Gov. Mark Gordon signed a wildfire funding bill into law Tuesday, but not before using a line-item veto to cut out a section of the bill that would have defunded his $152 million Energy Matching Funds and Large Project Energy Matching Funds programs.
The programs are designed to provide matching money for private or federal projects related to carbon capture utilization and storage, carbon dioxide transportation, industrial carbon capture, coal refineries, hydrogen production, transportation, storage, hydrogen hub development, biomass, biochar, hydropower, lithium, processing and separation, battery storage or wind and solar energy.
“Carbon is an incredibly important building block, and so putting Wyoming out in the lead to be able to come to new technologies, new ways to be able to use it, (is) absolutely critical,” Gordon said during a Wednesday press conference over Zoom. “I’m really disappointed that somehow in the political squash of the session, we lost our way on really being that supportive of our energy industry.”
the program has been a thorn in the side of some Wyoming conservatives like state Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, and Rep. Scott Heiner, R-Green River, who argued it is the source of the governor’s “Green New Deal” projects.
During the press conference, Gordon also mentioned how he believes 88% of the money in the program has gone to benefit fossil fuels and mining industries.
“The fact that we spent a lot of times trying to undermine those industries, I’m not sure everybody thought that they were doing it, but in fact, they were undermining that,” Gordon said. “I think that is incredibly unfortunate.”
What’s It About?
The bill itself, Senate Enrolled Act 62, is focused on wildfire mitigation and was using money from the energy accounts to pay for loans, an act Gordon described as theft.
“That there were legislators willing, for narrow political ends, to pull the rug out from under coal, oil and gas is beyond comprehension,” Gordon wrote in a letter explaining his actions on the bill.
Instead, Gordon used money from the state’s general fund to pay for these loans.
Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, chairman emeritus of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, brought the amendment to use all of this money and repeal the energy matching funds account.
He said the fund was also gutted and repealed in the supplemental budget that ended up dying, so he tried bringing the effort back in the wildfire money bill.
Sen. Eric Barlow, R-Gillette, the sponsor of SEA 62, said he was fine with the governor’s veto as cutting the program was a change made to the bill by the House.
“It’s a completely separate policy issue that should not have been part of this program,” he said. “It’s a very important program.”
Bear said he’s not buying the governor’s argument and doesn’t believe these alternative energy projects will help Wyoming’s fossil fuels industries or customers, but will rather raise costs on both.
“It creates a whole exponent on top of the natural market,” he said. “By doing that, it raises the price of fossil fuels. It’s needless.”
The 2024 wildfire season in Wyoming was a devastating one, with more than 850,000 acres burned, about70% of which is owned by private landowners, large and small.
As approved by the governor, SEA 62 provides $49 million in grants from the state’s general fund to pay for restoring grass and preventing noxious weeds and grasshoppers as a result of land destroyed by the wildfires. An additional $2.75 million is appropriated to manage the disbursement of this money.
The bill includes $20 million to replenish the emergency fire suppression account; repays $20 million that was borrowed from the Legislative Stabilization and Reserve Account in 2024 for fire-related activities; appropriates $1.2 million for disaster contingencies within the Office of Homeland Security and replenishes $1 million in Governor’s contingency funds.
The governor is also authorized under the bill to borrow up to $30 million to meet funding needs in the event that existing reserves in the state’s forestry division are exhausted.
Gordon removed from the bill a loan program for wildfire restoration that he believed was duplicative of a $25 million loan program already established in a different bill he signed into law. The loan program Gordon vetoed was much larger at $100 million.
A piece of the original bill the governor did not restore was the creation of a task force to oversee the use of the wildfire money. Barlow said he hopes the governor creates this on his own through an executive decision.
Gordon also said he would call a special session for more wildfire funding if this year’s season is particularly bad and expressed concern about what the large cuts to federal agencies will mean for federal assistance in this year’s fire season.
Thoughts On The Session
Gordon also gave his thoughts on the recently-completed legislative session, sharing a somewhat negative perspective.
This comes in contrast to the views he gave during a press conference shortly before the session started, where he expressed mostly optimism.
Gordon said he believes a lot of time during the session was spent on “issues that were important, but maybe not as essential to the running of state government as I hoped that they would be.”
Specifically, he said national issues seemed to take on the highest priority in this year’s session.
“A little bit sad to me that so much of the national agenda really overwhelms some of the necessary work of the Legislature,” he said. “There was a certain amount of absolutism that I think maybe got in the way of the best outcomes for Wyoming people.”
He also mentioned how a number of needs in the scrapped supplemental budget were not addressed in other bills and mineral royalty grants not renewed.
Bear disagrees with these arguments, and once again pointed to a poll conducted by the Freedom Caucus during the 2024 election season that it used to determine the public’s highest priorities.
In this poll, he said Gordon’s supporters showed a strong interest in the issues that the Freedom Caucus championed in its “Five and Dime” plan.
“His supporters overwhelmingly supported the five priorities,” Bear said. “He’s not listening to what his own supporters are saying.”
Gordon was also disappointed that less than 50% of the committee bills brought in this year’s session passed into law and 13 were killed immediately without ever being heard.
He also mentioned how a concerted effort was made to bring bills to his desk early enough to override second vetoes on bills he already vetoed in the past, an effort he described as “kind of stupid.”
“Really, what I think you should be doing is thinking about what’s best for the people of Wyoming,” he said. “This isn’t a battle between the Freedom Caucus and Governor Gordon. This is about governing Wyoming in the best interest.
“I’m willing to listen and I hope that they would be too, to what people think is the right thing.”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
