Don’t let the dark money fool you again. Proposition 1 is not a 50% reduction of property tax. It is not even a 50% reduction of residential property tax.
“Proposed Initiative, Proposition Number One” is a 50% “property tax exemption for qualified homeowners’ primary residence,” according to the Secretary of State’s official ballot language.
That language is important.
By severely narrowing the amount of Wyoming property that can be claimed under the 50% exemption, Prop 1 corrects a specific injustice without radically stripping communities of needed revenue.
The dark money flooding Wyoming peddles panic and fear. Special interests that line their pockets with government slush money would have you believe that November’s vote threatens December’s snow removal. This is, of course, rot.
The first thing you should know is that no budgets will be affected until the 2028 fiscal year.
When you hear politicians threaten to defund essential services in retaliation for your vote, ignore their malicious fulminations. Prop 1 is designed to provide time for the supplemental budget process to make sure that essential services remain unaffected by a fairer tax structure.
The second thing you should know is that Wyoming’s official, non-partisan Consensus Estimating Revenue Group used a Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal system to project that in 2028, Prop 1 will reduce taxes by a total of 1.8% -- $92.6 million dollars out of a $5.05 billion budget.
More than 30,000 Wyoming citizens petitioned the Secretary of State to put this well-crafted law on the November ballot because, over the course of years, establishment politicians turned a deaf ear to them and to their conservative representatives.
Ballot Initiatives are a constitutional mechanism (Article 3, Section 52). They allow Wyoming citizens to legislate directly when the legislature and governor fail to address pressing concerns. It is the first time in 30 years that the process has been invoked.
The reason that so many citizens cried out for correction of the property tax code is the harm caused by real estate speculation by the likes of Blackrock and foreign governments—coupled with blue-state refugees flooding into the Cowboy state.
These unnatural demands on Wyoming real estate have been causing inflation in the housing sector for years. And this housing inflation significantly outpaces the already-unacceptable inflation caused by profligate federal spending.
For instance, in the second quarter of 2025 the overall inflation rate was 4.2%. But during the same quarter, the inflation rate in the Housing sector was 38% higher than the average inflation rate and more than ten times higher than the Transportation sector.
Some homeowners have seen their property taxes double since 2019. Since housing consumes nearly half of the average household’s income (49.4%), those distortions take substantial bread off the kitchen table.
Such disproportionate inflation does not affect commercial property to the same degree. Commercial property taxes have a different structure from residential property. As a result, during periods of pressure in the residential housing market, property taxes based on home valuation shift the tax burden from businesses to families.
That is what Prop 1 was written to address.
The logic of property taxation makes sense in the abstract. Certainly, the streets, sewers, utilities and peace officers of a community should be funded by those who own homes and businesses that are connected to those utilities and that are served by its community services.
That’s not the issue.
The issue is that when out-of-state pressures artificially upset the balance that existed when a resident originally moved into the neighborhood, fairness demands a restoration of the proper balance.
When fairness is ignored, families suffer. And, in some cases, long-term residents on a fixed income are forced out of their homes.
No doubt Teton County is ground zero for these inequities. But the problem is spreading. Young families are being priced out of the housing market across the state. Retirees with paid-for homes are seeing inflation in their property taxes that far outpaces their cost-of-living increases.
Not just in Jackson, but in Sheridan, Afton, Evanston, Lander and beyond.
By adjusting only 1.8% of our tax-structure, Wyoming can restore the balance that has been skewed by globalist billionaires and the wacky policies of blue states. Don’t let the dark money of those same globalist billionaires and deep-blue lobbying machines scare you away from helping your neighbors.
We have raised these issues before the legislature for more than a decade and have been met with vetoes and stony silence. Now, for the first time in three decades, the people of Wyoming have an opportunity to legislate directly.
I will be voting for Prop 1. Once you understand the real issue, I think that you will, too.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/ Email: JLange64@protonmail.com
