Members of the Wyoming House and Senate were unable to come to an agreement about property tax relief Tuesday morning, throwing into doubt the future of a 50% tax cut — the biggest property tax bill of the 2025 session.
State Sen. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, described the inability to flesh out an agreement on Senate File 69 on Tuesday as “hugely disappointing.”
“At the end of the day, tax relief is in the House right now, whatever they do we’ll see,” he said. “I’ve been pushing this bill for three years and I thought we were there. This morning was hugely disappointing.”
Despite the Joint Conference Committee (JCC) meeting being held at the crack of dawn with hopes of coming to a final solution on property tax relief on the horizon, it only took about five minutes for those hopes to quickly extinguish.
A vote to move forward with the Senate’s compromise offer on the deal for a 25% cut was rejected on a 3-3 vote, with every member of each side voting for their chamber’s position.
Senate Vice President Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, said he saw his vote as expressing that only “three members of the JCC wanted tax relief,” although he also added he believes the House as a whole wants it too.
“I hope that we’ll be able to come to an agreement that we had, my understanding had already,” he said.
What Was The Deal?
The three upper chamber members, Salazar, Mckeown and Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, proposed the House accept a 25% property tax cut on residential structures and associated land valued up to $1 million, with no backfills for local governments and schools and no expiration date.
In 2026, a requirement that a homeowner occupy a home at least eight months of the year to get the cut would go into effect.
This appeared to give a slight advantage to the Senate as the version of SF 69 that the House passed was for a 50% cut with 50% backfills and an expiration date of 2026. Once that cut expires, a 25% cut with no backfills was set to go into place.
“People back home wanted property tax relief and at 25% that backfill was not needed,” Salazar said. “But it did give substantive property tax relief. I’ve always said that perfection is the enemy of good. This was a good deal.”
The version of SF 69 that passed out of the Senate contained a 50% cut with no backfills and a 2026 expiration date. Heiner said Tuesday that he felt the bill was being reverted back to the Senate’s version.
“It has most of the things that the engrossed version of the Senate bill had,” he said.
But Gierau said he was told entering the meeting that the House had already accepted the deal, which he said was negotiated in good faith, involved compromises and was why the meeting was scheduled in the first place. Salazar described what happened as a “surprise,” and said the meeting was mostly looked at as a formality to sign off on the deal.
“We desperately want property tax relief for our folks,” he said. “I was about to sign my name to the paper today, the agreement that we would do that.”
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, center, said he had a handshake deal with House members over a property tax releif bill before it stalled in the Joint Conference Committee on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily) 
House members Tony Locke, R-Casper, from left, Scott Heiner, R-Green River, and Chris Knapp, R-Gillette, during Tuesday's Joint Conference Committee meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025, where a deal on property tax releif stalled. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily) 
Sens. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, left, and Time Salazar, R-Riverton, during Tuesday's Joint Conference Committee meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025, where a deal on property tax releif stalled. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily)
Want More Time
Rep. Scott Heiner, R-Green River, said during the meeting that he and his other House JCC members — Reps. Tony Locke, R-Casper, and Chris Knapp, R-Gillette — wanted more time to go back to all the House members and “present this in our caucus.”
Heiner told Cowboy State Daily he was referring to the Republican caucus of the House.
“Our vote this morning was not a vote to reject the proposed amendment,” Heiner said. “It was a vote to ask for more time to consider it and then reconvene in a couple of days.”
Still, McKeown told reporters after the meeting he found this end result “very, very disappointing.”
He and other members of the Senate JCC said the tax deal had been agreed upon Monday, overcoming the biggest points of contention about the size of the tax cut and backfill, with Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, adding a formal handshake had even occurred on it, which he considered “a done deal.”
“We shook hands, we had a deal,” Biteman said.
Locke told Cowboy State Daily no deal was ever struck and is “not how we operate.” He also said the Senate’s proposal likely violates the Legislature’s rules, which requires conference committees to compromise. Neither chamber had passed SF 69 with a 25% cut.
“In addition, we felt it appropriate to have further discussion between the House JCC members before our final decision,” Locke said. “We do not have any intent to stop SF 69 from moving forward.”
Heiner didn’t deny they had seen the proposed deal Monday, but stressed that the “big bill has wide implications for the people of Wyoming.”
“After getting the Senate’s proposed amendment this morning, we only wanted to go back to our chamber to discuss it with our members and to run the numbers,” Heiner said. “We asked for a couple of days and reconvene.”
Heiner said during the meeting that if a citizen’s initiative to permanently cut taxes by 50% passes in 2026, the bill being discussed would have to be repealed since it has no expiration date.
The financial impact of a 25% cut on the state would be $200 million.
Gierau said he’s hopeful that the House JCC will keep its word and eventually accept the deal.
“We’re hopeful, all we can do is take them at their word,” he said. “But we did that yesterday, it didn’t work out so good.”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
