To save or to spend: $1B difference in budgets between Wyoming Legislature's two chambers

The House is adding money to the governor’s proposed budget, with a focus on spending more on programs and services. The Senate, however, is cutting up to $480 million from what the governor originally recommended in his budget proposal.

Senate President Ogden Driskill told the WTE in an emailed statement that the impact of politics resulted in a tighter version of the budget from the Senate.

“Politics played a role in leaving out important priorities from this year’s Senate budget, resulting in a much leaner version than the original Joint Appropriations Committee’s position,” Driskill said. “This will impact Wyoming’s people and communities. Still, passing a budget is required by the Wyoming Constitution, and I won’t stand in the way of funding our government. I voted with the body, knowing that Senate and House conference committees have a lot of work ahead of them in order to meet in the middle.”

Sen. Stephan Pappas, R-Cheyenne, told the WTE the Senate cut $150 million more in general fund programs and $300 million more in school funding, on top of the $30 million cut from the governor’s proposed budget by the Joint Appropriations Committee.

“We are $480 million from the governor’s budget, and that’s what I was really complaining about,” Pappas said. “We just decimated the governor’s budget, and the House, actually, is going in the other direction. They’re adding to the governor’s recommendations.”

Hicks told the WTE that biennium budgets are often difficult to pass and that this one represents a majority of the Senate — but this is just “halftime.” Both Hicks and Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, noted that priorities in the Senate “are far apart” from the House of Representatives.

“It’s gonna take a lot of time, negotiations and hopefully reasonable heads prevail,” Hicks said.

The Senate budget went through scads of amendments since its first hearing on Monday, many of them spurring on passionate speeches by senators on the floor either in favor of or against the budget changes.

Hours after lawmakers down the hall voted to pass the House budget, the Senate passed its own budget late Thursday night with a vote of 23-8.

The “nay” votes came from Sens. Fred Baldwin, R-Kemmerer; Eric Barlow, R-Gillette; Cale Case, R-Lander; Affie Ellis, R-Cheyenne; Dan Furphy, R-Laramie; Mike Gierau, D-Jackson; Stephan Pappas, R-Cheyenne; and Minority Floor Leader Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie.

Rothfuss told the WTE many of the amendments made to the budget were inappropriate and that the resulting product “shows a division in the Legislature.”

“(The budget) shows the element of the Legislature that is really against the people of the state of Wyoming and against programs that would help them,” he said. “And that’s regrettable.”

Reductions in funding for programs at the University of Wyoming, capital construction projects for K-12 public schools and gender-affirming care services through the Wyoming Department of Health are a few of the amendments that were adopted by senators this week.

Rothfuss said the Legislature failed in its constitutional obligation to use the budget as “a standard operation of government.” There was no objective baseline for what was appropriate to amend in the budget, he said. If senators liked it, then it was appropriate — if senators didn’t like it, then it wasn’t.

“It was perhaps the most hypocritical day of legislating I’ve ever witnessed in my 14 years,” Rothfuss said.

Nethercott, who voted in favor of the budget, also speculated on some of the amendments that were brought in.

“It is sometimes questionable when the budget amendment doesn’t relate necessarily directly to any kind of direct appropriation, to understand the wisdom of bringing it and the controversy that it presents to the chamber,” Nethercott told the WTE.

Nethercott said she voted yes on the budget to fulfill the Legislature’s constitutional obligation to pass it, but held some “grave concerns” about the final product. A similar thought process was held by Pappas, who said this was the first time he’d ever voted against a budget.

“It’s our duty to come down here and pass a budget, and I knew it was going to pass,” Pappas told the WTE. “My vote was basically just a statement I wanted to make, that I wasn’t happy with what the Senate did.”

The budgets from the two chambers will be further debated in each chamber before going to the budget conference committee.