If the Wyoming House and Senate approve its budget changes, then the chambers’ Joint Conference Committee will have helped the University of Wyoming dodge a $40 million cut, while also limiting the Wyoming Business Council to one year’s funding instead of the standard two. 

The Joint Conference Committee adopted numerous changes to the state’s two-year budget draft, but didn’t formally advance the document to the House and Senate chambers. The committee meets again Monday and may do so at that time.

Then, the House and Senate can vote on whether to adopt that draft by a simple majority.

First, UW

Starting in January, the Joint Appropriations Committee majority had sought to deny around $20 million in exception requests the University of Wyoming made, while imposing a $40 million cut to the university’s block grant.

That’s about 10% of the state’s grant to UW but a lesser proportion of the school’s overall operating budget.

The Senate sought to restore the $60 million.

The House sought to keep the denials and cuts, ultimately settling on a bargain to cut $20 million, and hinge UW’s retention of the remaining $20 million on its finding and reporting $5 million in savings.

The Joint Conference Committee the House and Senate sent into a Friday meeting to negotiate those two stances chose to fund UW “fully,” Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily in the state Capitol after the meeting. 

But, $10 million of UW’s $40 million block grant won’t reach it until the school charts a “road map” of how it could save $5 million, and reports that to the Joint Appropriations Committee, she added. 

“A healthy exercise, I think, for them to participate in, while the Legislature still allows them to receive full grant funding,” Nethercott said. 

“I’m hopeful people feel confident the University is fully funded,” she continued, as it’s “on the brink of receiving a new president, having the resources he or she may need to continue to steer the leadership of the University, our state’s flagship school into the future.”

Hours earlier in a press conference, House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said the Legislature has been clear that UW should avoid “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI programming, and that it’s the position of the House majority that the school should tailor its programming to Wyoming’s true business needs – so UW graduates will stay in the state.

Within an earlier draft of the budget sat a footnote blocking money for Wyoming Public Media — a publicly funded media and radio entity funded through UW’s budget.

That footnote is gone from the JCC’s draft, said Nethercott. 

Wyoming Business Council

The Wyoming Business Council is set to receive roughly $14 million, confined to one year, for its internal operations, said Nethercott. 

“Both chambers have decided to only fund the operations,” Nethercott said, “not all the grant programs.” 

She said that’s to compel the Legislature to revisit the concerns it has with the agency, then return in the 2027 legislative session with a vision for its future. 

The Business Ready Communities program is “eliminated,” she said. 

JCC member Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, elaborated further. 

Of the appropriation, $12 million is from the state’s checking account, plus the state is authorizing WBC to use $157,787 in federal funds and nearly $1 million from other sources. 

“We’re going to take it up as an interim topic in appropriations (committee) and how to rebuild it and make it work the way we think it should work,” said Pendergraft. But the JCC opted to fund the Small Business Development Center for two years, along with Economic Diversification Division for Manufacturing Works, and the Wyoming Women’s Business Center, Pendergraft noted, pointing to that language on his draft budget sheet. 

Pendergraft made headlines last year by saying he wanted to eliminate the Wyoming Business Council altogether. 

But Nethercott told the Senate earlier this month, legislators have complained of that agency her entire nine-year tenure. 

She attributed this to what she called communications shortfalls that may not be intentional. She cosponsored a now-stalled bill this year that had sought to adopt a task force to evaluate WBC. 

The Wyoming Business Council’s functions range from less controversial, like helping communities build infrastructure, to more controversial, like awarding tax-funded grants to certain businesses on a competitive application process. 

Wyoming Public Television

Wyoming Public Television, which is not the same as Wyoming Public Media, is slated to receive the $3 million it lost when Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nethercott said. 

It will also receive its usual $3 million from Wyoming. 

The entity will not receive another $3 million it had sought to upgrade its emergency-alert towers, said Nethercott, “because we received information from them… they have another source to pay for the replacement and maintenance of the towers.” 

Like the Wyoming Business Council, the Wyoming Public TV’s functions range from less controversial to more controversial.

The entity operates, maintains and staffs emergency alert towers throughout Wyoming. 

Wyoming Public TV also produces entertainment and informational movies. Its state grants run through the community colleges’ budget. 

State Employees

Nethercott noted that the JCC advanced to both chambers an agreement to pay $111 million from the state’s checking account to give state employees raises.

Those raises would bring them to 2024 market values for their work, she noted. 

Because that money is coming from the state’s checking account, or “general fund,” and not its severance tax pool as the House had envisioned, then $111 million won’t impact the $105 million investment another still-viable bill seeking to build an “energy dominance fund” envisions. 

That bill, sponsored by Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, seeks to lend to large energy-sector projects. 

Biteman told Cowboy State Daily in an interview days before the session convened that its purpose is to counteract “green” compacts investors have adopted, and which have bottlenecked energy projects.

Wyoming’s executive branch is currently suing BlackRock and other investors on that same assertion. 

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.