncertainty. It is reasonable — and responsible — to expect government to do the same.”
Those strong feelings stem from last week’s JAC meetings on the $11 billion biennial budget proposed by Gordon. Appropriators nixed funding to the University of Wyoming (UW), the state Department of Health, the Department of Family Services, some proposed state employee wage increases and more.
At the same time, Bear said they raised funding for certain state employees, like state troopers and snowplow drivers, as well as the Department of Health’s developmental disabilities waiver program.
The JAC also voted to defund and dismantle the state’s economic development agency, the Wyoming Business Council (WBC). If that happens, Wyoming would be the only state in the U.S. without such an agency.
Affected state leaders have their say
“The current legislative approach is to destroy an entity that's making a positive difference and send the programs to other state entities that are not equipped to do this work,” WBC Board Co-Chair Mark Law said in a press release after the JAC cut funding. “In a small state like Wyoming, less does not become more; the risk is that less becomes zero.”
UW President Ed Seidel said the state’s only four-year public university hasn’t decided what programs to cut if the JAC’s budget becomes law.
“The JAC’s vote -- coming at a time when state finances are not in crisis -- goes against Wyoming’s heritage of prioritizing access to high-quality education for its people,” Seidel wrote in an email to UW staff. “And it would force reductions in programs and services that are bound to be felt by the people of Wyoming, along with making it much harder to keep UW ‘as nearly free as possible.’”
Wyomingites share their thoughts
The Wyoming Business Council has come in handy for people like Ben Noren, a founder of the Laramie-based company CellDrop Biosciences, which is trying to heal tendon and ligament injuries with stem cells in microscopic droplets.
“ I am extremely disappointed, frustrated and just a little bit dismayed that certain people in Wyoming don't understand the business ecosystem and the importance of technical business and some of the … roadblocks that we have to becoming successful,” said Noren.
Noren noted the process involved in receiving a grant from the WBC, such as the Wyoming Small Business Innovation Research Match Grant Program, is “highly competitive,” and that it exists ”very much in the spirit of the competitiveness of the American economy.”
During a hearing with WBC CEO Josh Dorrell in December, lawmakers like Rep. Ken Pendergraft (R-Sheridan), a member of the Freedom Caucus, argued the council’s existence seemed to be in conflict with the principles of a free market.
“One of the criticisms that I hear often of the Wyoming Business Council is [that it is] picking winners and losers,” said Pendergraft.
But Noren said that philosophy ignores the regulatory hurdles businesses like his face just to get started, some of which come from the federal government. Biotechnology, he said, is “heavily regulated” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In essence, that means until CellDrop has a product that meets FDA approval, they cannot sell it and generate income.
That’s where the WBC comes in. Noren said CellDrop has benefited from multiple of its grants.
“ I admire the sort of rugged, free markets approach that they take. But the idea that you can just magic a technical business from nothing is incompatible with the red tape that exists at multiple levels of government that prevent people like me from actually implementing a business like mine in the state,” he said.
To Noren, getting rid of the WBC would mean Wyoming’s economy would become less diverse.
“You will be left with zero technical businesses at the end of the day, and no incentive to move a technical business to Wyoming of any size, but especially not anything innovative,” he said. “[That’s] because that innovation comes from these new … untested ideas, [and] there will no longer be an avenue to investigate them here in the state. And I think that is extremely detrimental.”
Economic development wasn’t the only element of state government that bore the weight of JAC scrutiny last week.
Lawmakers on that committee also voted to cut Medicaid rate reimbursement increases for mental health and OB-GYN providers from the health department’s budget.
“ I think those increases could have really been beneficial in helping with problems that we're facing as far as OB services in our state, and also with the need for more mental and behavioral health treatment in our state,” said Eric Boley, president of the Wyoming Hospital Association.
Boley cautioned that the exodus of obstetric physicians and maternity care in Wyoming is a multifaceted problem that can’t purely be chalked up to insufficient reimbursement rates. He mentioned other reasons for the lack of care, like the declining number of births as demographics shift. But he said the money for those physicians would’ve been “helpful” in addressing the problem.
“ It would be great if those [funds] were put back in,” he said. “I know that the [Joint] Appropriations Committee is taking a look at what benefit can come through the Rural Health Transformation funds, and OB is part of that. But the reality is, I don't know how soon we'll actually see that funding being rolled out and readily available to be deployed in our state.”
On a related note, JAC lawmakers also voted to attach an amendment to the health department’s budget last week that would prevent any dollars from the state’s general fund from being used by the agency for abortion or sex change operations.
Department of Health Deputy Director Franz Fuchs told Wyoming Public Radio that he expected the impacts of that amendment on the agency to be minimal.
That’s because the agency rarely uses funds for abortion, and does not provide sex change operations, he said. He added, in a handful of cases from the past few years, a Medicaid birth has gone awry and the life of the mother was in danger, necessitating an abortion.
If the budget becomes law as written, Fuchs said mothers in those life-threatening scenarios would be the ones required to pay for an abortion.
Procedural and medication abortions remain legal in Wyoming.
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.
