When Senate President Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, and state Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, met on stage at the Wyoming Business Alliance’s Governor Business Forum in Laramie on Thursday, it was a collision of outgoing and incoming visions about what Wyoming’s state government should look like.
Driskill is at the end of his term as Senate president while Bear will likely be the next chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the premier committee for drafting the state’s biennial and supplemental budgets.
Driskill will still serve in the Legislature until at least 2026, but it will be up to the next Senate president to determine his committee assignments.
Bear and Driskill disagreed on many topics Thursday, but agreed they share a desire to do what they believe is right for Wyoming.
“We can butt heads as long as they’re not bloody, and this is how you get to better policy,” Driskill said. “At some point in time you find yourself to the middle.”
Rep. Trey Sherwood, D-Laramie, was also part of the panel discussion. She and Driskill said they want to see policy driven by Wyoming problems rather than national headlines, an approach many have accused members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus of taking. Bear is the former chairman of the Freedom Caucus.
The Role Of Government
Bear believes Wyoming government can do better than it is and wants to help advance President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda in the state.
He said he believes Trump’s administration will have a significant positive impact on Wyoming’s coal industry, while Driskill was a little more pessimistic.
“I think the election was really clear that there’s a rejection of this climate cultism that says we can’t have carbon at all,” Bear said.
More specifically, he believes Wyoming voters passed a clear mandate in support of the Freedom Caucus agenda judging by the results of this year’s election. The Freedom Caucus will take over a majority of seats in the Wyoming House this session.
Sherwood takes a slightly different approach, seeing the state’s budget as a reflection of the Legislature’s shared values.
Next Year’s Budget
Gov. Mark Gordon also unveiled his $692 million supplemental budget Thursday during the forum, which he promoted as being both fiscally conservative and serving the public’s needs. It will be up to the Legislature to decide how much of this budget it wants to approve.
The Legislature will oversee a relatively strong fiscal outlook entering the 2025 session thanks to a Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (CREG) report released in October showing an expected $122 million overall revenue surplus compared to what was forecasted for the state in January.
Bear wants government spending limited to constitutionally mandated items and what the Legislature feels is most needed to help residents.
Driskill mentioned how the Legislature made $400 million in cuts when he was on the Senate Appropriations Committee. He believes a commonly promoted narrative that the “sky is falling” in Wyoming is false and that the state is in a relatively strong financial position.
Comparing the Wyoming government to the debt and spending of the federal government, he said, is not one in the same.
“Folks, the sky is not falling,” he said. “Wyoming has more money per capita in savings than any other state in the nation.”
Driskill said the correct way to use surplus money is not to send it back to taxpayers, but put it into savings to help the state balance its needs during leaner years. This has generally been the approach of the Legislature over the last few decades.
Over the past two years, the Legislature has put nearly $3 billion into savings partially thanks to a large uptick in investment interest income. It’s Driskill’s goal for 50% to 60% of the general fund spending to funded by investment income.
Driskill said he isn’t worried about being able to support the state’s short-term needs and that supporting the needs of Wyoming’s children and grandchildren is who a large savings account will benefit.
“That’s what I look at when I put money into savings,” Driskill said. “It’s not for me, it’s for the future generations and I want to have something left with that wealth that Wyoming has.”
He also mentioned how the Legislature performed some fiscal maneuvering in order to put federal COVID-19 funds into savings rather than using it for its intended immediate use.
The Role Of Government
Driskill also argued that business corporations usually don’t make cuts during profitable years, but rather make investments in their business, and said the Legislature should take the same approach.
“Let’s not cut ourselves in a prosperous time,” Driskill said, receiving applause from the audience.
Although Driskill said that businesses are simply looking for a stable and predictable government when they move to a state, Bear countered that putting more money into the economy is not a destabilizing measure.
Bear said unlike a business, the government takes money out of the economy and produces no physical products.
“The more money we take out of the economy is less money that you all can invest in things like housing for your workforce,” he said.
Driskill mentioned how a TerraPower nuclear reactor in Kemmerer has been opposed by some conservatives in Wyoming because billionaire Bill Gates is behind it.
Driskill doesn’t share those concerns and said the Legislature shouldn’t be turning away any business as long as there’s a fair playing field and it doesn’t negatively affect the state.
“I don’t care who comes, I want investment in Wyoming, I want jobs in Wyoming,” Driskill said. “If it means it’s Bill Gates, I welcome him. If it’s Warren Buffett, Rocky Mountain Power — if they want to play fair and play good, I welcome them.”
Driskill believes the government can invest in economic growth by offering grants to private industries.
“I’m one of the ones who does believe government has a role,” he said.
Property Taxes
Bear believes the voters are clearly demanding property tax relief, a solution he said could be engineered by making budget cuts. He said the taxpayers have already given the state a generous amount of money over the last few years due to the rising property taxes.
“Now, it’s time to give a little bit of relief in that area,” he said.
Although Driskill agrees rising property taxes is a significant issue for Wyoming, he doesn’t believe tax cuts should be paid for by taking money out of the general fund, where a significant portion of the account is funded by mineral revenues.
This is the same reason why Gordon vetoed a bill that would have provided tax relief last year because of its dependence on the general fund, which the governor saw as using one sector of the economy to unfairly subsidize another. He defended that veto again during a press conference Thursday.
Driskill also doesn’t want ultra-wealthy residents who only live in Wyoming a small portion of the year to receive these same cuts.
“I think he needs to continue to pay a fairly high rate on his $30 million house,” he said of this demographic, also drawing a short applause. “I want relief to go where it needs to go.”
Bear wants tax cuts levied across the board not just for residential taxes, but also for other sectors like agriculture and minerals that would be paid for by making governmental cuts in other areas. He mentioned how Wyoming still has the most state employees per capita in the nation.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
