Lawmakers have lengthy to-do list for budget session

CASPER — Wyoming lawmakers were set to convene Monday for a budget session. But the to-do list this time around is longer than normal. 

The Wyoming Legislature is tasked with crafting a two-year financial plan for the state, something that is a necessity every budget session. But along with that, lawmakers must decide ow to spend a half billion dollars in relief aid while redrawing the state’s legislative map as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process. 

The 20-day budget session happens every even-numbered year. This time around, the Legislature will be handling three budgets: the base budget, the capital construction budget and the spending plan for the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) relief funding. 

Gov. Mark Gordon is responsible for drafting versions of these budgets, which are then sent to the Joint Appropriations Committee (which you will often hear referred to as “J-A-C”). The committee has held numerous meetings since the governor made his budget recommendations. Members heard from dozens of interested parties about how the money was being spent. 

Next, the draft budget will be delivered to the Legislature, at which point lawmakers will begin to offer up amendments. 

The main budget is the general government appropriations plan that lawmakers pass every budget session. 

You’ll hear lawmakers and lobbyists at the upcoming session calling this current budget “flat.” In this context, “flat” means Gordon did not make any ground-breaking recommendations. His drafts were fairly even-keeled. 

Perhaps the most notable change is the increase in pay for state workers. The increase is not universal for all positions, but determined by the “market value” for each sector. 

Those increases work out to about 5% on average, said appropriations committee member Rep. Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs. Wages are currently about 19.4% below market value on average.

The proposed boost in state wages is driven by the fact that Wyoming is struggling to attract and maintain qualified state workers. The state experienced a doubling in turnover rates at almost half of Wyoming’s executive branch agencies between 2010 and 2021, according to WyoFile. 

“We are hemorrhaging talent and experience,” Gordon said at a Joint Appropriations meeting last year. 

When surveyed, employees overwhelmingly cited compensation as the reason they did not stay in state-run jobs. 

Sen. Mike Gierau, a Jackson Democrat, said he hoped the pay increases would have been higher.

While workers are set to get raises, the base budget does not create many new positions. Fears that the relief money will eventually dry up, leaving some of the new positions without a funding source, drove that decision. 

“The size of Wyoming’s government stays pretty small in this view,” Stith said. “The governor was really careful to recommend not growing government.” 

The budget’s largest expenditure is earmarked for the Department of Health, at roughly $1.9 billion (the majority of which is federal money). Some of the dollars would go toward mental health services, but none is explicitly allocated for suicide prevention, despite the state having the highest rate in the nation. 

The next largest expenditures are planned for the Department of Family Services ($300.7 million), the Department of Corrections ($262.6 million) and higher education ($600 million).

Together, those four allocations form about two-thirds of the proposed budget. 

Another substantial portion of the budget would be put towards “medium-term and long-term savings,” Stith said. Specifically, $75 million would be put toward the Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust Fund, $75 million is planned for the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund, while $75 million would head to the common school land account, what Stith calls “medium-term savings.” 

The rainy day fund will grow to about 1.7 billion, according to Rep. Tom Walters, R-Casper, another member of the appropriations committee. 

Because the budget is so “flat,” there is not expected to be much drama, but some disagreements could happen. 

“Where I think the flash point might be is on the Senate side,” Stith said. “They might want to increase that savings number.” 

In the end, the Joint Appropriations Committee did not make many changes to what Gordon proposed. 

Reading the main budget

Total allocations in the base budget are made up of three pools: general funds, federal funds and “other funds.” General fund money is essentially money out of the state’s checking account, federal funds consist of money from the federal government that the state would have received regardless of the pandemic. 

The governor also converted some of the ARPA relief money into general fund money. That money is incorporated in the general fund column. 

Other funds are typically private donations or agency-generated dollars. For example, a state park may charge visitors for camping spots and then grant the Legislature the authority to spend that money. 

