Entering the Wyoming House of Representatives chamber Monday amid an ovation that stretched into a rhythmic cadence, Gov. Mark Gordon urged legislators to restore key portions of his November budget recommendation.
That’s after the legislative Joint Appropriations Committee proposed multiple cuts and denials to Gordon’s recommendations, in its second-draft version of the budget.
Now the Wyoming Legislature gets to grapple with the third and later drafts until it sends a budget to the governor’s desk around the first week of March.
Gordon’s speech opened this week’s four-week legislative session.
Standing and sitting ovations punctuated key portions of Gordon’s speech, with at least one revealing an ideological divide: the Democratic delegates within Cowboy State Daily’s view sat in silence, as Republicans stood to applaud Gordon’s call for lawmakers to advance a sound constitutional amendment that would allow the legislature to restrict abortion.
Put My Budget Draft Back
“Using ‘no’ as a club is not how America became great,” said Gordon.
The statement was a play on words reflecting his nickname for lawmakers aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus – “Club No” – and the Trump slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Gordon first launched the “Club No” pejorative after Freedom Caucus member Rep. Bill Allemand, R-Midwest, vocally opposed the efforts of energy company Radiant to put a nuclear reactor business and stored spent fuel near Bar Nunn.
Numerous members of that community voiced safety concerns with the spent fuel storage proposition.
Radiant took its business to Tennessee instead, indicating Wyoming’s policy landscape is unstable.
“We are in a real competition with other states and other nations,” said Gordon.
He called on the Legislature to “rejuvenate, renovate and reimagine the Wyoming Business Council” using a task force.
The JAC has proposed defunding and dismantling the Wyoming Business Council, which is a state agency that gives grants and loans to businesses and communities. It has asked for $111 million this biennium, and Gordon recommended it receive about half that amount – though he’s defended its core mission.
University Of Wyoming
Gordon urged lawmakers to halt a proposed $40 million cut to the University of Wyoming.
“Now is not the time to ignore the vision set forth in our Wyoming Constitution regarding our land grant university,” said Gordon. “Simply cutting a budget won’t lead to improvement. But a dialogue could.”
The governor asked legislators to revert back to his draft recommendation, of putting $250 million into the inviolate Permanent Mineral Trust Fund as an investment corpus. The Joint Appropriations Committee last month had proposed, instead, sending that money to the state’s savings account: the Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account (LSRA).
House Appropriations Chair John Bear, R-Gillette, who oversaw the proposed cuts and denials his committee and its Senate counterpart in the Joint Appropriations Committee made last month, voiced incredulity in a text message to Cowboy State Daily after Gordon’s speech.
“Mark Gordon’s pleas for the status quo, after seven years of growing budgets and decreasing Wyoming’s household spending power, is offensive,” said Bear. “His lack of mentioning the Wyoming taxpayers was glaring and short-sighted.”
Bear pointed to the 2024 primary election, in which the staunchly conservative Wyoming Freedom Caucus gained large numbers in the state House of Representatives.
“Fortunately, the people of Wyoming stood up in the 2024 election and said no more,” added Bear.
Bear noted that another $511 million is still slated to go into the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund.
Not Being Said
If the things Gordon addressed are a preview of the Legislature’s top issues this year, then election integrity didn’t make the cut.
Between the Joint Corporations Committee’s recommended bills and those the Management Audit Committee has adopted; the Legislature could consider at least 14 bills related to election reform this year.
Gordon’s speech, rather, referenced a Jan. 6 ruling of the Wyoming Supreme Court, which upheld abortion as a fundamental right.
Gordon urged lawmakers to craft a state Constitution amendment — to advance to the voters for possible approval this November – that would allow the legislature to restrict abortion.
“Protecting life is the most serious responsibility entrusted to government,” said Gordon. “The question of abortion deserves careful deliberation.”
He asked the Legislature to take up the issue earnestly and build a “clear, irrefutable, durable and morally sound resolution to this fraught issue.”
Gordon added: “Life is sacred.”
A standing ovation followed. The Democratic lawmakers who were within Cowboy State Daily’s view remained seated.
Gordon also did not speak about current efforts by lawmakers to change the way Wyoming Supreme Court Justices are chosen – but Wyoming Supreme Court Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden urged lawmakers to stop that effort during her later state of the judiciary speech.
Honorees
Gordon’s calls to honor various Wyoming figures ranged from Wyoming’s public schoolteacher of the year, to the owner of a startup trucking business, to University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel — to Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Timothy Howell, who rescued people from the Green River tunnel last February as a multi-vehicle collision made it burst into flames.
Howell was off-duty and traveling with his family at the time.
Before the speech, legislators escorted into the House chamber the justices of the Wyoming Supreme Court, followed by all five statewide elected executive branch officials, to waves of applause.
Of the former, a small whoop of approval erupted during the applause for Justice Kari Jo Gray.
She was the lone dissent on the Wyoming Supreme Court’s Jan. 6 ruling to uphold abortion access as a fundamental health care right under the state Constitution.
Odds And Ends
Gordon touted Wyoming’s Stabletoken currency, its adoption of school choice initiatives and efforts to improve traditional K-12 schools, the low error rates of its Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the limited government and local-control visions of its state Constitution.
He urged lawmakers to restore to the budget a pay increase for state employees that would bring them from 2022 market rate wages to 2024 levels.
The JAC last month removed that draft provision, but advanced targeted increases for some of the nurses who work with mentally ill detainees of the state, state troopers past their trainee phase, county attorneys’ offices, the Natrona County District Attorney, and snowplow drivers.
“We need to fully understand that growth expands our choices but does not need to change our character.”
He asked the legislature to fully fund the state’s Asian trade office to develop agricultural markets in places like Taiwan and help younger farmers and ranchers in Wyoming meet a broader market.
The governor lauded his wife Jennie’s farm-to-table programs geared toward feeding school children. And he asked the Legislature to restore his $3.5 million (half-federal, half-state money) recommendation to fund a summer feeding program for children and teens.
Gordon noted that tourism, typically Wyoming’s second most successful industry after minerals, brought $4.9 billion in direct spending to the state’s economy in 2024.
“We have the opportunity to add to it with the potential relocation of the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and take it out of Colorado Springs,” he said.
The Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association last month signaled it would move the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy to Cheyenne – contingent on obtaining funding for the move and securing a suitable location.
Cheyenne’s economic development organization, Cheyenne LEADS has committed $15 million for a move. The Wyoming legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee has also placed a $15 million line item in the state’s draft budget, at Gordon’s request.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
