At the beginning of the 68th Legislature, the Wyoming Senate set out to deliver on a bold, conservative vision that would challenge the established norms of Cheyenne and provide a new way forward for policymaking in Wyoming.
Your senators came together to build bridges over major differences in opinions to provide stability for our state while passing some of the most conservative achievements in the history of Wyoming.
As a body, the Wyoming Senate worked cooperatively to pass a 50% property tax cut without including new entitlement spending to the tune of over $200 million dollars to local governments.
Insiders call this “backfill”. Senate File 69 was the largest tax cut ever proposed in the state's history, and your Senate did this while protecting the future of Wyoming’s investment accounts and our children’s economic future.
“Backfill” as they call it, is a socialistic, unsustainable budgetary trick that could only realistically last for a few years before the investment accounts were severely drained and Wyoming would be faced with huge burdens of this new entitlement spending and a depleted savings account.
The Wyoming Senate refused to stand by while political posturing threatened our residents, by devastating the lucrative returns from years of conservative investing.
As conservatives, we know that cutting taxes is only responsible if it also includes spending freezes and cuts. Again, the Wyoming Senate delivered historically!
For the first time in recent memory, and maybe the first time ever, the Wyoming Legislature resisted the urge to unnecessarily grow the size of government and spending by refusing to pass a nearly $1.3 billion dollar budget increase.
We heard from the people loud and clear; if we were going to substantially cut taxes, we had to pull our weight and cut our spending substantially as well.
Through a week of hard work, our Senate was able to find alternatives for essential budget actions such as fire mitigation, fully funding education inflation adjustments, and water infrastructure management among other things, while not increasing spending by over a billion dollars.
There is no question, this was a bold move that took some people by surprise, but right now, the public is looking for bold moves to rein in high taxes, big government, and big spending, and your Wyoming Senate delivered again!
Besides these historic, conservative accomplishments, our senators produced dozens of practical and sensible bills that were designed to secure our elections, provide effective and fast fire mitigation, further expand and protect Second Amendment rights, protect fairness in women’s sports, grant aggressive protection for private property owners, to restrict damaging investment policies that care more about social justice than a return on investment, and so much more.
Your senators worked with Wyoming families and Wyoming industry to pass good legislation, and to protect our state from short- sighted, reactionary policies.
As Senate President, it has been encouraging to see 31 senators with different perspectives, life experiences, and political opinions unite to provide bold conservative policy changes while protecting our investment accounts, combatting irresponsible policies that would lead to future tax increases, and cutting wasteful spending and government pork in the most fiscally conservative move a Wyoming legislative body has ever made. We walk the walk.
Your senators will keep delivering bold, conservative solutions. We will work with our colleagues in the house and not rest until we have found long-term property tax reform that isn’t a California solution to a Wyoming problem (my personal preference is abolishing the property tax).
We will take a real look at reforming the way we fund major construction projects to cut down on waste and poor legislative management. We will preserve our investment accounts with the bold vision of replacing taxation with investment returns.
We will defend the Wyoming way of life as a state full of rugged individuals with a strong sense of community and family.
Your Wyoming Senate is full of great public servants who will never stop working for you, with your support and input, we can keep Wyoming financially secure and our communities safe and strong.
Bo Biteman represents Senate District 21 in Ranchester. Biteman serves as president of the Wyoming Senate.