As the budget session moves forward, the budget draft will undergo amendments, which can be proposed by interested parties, but must be introduced by lawmakers. These amendments will appear in different colored lettering, making it easier for the public to know what has changed.

American Rescue Plan budget

The relief aid budget does not move through the Legislature every two years. Instead, the money was sent to the states by the federal government to help with the economic problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This budget consists of about $339.5 million in ARPA money that has a specific purpose as required by the federal government. You may hear lawmakers refer to this money as having “federal strings attached.” 

The appropriations committee amended the governor’s relief aid plan more than it did the base budget. 

The governor proposed roughly 25 different allocations. The committee accepted about seven of them, while also combining some of the governor’s proposals. The committee added an entirely new project line, which included $50 million to local government support projects for water and $50 million for other local government projects. 

Gordon also recommended $7 million to staff the state’s suicide prevention hotline 24/7. The appropriations committee cut this recommendation in its entirety. 

“$7 million every two years seems like a really high price tag to change our phone number,” Stith said, adding that he is open to more “evidence-based” suicide prevention programs. 

Outside of the base budget and the ARPA budget, there’s the capital construction budget. That money is meant to go towards building and refurbishing state facilities and hospitals. 

The Capital Construction budget amounts to roughly $190 million, $62 million of which is federal money. Another $58 million in the capital budget is earmarked for the University of Wyoming. As of right now, $55 million dollars is going towards hospitals via ARPA money with the federal strings attached. 

Redistricting

This year, the Legislature is also tasked with passing a redistricting bill, which happens once a decade following the Census. 

Lawmakers have been working for months on redrawing the state’s legislative districts in light of population changes: namely that Wyoming’s larger cities are growing and its smaller communities are getting smaller. Throughout the process, the committee experienced difficulties balancing the urban and rural regions of the Equality State. 

The Wyoming legislative committee tasked with redistricting had its final meeting Friday, at which the panel voted to move forward with a statewide map following months of debate, dozens of meetings and a fair share of drama. They had originally aimed to be done by Dec. 1. 

The bill and revised map will be presented to lawmakers at the budget session. The measure that the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee voted in favor of would increase the total number of state lawmakers to 93 by adding two House districts and one Senate district. There are currently 60 representatives and 30 senators in the Legislature. The final bill the committee voted on on Friday only received three “no” votes. 

Adding three lawmakers, some lawmakers said, helps to give the rural areas the representation they asked for and deserve while respecting the population increases in some of the urban areas.

One of the new House districts would comprise parts of north Cheyenne and sections of Laramie, Goshen and Platte counties. At Friday’s meeting, lawmakers voted to incorporate part of Laramie County into Platte County’s single district, as opposed to using Goshen County to boost Platte’s district population. The other House district will be east of Casper, encompassing more rural parts of the area extending to the Glenrock region. The goal, lawmakers said, is to have an “outside of Casper district” that encompasses the “mineral interest area” of Glenrock and the Dave Johnston Power Plant. 

The Senate district would stretch through the east-central part of the state and partly straddle Natrona and Converse counties. Lawmakers reasoned the new House district would encompass more of Natrona County, while the new Senate district would encompass more of Converse County. 

“We can make it work, but it does make it more difficult,” Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, said earlier this month. He was in the Legislature when there were 62 representatives and 31 senators in the past. 

Multiple members of the committee have expressed a desire to move ahead with only one map, but the committee did vote to sponsor a back-up plan drafted by Scott “in case something goes wrong.” 

During one redistricting process in the past, the main redistricting bill fell through, and the Legislature ended up moving forward with Scott’s plan. It became the statewide map for the next decade.

Other bill drafts 

Only bills related to the budget or redistricting will be automatically heard. All other bills will have to make over a two-thirds introductory vote hurdle. 

In fact, there’s a bill being brought for the fourth time to eliminate the super-majority requirement. 

