On June 3 in Gillette, the Joint Revenue Committee passed a motion, 11-3, to draft a bill to eliminate property taxes from the Wyoming Constitution.
The motion was made by Natrona County’s Senator Bob Ide, who initially said he wanted to amend the US Constitution before being corrected. What are the consequences of such a motion? Where did property taxes come from?
Property taxes have funded local communities in America since before this nation existed. Some accounts trace the first property tax to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.
Wyoming first approved a property tax in 1876, during its territorial days. The retail businessmen, ranchers, and bankers who built this state understood property tax was a necessary mechanism to provide the financial means to educate our citizenry and build thriving communities.
But Senator Ide and other members of the Freedom Caucus don’t want the State Constitution to hamstring their tax-slashing agenda. This agenda ignores the needs of our communities.
Our founders expressly put property tax in the Constitution because they knew that legislators would be tempted to eliminate taxes to garner votes in elections.
That didn’t stop co-chairman of Revenue and Freedom Caucus member Tony Locke from complaining he was tired of hearing that his proposed property tax revisions were unconstitutional – even though his revisions failed to meet the standards for treating taxpayers equally and fairly.
Maintaining the constitutional link between property taxes and public services is not only wise but it’s necessary. Property taxes are more stable and have been the bedrock for funding public services that benefit Wyoming citizens and communities.
The Freedom Caucus claims to be constitutionalists, but the truth is they routinely try to ignore or alter the Constitution.
Throughout the meeting, their failure to grasp tax policy was also apparent.
Sen. Ide suggested a “consumptive tax,” i.e., sales tax, could replace property taxes.
Sen. Cale Case spoke eloquently about the dangers of eliminating property taxes and explained it would take an incredibly high sales tax to replace all property tax revenues, which include ad valorem taxes paid through the production of minerals.
Rep. Storer added numerical context: property taxes contribute $2 billion per year for schools and local services. Wyoming would need to more than double its sales tax to compensate.
Shifting from property taxes to sales taxes would devastate rural Wyoming. Sales tax is concentrated in Wyoming’s bigger cities and tourist hubs like Teton County.
Small towns and agricultural counties, with fewer buyers and consumers, will struggle to raise enough revenue to maintain basic services.
But struggling small towns likely aren’t a concern of the Freedom Caucus.
Their leader, Representative John Bear, once said on the floor of the Wyoming House of Representatives that some small towns should likely die, implying they cost the state and taxpayers too much money.
Do we really want to lose small town Wyoming, the soul of our state?
Two days after their committee actions, the Freedom Caucus Chairman of the Revenue Committee seemed to express buyer’s remorse in an interview with Cowboy State Daily. But they apparently missed the warnings clearly outlined during the meeting by several of their committee colleagues.
And this speaks to perhaps the greatest danger of the Freedom Caucus: its members’ lemming-like tendency to jump off a cliff when their leaders make a critical error, as seen in the 11-3 vote to eliminate property taxes.
Imagine the collapse of local services and schools, with no real plan to replace the lost funding.
Electing people who will not think for themselves and are politically forced to follow some prescribed dogma or puppet master will ruin this state.
We should resist the Freedom Caucus’s attempt to return Wyoming to the Stone Age.
Sincerely,
Albert Sommers, Pinedale
Albert Sommers served in the Wyoming House of Representatives for District 20 from 2013 - 2024 and was Speaker of the House from 2022-2023.
