Dear editor:
Wyoming is facing real economic headwinds: outmigration of young families, workforce shortages, housing constraints in growing communities, and other states actively recruiting our employers away. That’s not ideology. That’s reality.
So it was hard to watch a recent Wyoming Joint Appropriations Committee exchange with Wyoming Business Council CEO Josh Dorrell devolve into rhetorical theater instead of serious oversight.
One legislator summarized modern economic competition as a “self-licking ice cream cone,” implying that any effort to strengthen communities is just government propping up business.
Another leaned on the tired “picking winners and losers” line, as if every state around us hasn’t been aggressively competing for jobs and investment for decades.
Let’s be blunt: Wyoming isn’t competing against a textbook free market. We’re competing against 49 other states, many of which use incentives, infrastructure investments, and innovation programs to land employers and keep local companies from leaving.
If Wyoming refuses to play at all, we don’t “win” some purity contest. We lose businesses, payroll, and families.
What made the hearing especially frustrating wasn’t disagreement, it was the unserious framing. The Business Council wasn’t asking to “send a check to everybody.”
Dorrell repeatedly described a shift away from handing out money toward reducing red tape that drives up housing costs, building local capacity so communities can solve problems without begging for bailouts, and funding shared infrastructure (water, sewer, business parks) that communities own and employers require.
That is not socialism. That is basic competitiveness.
And the “picking winners and losers” rhetoric gets even stranger when you look at what it ignores.
Legislators routinely fund roads, water systems, workforce training, and schools, because those are public goods that make communities livable and commerce possible.
But when the same logic is applied to economic infrastructure, especially when it’s tied to measurable outcomes—some members suddenly act like it’s a moral offense.
The public deserves oversight that is mature enough to separate two different questions:
1. Should Wyoming ever write direct checks to private companies? Reasonable people can argue about where to draw that line.
2. Should Wyoming invest in community capacity, infrastructure, and innovation matching programs so we can compete, retain employers, and grow our tax base?
If the answer is “no,” then be honest: you’re choosing decline and calling it virtue.
You can want low taxes and fewer regulations and still understand that “do nothing” is not a strategy. It’s surrender, especially when other states are actively targeting Wyoming businesses and workers.
Wyoming doesn’t need more performative analogies. It needs legislators who ask serious questions: What programs work? What’s the ROI? What guardrails prevent abuse? What statutory updates are needed? How do we ensure transparency and accountability?
Because if the Legislature’s approach to economic development is just to sneer, posture, and pretend the rest of the country isn’t competing, then the only “self-licking ice cream cone” in the room is the one where we congratulate ourselves while Wyoming shrinks.
Sincerely,
Mark Law, Sheridan