Procedural changes 

Arkansas and Wyoming are the only states who have a two-thirds introductory vote threshold, and Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, is proposing a constitutional amendment that would take away that two-thirds requirement present at all budget sessions. 

The thinking behind the two-thirds vote requirement is that it will conserve enough time for lawmakers to handle the complicated budget process. 

That said, when lawmakers are trying to push their bill drafts through the two-thirds introduction vote, they end up debating the matter for hours before the measures are even formally heard. 

In the Cowboy State, constitutional amendments require two-thirds support from each chamber to be put on the ballot in the next general election. If the amendment makes it on the ballot, it requires a majority of the total votes cast to go into effect. 

So even if Harshman’s bill is successful in the Legislature, it still needs voters’ backing.

COVID-19 vaccination 

A new version of a previous special session bill that aims to create protections for unvaccinated Wyoming residents is also slated for the budget session. This draft is a reworked version of measures that were introduced during the 2021 special session that convened to fight back against one of the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandates. 

House Bill 32 would require health care facilities, governmental entities and providers of “essential services” to offer accommodations to people who are unable or unwilling to provide proof of immunization. It would also prohibit COVID-19 vaccine requirements in Wyoming schools for the next five years and make requiring immunization as a condition of employment “a discriminatory or unfair employment practice.” 

The measure is a less severe version of House Bill 1006, which failed in last year’s special session. 

Last fall, the Biden administration announced vaccine mandates for various groups — including workers at large private businesses. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that workers at companies with 100 or more employees can’t be federally obligated to be vaccinated against COVID-19, while workers at health care facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid can be federally mandated to be vaccinated against COVID-19. This bill attempts to respect that federal ruling. 

Critical race theory 

Casper Rep. Chuck Gray filed a bill Friday that explicitly seeks to keep critical race theory out of Wyoming classrooms. The “ban on teaching and training critical race theory” prohibits preschool through 12th grade students from “instruction that presents any form of blame or judgement on the basis of race ethnicity, sex, color or national origin.” On a more granular level, teachers are also not allowed to teach students that a person, because of their “sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin,” is inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same “sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin,” nor are they allowed to teach students that the U.S. is “fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist.” 

The Wyoming Education Association, which represents the state’s public school teachers, expressed concern over this bill. 

“It is definitely a substantial concern that it seems like, again, political expediency around inflammatory rhetoric and not data driven...education policy,” said Tate Mullen, the group’s director of government relations. 

Critical race theory is an academic framework for examining how racism is embedded in U.S. institutions and society. At least 35 states have introduced anti-critical race theory legislation so far, according to ABC News. 

Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devil’s Tower, and the Senate President Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, filed a bill last week that requires school districts to create an online directory listing all teaching materials and curriculum used in each school by grade level and subject. 

That bill never uses the phrase “critical race theory,” and Driskill maintains that it does not have to do with the controversial topic. 

But the former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow directly linked the bill to critical race theory at a press conference held on the legislation in the fall. Balow has since resigned her post. 

Juvenile justice 

Wyoming has one of the highest incarceration rates for juveniles in the nation, and there’s a bill aimed at remedying that issue. Legislation meant to spur widespread collection of juvenile justice data in Wyoming earned the backing of the Joint Judiciary Committee during the interim.

Wyoming has struggled for years from the lack of data on juveniles in the criminal justice system, and the bill is aimed at filling those gaps in data. 

There is also an amendment to the proposed budget in the works that would seek to address Wyoming’s incarceration rate of juveniles. 

The Wyoming Youth Justice Coalition is currently ratcheting up an effort to get a budget amendment passed that would allocate $3 million towards funding County Juvenile Service Boards, county-level outfits dedicated to keeping juveniles out of the formal correctional system, like detention, and in their communities. As the budget stands, there are zero dollars allocated for the County Juvenile Service Boards. 

Without these service boards, advocates and experts argue, more juveniles will be taken out of their communities and put into detention facilities, which have adverse outcomes and tends to land them back in detention.