Although many members of the Wyoming House and Senate had been gearing up for contentious negotiations over the budget bill, they’re now walking away from what turned out to be quick negotiations feeling like their side came out on top.
Five representatives and five senators assembled for the first Joint Conference Committee (JCC) on Monday, they sped through reconciling the budget with no nays and few debates, and adopted a unified bill in under two hours. Budget negotiations in 2024 were split into two days, each taking roughly an hour.
In the lead up to this year's negotiations, Gov. Mark Gordon had proposed a budget totalling roughly $11 billion. The Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC), a group of 12 lawmakers who took the first crack at the budget bill, brought that number down to $9 billion. By the end of each chamber’s amendment process, the House had a budget of a little over $9 billion while the Senate’s amended budget ran over $10 billion – a $170 million gap.
Initially, there were fears among some senators that the difference between the chambers' budgets would result in hard-to-reconcile negotiations. Some, like Sen. Gierau (D-Jackson), said a contingent of members in the higher chamber were ready to deny the budget vote wholesale.
“I had 12 members of my Senate that said they wouldn't vote for the budget if UW [the University of Wyoming] didn't get full funding,” said Gierau. “Twelve is awfully close to 16 [half the body]. And that'd turn over the whole apple cart. And we'd be here for a special session."
The House had spent days, even spilling into the weekend, attempting to power through a tense budget amendment process. Across the Capitol, senators like Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) were ready for an extended budget fight, only to be “pleasantly surprised” that the JCC went the way it did. When it came time, the reconciled budget that flew through the JCC ended up looking much more like Gordon’s original proposal than the JAC’s markup.
However, there’s no obvious moment where the JCC came to a clear agreement on which amendments they would keep and which they would ditch. Both sides have guesses as to what made these budget talks unique, and both sides are claiming a level of victory in the name of Wyomingites across the state.
Senate reactions
On the Senate side, lawmakers like Sen. Gary Crum (R-Laramie) said they’d been having casual “hallway conversations” about the budget for weeks. He said nothing had been a “back room” negotiation.
Senate President Bo Biteman (R-Ranchester) and Gierau both confirmed that talks in an effort of compromise were ongoing, but did not specify where and when. Moments before the first JCC meeting took place, members of the committee entered into a closed-door meeting.
Yet, Gierau said politicking in the Capitol had nothing to do with it. While the senator is not completely happy with the budget, he chalked up wins on the Wyoming Business Council (WBC), UW and pay for state employees to an outpouring of voter voices.
“I think the people of Wyoming saw what happened at that markup in January, and they were mad. And they let us know that we [they] were mad,” said Gierau. “I think what happened today [Feb. 27, the day of the JCC meeting] was a testament to the people of Wyoming engaging in the process, calling their legislators, telling them, ‘I don't want this.’”
Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-Devils Tower) concurred with Gierau, claiming he heard a range of perspectives on the budget from his constituents and from Wyomingites further afield. He went as far as to claim the silent majority has spoken up against the Freedom Caucus, a group the caucus claims to speak for.
“ When we brought [that] second reading amendment of mine, what I didn't anticipate was, for the first time, the public showed up in numbers, be it public radio, public TV, University of Wyoming, Business Council – across the board, the public showed up and they said, ‘Look. We want our services. We're not in a time of dire need,” said Driskill. Driskill’s amendment, dubbed the Big Beautiful Amendment, restored most of the governor’s funding requests to the Senate’s version of the budget.
House reactions
On the House side, members from the JAC were working to find a unified position through more hallway conversations and a caucus meeting.
According to Rep. Trey Sherwood (D-Jackson), who didn’t sit on either committee, the business council and UW became primary points of conversation inside a House caucus meeting. House members on the JCC wanted to “get the room’s temperature,” or input from the body, before the first JCC meeting.
“Just like, do we want to hold our position on the use of BRC [Business Ready Community, a grant and loan program through the WBC] funds, or do we want to go to the Senate position and know that we have a pathway for it to pass the budget?” said Sherwood. “The House was comfortable saying: Let's dive into [programs under the WBC] as an interim topic and not let the budget get held up on this one issue.”
Other members, like Rep. Daniel Singh (R-Cheyenne) and Rep. Jacob Wasserburger (R-Cheyenne), confirmed that unrecorded talks took place regarding the budget, but no votes, motions or roll calls took place. Singh described the process as a bipartisan effort to find a common position.
Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette), former chair of the Freedom Caucus and a co-chair of the JAC who’s been at the forefront of budget negotiations on the House side, said he thinks the caucus did pretty well for the numbers they had. The Freedom Caucus’s top priority for this budget session was to return state spending to pre-pandemic levels.
While the Senate had members who opposed the Senate’s amended budget and preferred the JAC’s proposal, they were few in number. Bear, on the other hand, said his caucus was fighting Republicans and Democrats in the House who “wanted to have a bigger government and not control [that government].”
In the end, Bear said the Legislature has a constitutional obligation to pass a budget.
“This budget is really larger than the budget needed to be for sustaining the same amount of services as we passed in 2024,” said Bear. “We don't have a majority in the Senate, and we don't have a super majority in the House. So there are certain limitations of what can be accomplished with the number of votes that we have of fiscal conservative Republicans.”
Bear said when it came down to the numbers, he believes his caucus might not have “held the line” on slowing the growth or spending of government, but they nonetheless managed a win.
“The Senate moved about $140 million towards our way, and we moved about $30 million towards their way. So I would consider that a win, considering the position we were in to negotiate from,” said Bear
In response to senators claiming that an outcry of public support for state programs in opposition to the Freedom Caucus was the reason for a budget much closer to the governor's original proposal, Bear denied the narrative flat- out.
He said he had just as many people on the other side saying, “ Make some changes. The status quo is not acceptable.”
“ I think there's overwhelming support,” Bear said. “Whether or not they want to elect more conservatives in the future so that we can do more slowing of the growth of government will be seen in August. We'll know then, but I believe that what we're trying to do is what the people of Wyoming do with their own paychecks and with their own budgets. And so I think they're gonna see the intelligence of not growing government faster than their own paychecks.”
Driskill agrees that August will be a litmus test for how voters feel, but he disagrees that the Freedom Caucus has picked up support from this budget session.
“They went outta their way to cut the budget and they showed what would happen if they truly got control,” he said. “When you look at the appropriations committee [JAC], they cut to the point that it was absolutely unacceptable to almost everyone in the state. So they overran their skis pretty hard on that … They really have tried to take Wyoming back into dirt roads and carriages rather than looking to the age of Jetsons.”
Voters will have a chance to weigh in at the primary elections on Aug. 18.
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.
