A Wyoming lawmaker has zeroed in on a plan to reduce the size of state government.
Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, told Cowboy State Daily that the first thing he'd do to reduce the state's budget would be to "get rid" of the Wyoming Business Council.
The Wyoming Business Council was created in 1998. Its stated goal is to “create an economic framework so that Wyoming businesses and communities can thrive.”
Economic development shouldn’t be the government’s responsibility, Pendergraft told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.
“What it ends up being is the government picking winners and losers,” Pendergraft said. “And certain businesses or individuals get benefits, perks and help, and others are left with what's not really a free market anymore.”
Wyoming Business Council CEO Josh Dorrell said he shares Pendergraft’s concerns about government intervention in the economy. However, he added no markets are truly free markets anymore.
“There's definitely a role for government in the economy,” Dorrell told Cowboy State Daily. “We believe that role should be very surgical and the interventions that we take should be well thought out and precise and no more than they need to be.”
The Legislature in 2024 granted the Wyoming Business Council nearly $87 million in state money for its biennial budget. The council was also budgeted $1.24 million in federal funds, and nearly $6 million in "other" funds.
The legislature earmarked about $23,000 that state money for information technology hardware, $355,000 for contracting with the Wyoming women's business center, $900,000 for administrative costs for the state small business credit initiative, and $429,000 for the Wyoming-Asia Pacific trade office.
An Uphill Battle
Wyoming has spent $370 million from 2015 to 2024 trying to diversify its economy through the Business Council, Pendergraft said. What has Wyoming gotten for its money? he asked.
Real gross domestic product has dropped from $34.8 billion in 2015 to $34.4 billion in 2024, according to numbers provided by the governor’s office, he said.
“In those nine or 10 years, private sector real GDP has decreased while we have spent $370 million to try to increase it,” Pendergraft continued. “It's not working. It's a huge flipping waste of money.”
Wyoming’s GDP has been declining since 2008, Dorrell added. Two out of every three people born in Wyoming leave, double the national average.
The quality of the state’s jobs also is decreasing, Dorrell said.
“We are in the business of reversing that economic decline and looking at what systems need to be changed so that those things can be reversed,” Dorrell said. “That trend is just not looking good for the future. Our agency is digging into those big challenges that businesses face and that communities face in growing.”
The Business Council requested $38 million from the state’s most recent budget and wanted that money for affordable housing, Pendergraft said.
Increasing the amount of affordable housing is part of the strategy of reversing the state’s economic fortunes, Dorrell said.
“We look at things like housing, like child care and the economic complexity that our businesses have and that they can achieve in Wyoming,” Dorrell added. “How do we increase the workforce? And how do we increase the population in our city centers so that they can continue to grow?”
Not New
Pendergraft’s call to cut the Business Council’s budget isn’t a new idea, Dorrell said.
“There's a push to get rid of the Business Council every legislative session,” he said. “It’'s something that we obviously take very seriously, but at the same time we use it as a way to get to know people better.”
What typically happens is that the legislator making the call gets to know the council and discovers they have shared views, Dorrell said.
“In most cases, we end up working together,” he said.
Matthew Christian can be reached at matthew@cowboystatedaily.com.
