Wyoming Business Council funding. Pay raises for correctional officers. The opportunity for school districts to get more help with suicide prevention education.
All were budget bill amendments that members of the Wyoming House killed this week.
The budget is currently undergoing second reading in the House and separately in the Senate. Second reading is often the first opportunity for all lawmakers to propose amendments and debate a piece of legislation.
Generally speaking, a day after a bill clears second reading, it goes through third reading, a similar process that allows for more amendments to be adopted and more debate.
The House’s second reading spanned two days working into the wee hours of the morning.
The state Senate, meanwhile, finished its second reading early by adopting an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower), that mostly aligned the upper chamber’s budget to Gov. Mark Gordon’s initial proposal.
On Thursday, the Senate opted to push consideration of more than 50 third reading amendments back to Friday to stay on pace with the House, which is a day behind schedule.
Many of the record 122 House second reading amendments filed for consideration by lawmakers would’ve moved the budget bill closer to Gordon’s proposal. Sixty-two were killed, and another 50 withdrawn by their sponsors. Ten were adopted by the House.
That means about 86% of all second reading amendments actually considered by the body were rejected.
Rep. Art Washut (R-Casper) said the volume filed for consideration could be “a red flag” for the future of the House’s budget bill, as it signals discontent about how the bill was crafted.
The tug of war between the two chambers largely mirrors what played out earlier this year, when the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) made sweeping cuts to Gordon’s budget proposal, which was based on requests from state agencies. Many of the JAC’s members belong to or are allied with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which has said its goal this budget session is to return state spending to pre-pandemic levels.
Wyoming Public Radio estimates that between official members, allies and endorsees, the Freedom Caucus has a majority in the lower chamber. The caucus’s power in the Senate is less clear.
But the growing daylight between the two chambers’ versions of the budget bill sets them up for tougher negotiations if they’re going to send a unified bill to the governor’s desk by the end of the session.
The 10 amendments the House adopted included corrections to existing statutes, additional employees for the state fair and additional funds for the Department of Environmental Quality’s Air Quality Division.
Wyoming Business Council
One amendment brought by Rep. Trey Sherwood (D-Laramie), a member of the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC), would’ve restored baseline funding to the state’s primary economic development agency, the Wyoming Business Council.
In its draft budget bill, the JAC had previously moved to defund the agency. The committee also forwarded a draft bill to the session that would’ve dismantled the agency and handed out some of its functions to other departments. That bill died, but other reforms remain in play.
Sherwood’s amendment would’ve kept the agency funded at the bare minimum needed to continue its operations in the 2027-2028 biennium. It included no increased funding, also called “exception requests.”
“By maintaining this standard budget, we are allowing the agency to comply with the pause, evaluation and redirection that we are considering in two pieces of legislation this session,” Sherwood said on Feb. 18.
Rep. JD Williams (R-Lusk) said the business council has a number of success stories, including some that haven’t received much attention from the media. His constituents made him aware of a few, he said.
“All three [stories] were … middle-aged ladies who came to me and described their small business endeavors, their successful small businesses,” said Williams. “[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.”
But those arguments didn’t sit well with many in the chamber. Rep. Ken Pendergraft (R-Sheridan), a Freedom Caucus member and fellow JAC appropriator, said he’d spent copious amounts of time with business council CEO Josh Dorrell about his agency, but that his thoughts on the primacy of the free market had been unchanged.
“When I look at what this agency has become, in light of what I believe it should be, there's virtually nothing salvageable,” said Pendergraft.
In the end, House lawmakers voted 27 to 33 to kill Sherwood’s amendment.
Suicide prevention in schools
The House also heard an amendment brought by former House Speaker Rep. Steve Harshman (R-Casper) that would’ve allowed school districts to use funds from the state Department of Education to help with suicide prevention education.
In explaining his reasoning for opposing the amendment, which contained no additional appropriations, Pendergraft echoed comments made to WPR by former Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette) last September.
“Most of you know that I am a former pastor, and once you start [down] that road, you never really get over it,” Pendergraft said. “I believe that suicide is a spiritual matter, and I don't want to see a secular entity get involved in trying to fix an issue that they're not equipped to fix.”
Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander) told lawmakers it would be great if all church leaders were trained in suicide prevention and mental health awareness. But that’s not the world we live in, he said.
“Our educators need to understand how to identify [suicidality], and our students need to identify how to identify it,” said Larsen. “They're going to talk to each other before they talk to others. I think that this is just trying to help. We heard our clergy people tell us how important this was.”
That was an apparent reference to a Feb. 12 press conference in the Capitol Rotunda hosted by faith leaders from across Wyoming.
At the press conference, one faith leader, General Presbyter Rev. Jeromey Howard, talked about behavioral health services and churches.
“ Our churches across the state are not able to meet these needs,” said Howard. “And I'm not just talking about the financial side of things. If you went to every clergy that I know and asked them to provide mental healthcare, we do not have the expertise to do it right. Friends, if funding is cut to the levels I have seen proposed, lives will be made worse.”
He said at one point, he was helping a man who was struggling with his mental health and who would frequently call Howard for support.
“ He found himself in a place that he could not get the resources he needed, so he turned to me,” Howard said. “Over the years, he would call me, and I would do my best to help him from a distance and find resources that he may need. Unfortunately, the day came when I came back from being away from my phone to find … messages asking for help. And I also found a message from somebody else, that he had taken his life.”
“The pain of not being able to be there for my fellow veterans is something I carry with me every day,” he said.
Harshman’s amendment later died by a vote of 28 to 31.
University of Wyoming
In the Senate, Driskill’s sweeping amendment restored all of the University of Wyoming’s (UW) standard funding cut by the JAC, and even added back some of the institution’s additional requests, like a $6 million ask for athletics the JAC had rejected.
In total, Driskill’s amendment restored nearly $61 million to UW’s portion of the state budget bill.
Amendments filed ahead of the Senate’s third reading suggest senators will debate many of the specific provisions on an individual basis, but they’ll be starting from a UW funding package that mirrors Gordon’s recommendations, not the JAC’s.
In the House, it’s a different story.
Representatives in Wyoming’s lower chamber originally filed 10 separate amendments to adjust UW’s budget. But as the negotiations wore on into a second day, six of the 10 were withdrawn.
Rep. Ken Chestek (D-Laramie), whose district overlaps much of the UW campus in Laramie, brought two amendments that failed. One was inspired by university students who wanted the state budget to include funding for a parking study. The other was shorter but far more substantial, re-adding the $40 million the JAC had cut.
This inspired significant debate between lawmakers. While some members of the Freedom Caucus defended their cuts as a response to specific curricula they want removed, Democrats and moderate Republicans raised issues of academic freedom. Others were dissatisfied that the $40 million appeared arbitrary rather than targeting problematic programs or administrative bloat.
Ultimately, the House voted 26 to 34 to reject Chestek’s amendment.
The only university-specific amendment to succeed in the House was Rep. Martha Lawley’s (R-Worland) proposal to honor UW’s $6 million request for additional athletics funding.
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.
