Wyoming
Legislative Leaders Debate Tax Relief, Visions For Wyoming’s Future
When Senate President Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, and state Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, met on stage at the Wyoming Business Alliance’s Governor Business Forum in Laramie on Thursday, it was a collision of outgoing and incoming visions about what Wyoming’s state government should look like.
Driskill is at the end of his term as Senate president while Bear will likely be the next chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the premier committee for drafting the state’s biennial and supplemental budgets.
Driskill will still serve in the Legislature until at least 2026, but it will be up to the next Senate president to determine his committee assignments.
Bear and Driskill disagreed on many topics Thursday, but agreed they share a desire to do what they believe is right for Wyoming.
“We can butt heads as long as they’re not bloody, and this is how you get to better policy,” Driskill said. “At some point in time you find yourself to the middle.”
Rep. Trey Sherwood, D-Laramie, was also part of the panel discussion. She and Driskill said they want to see policy driven by Wyoming problems rather than national headlines, an approach many have accused members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus of taking. Bear is the former chairman of the Freedom Caucus.
The Role Of Government
Bear believes Wyoming government can do better than it is and wants to help advance President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda in the state.
He said he believes Trump’s administration will have a significant positive impact on Wyoming’s coal industry, while Driskill was a little more pessimistic.
“I think the election was really clear that there’s a rejection of this climate cultism that says we can’t have carbon at all,” Bear said.
More specifically, he believes Wyoming voters passed a clear mandate in support of the Freedom Caucus agenda judging by the results of this year’s election. The Freedom Caucus will take over a majority of seats in the Wyoming House this session.
Sherwood takes a slightly different approach, seeing the state’s budget as a reflection of the Legislature’s shared values.
Next Year’s Budget
Gov. Mark Gordon also unveiled his $692 million supplemental budget Thursday during the forum, which he promoted as being both fiscally conservative and serving the public’s needs. It will be up to the Legislature to decide how much of this budget it wants to approve.
The Legislature will oversee a relatively strong fiscal outlook entering the 2025 session thanks to a Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (CREG) report released in October showing an expected $122 million overall revenue surplus compared to what was forecasted for the state in January.
Bear wants government spending limited to constitutionally mandated items and what the Legislature feels is most needed to help residents.
Driskill mentioned how the Legislature made $400 million in cuts when he was on the Senate Appropriations Committee. He believes a commonly promoted narrative that the “sky is falling” in Wyoming is false and that the state is in a relatively strong financial position.
Comparing the Wyoming government to the debt and spending of the federal government, he said, is not one in the same.
“Folks, the sky is not falling,” he said. “Wyoming has more money per capita in savings than any other state in the nation.”
Driskill said the correct way to use surplus money is not to send it back to taxpayers, but put it into savings to help the state balance its needs during leaner years. This has generally been the approach of the Legislature over the last few decades.
Over the past two years, the Legislature has put nearly $3 billion into savings partially thanks to a large uptick in investment interest income. It’s Driskill’s goal for 50% to 60% of the general fund spending to funded by investment income.
Driskill said he isn’t worried about being able to support the state’s short-term needs and that supporting the needs of Wyoming’s children and grandchildren is who a large savings account will benefit.
“That’s what I look at when I put money into savings,” Driskill said. “It’s not for me, it’s for the future generations and I want to have something left with that wealth that Wyoming has.”
He also mentioned how the Legislature performed some fiscal maneuvering in order to put federal COVID-19 funds into savings rather than using it for its intended immediate use.
The Role Of Government
Driskill also argued that business corporations usually don’t make cuts during profitable years, but rather make investments in their business, and said the Legislature should take the same approach.
“Let’s not cut ourselves in a prosperous time,” Driskill said, receiving applause from the audience.
Although Driskill said that businesses are simply looking for a stable and predictable government when they move to a state, Bear countered that putting more money into the economy is not a destabilizing measure.
Bear said unlike a business, the government takes money out of the economy and produces no physical products.
“The more money we take out of the economy is less money that you all can invest in things like housing for your workforce,” he said.
Driskill mentioned how a TerraPower nuclear reactor in Kemmerer has been opposed by some conservatives in Wyoming because billionaire Bill Gates is behind it.
Driskill doesn’t share those concerns and said the Legislature shouldn’t be turning away any business as long as there’s a fair playing field and it doesn’t negatively affect the state.
“I don’t care who comes, I want investment in Wyoming, I want jobs in Wyoming,” Driskill said. “If it means it’s Bill Gates, I welcome him. If it’s Warren Buffett, Rocky Mountain Power — if they want to play fair and play good, I welcome them.”
Driskill believes the government can invest in economic growth by offering grants to private industries.
“I’m one of the ones who does believe government has a role,” he said.
Property Taxes
Bear believes the voters are clearly demanding property tax relief, a solution he said could be engineered by making budget cuts. He said the taxpayers have already given the state a generous amount of money over the last few years due to the rising property taxes.
“Now, it’s time to give a little bit of relief in that area,” he said.
Although Driskill agrees rising property taxes is a significant issue for Wyoming, he doesn’t believe tax cuts should be paid for by taking money out of the general fund, where a significant portion of the account is funded by mineral revenues.
This is the same reason why Gordon vetoed a bill that would have provided tax relief last year because of its dependence on the general fund, which the governor saw as using one sector of the economy to unfairly subsidize another. He defended that veto again during a press conference Thursday.
Driskill also doesn’t want ultra-wealthy residents who only live in Wyoming a small portion of the year to receive these same cuts.
“I think he needs to continue to pay a fairly high rate on his $30 million house,” he said of this demographic, also drawing a short applause. “I want relief to go where it needs to go.”
Bear wants tax cuts levied across the board not just for residential taxes, but also for other sectors like agriculture and minerals that would be paid for by making governmental cuts in other areas. He mentioned how Wyoming still has the most state employees per capita in the nation.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
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.
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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