Republished with permission from The Riverton Ranger/WyoToday Media
Public transportation authorities across Wyoming received – for some, devastating – news this week: Federal transportation funding that comes in through the Wyoming Department of Transportation has been significantly reduced. For some smaller authorities, like senior centers, it may mean the end of public transportation services altogether.
The reductions ranged from a whopping 51% in Sheridan to 37% for the University of Wyoming, to about 24.56% for the partnership of the Riverton Senior Center and Wind River Transportation Authority, or WRTA.
WYDOT attributed the reductions to the end of Covid-era added funding from the federal government. Compounding the blow is the fact that public transportation officials in Wyoming, for the most part, didn’t see it coming. WYDOT first alerted local transit leaders on May 27 that significant cuts were coming, just over a month before the start of the new fiscal year. The final figures were delivered last week.
“It’s substantial,” WRTA Director Tim Nichols explained of the funding cuts, which for his agency and its collaboration with the Riverton Senior Center, amounts to a loss of $238,000 in federal grants and combined with local matching funds, about a $380,000 threat to its anticipated budget. “It came as a huge shock. Everybody was just blindsided.”
Absorbing these kinds of cuts on short notice will be a monumental effort, Nichols described, especially for agencies that are already strapped for stable funding sources to meet their local matching dollars to receive the federal funds, like WRTA.
WYDOT acknowledged the short notice and feedback it had received about the unexpected major budget reductions. The agency “is deeply committed to advising of any future changes in federal and state apportionments expeditiously to allow the [local transit authorities] sufficient time to plan their budgets moving forward,” WYDOT Transit Coordinator Rob Rodriguez wrote to transit officials in an email Thursday.
Several other WYDOT officials did not respond to requests for comment by press time Friday.
WRTA
Wind River’s transit authority has been at work to create efficiencies and partnerships in the wake of the failure of the 1/2% economic development sales tax that died on the November 2024 ballot. That sales tax had funded the lion’s share of local matching dollars needed to leverage federal transit funding, and its loss has left local funding unstable for the agency.
WRTA has partnered with the Riverton Senior Center and WYDOT itself in an effort to collaborate and reduce administrative and overhead expenses, and some of that work helped spare the agency from the more dramatic federal cuts handed down last week. Still, without stable local funding, Nichols said the federal reductions will be hard to absorb and will result in reduced transportation services.
The city of Riverton has helped fill some of that local need. For the current fiscal year, the city granted WRTA $42,000 to help meet the local match; for the coming fiscal year, of the $112,403 requested from WRTA, the city agreed to $25,000.
The agency has been attempting to get onto a Lander City Council agenda to discuss the local funding match needs for eight months, Nichols said, to no avail.
‘Start hacking’
WRTA and other transportation authorities across Wyoming have little time to redo their budgets before the cuts are felt on the ground. Many had budgets already approved and in place for the fiscal year beginning on July 1, and will now have to go back to the drawing board. The federal fiscal year doesn’t quite align, beginning Oct. 1.
“Within three months, every director in the state has to start hacking,” Nichols described. “Obviously our priorities are to have the impact lessened at the rider level as much as it can be.” He pointed to fixed-route operations – traditional bus rides on a looping route – “I mean, that’s half a million right there. That removes a huge portion of connectivity in the county, and how do we make that up?” Nichols asked. “I’m not sure that we can.”
How can people help? “Talk to their legislators,” Nichols advised. It’s advice he’s followed himself. He’s been in contact with local legislators on the situation and is exploring even more partnerships and consolidation that could mark a path ahead: Perhaps a more regionalized public transportation system could be utilized in future years to help retain local transportation services with less funding.
WYDOT indicated that increased funding is unlikely in future years. “In the spirit of long-term transparency and early communication, it is important to clarify that all future funding will be limited strictly to our flat annual statutory apportionment. WYDOT cannot guarantee annual funding increases,” Rodriguez wrote in his Thursday email. “With a new funding bill currently being developed, our baseline apportionments are projected to remain flat, if not experience minor decreases.”
The only area, Rodriguez wrote, that may be able to increase federal funding is money that’s tied to data submitted to the National Transit Database. He encouraged transit leaders to ensure those numbers are fully accurate going forward and that they contain three full years of ridership and other required data. “Because compiling this multi-year data history takes time, all subrecipients should proactively structure their local transit budgets for the next two to three years around the expectation of flat funding levels or very minimal increases,” he concluded.
Varying cuts
Along with the feedback from Wyoming’s public transportation officials about the lack of notice for the cuts, WYDOT also received inquiries from agencies wondering how WYDOT determined how much to cut each authority.
Rodriguez described the method used by the Wyoming Transit Advisory Committee (WyTAC) to distribute the federal funds.
While statewide requests for this funding was more than $14 million, the total funding available was just over $8.5 million, he wrote. “To bridge this $5.5 million shortfall as fairly as possible, WyTAC’s volunteer voting members held two intense sessions to review applications and optimize allocations.”
During the five hours of deliberations, WyTAC used the state’s Local Government Coordination formula as a baseline, then “reworked their formulas numerous times until the budget was finally balanced,” Rodriguez reported. “These rigorous adjustments were made step-by-step until the final mathematical models were achieved, aiming, as much as possible, for a uniform, equitable impact across all local transit authorities, ensuring no single entity bore the disproportionate brunt of the statewide deficit.”
