Governor, lawmakers respond to Senate decision on supplemental budget

CHEYENNE — Wednesday night, the Senate rejected a decades-long practice in Wyoming by announcing it would not pass a supplemental budget bill this session.

Leaders in the House said they were left “speechless” by the announcement, which came as a news release to media outlets, including the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

“The way that it happened — the kind way of saying it is that it was a surprise. But the House is going to work through it,” Speaker of the House Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said Thursday morning.

What the supplemental budget does and what happened

Every two years, lawmakers in Cheyenne prepare a biennium budget for state operations, traditionally passed in even-numbered years. For the current 2025-26 biennium, that budget was passed in 2024.

Wyoming governors have, for many years, requested supplemental funding in odd-numbered years, and negotiations take place between the chief executive, senators and representatives over what funding all can agree is necessary to cover state operations until the next budget cycle begins.

This year, the Senate decided to buck the longstanding tradition, announcing to the surprise of many that there would be no supplemental budget bill approved from that chamber. This effectively means no supplemental budget bill for state operations will pass, because the House cannot pass such a measure alone.

“The Senate has concluded that now is not the time to increase spending needlessly,” the Wednesday evening news release from the Senate read. “The 2025-2026 biennium budget provides the necessary funding to run the state. With only eight months until budget discussions begin, now is not the time for this supplemental agreement.”

Generally agreed upon is that any supplemental budget allocations should be to “respond to emergency shortfalls in the biennium budget,” the release read.

Governor, leaders speak out with very different messages

Thursday morning, Gov. Mark Gordon issued a statement saying that since taking office, he had “submitted balanced budgets to the legislature that are carefully analyzed, well-vetted and reflect what I consider a common sense view of what’s best for the people of Wyoming.”

“I opened this session by explaining that this supplemental budget was focused on emergencies and unanticipated expenses,” Gordon said, continuing that the Legislature “has overlooked emergencies and ignored unanticipated expenses in a quest for political talking points.”

“This is what occurs in a ‘no compromise’ environment,” he said. “I would hope that our legislators have their constituents’ best interests in mind, and I remain optimistic that they will refocus their attention to address the most important issues facing Wyoming at this time.”

These, according to Gordon, include fire suppression and recovery, funding the property tax relief program and addressing inflation in school funding.

“It is hard to raise a calf or drill a well on rhetoric alone,” Gordon said.

Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, who was first elected to the House in 1993, told the WTE that he had never seen this type of action before.

“I have never seen this done with a budget bill, even a supplemental budget bill,” Case said, but he could remember a time when the chambers could not agree upon a capital construction bill. “Life goes on,” Case said, noting that the budget this year was a supplemental bill. “It is not like a shutdown at the federal level. It is nothing like that.”

Funding remains in place for basic operations of state government through the budget passed in 2024, Case said, although he said he felt some of the supplemental requests were necessary.

“The question is, can we fund those through other means, through other bills before we leave,” Case said. “I think there will be a movement to minimize the damage before we leave with that, and we will see where we are. It is definitely not the end of the world.”

Neiman said that while his chamber had not anticipated that the budget bill would go away, he grew concerned before the announcement.

“I saw pieces of the budget being moved into other pieces of legislation, which told me, why are we doing that if we’ve got a supplemental budget?” Neiman said.

The supplemental budget did include what Neiman said was necessary funding, including money for wildfire response and recovery funding. But Neiman said that the House Appropriations Committee had recommended $235 million less than Gordon asked for in its supplemental budget bill.

“We reduced the amount that was being asked, and we tried to remove things that were unnecessary,” he said. “There were some things I felt were important … wildfires were unforeseen problems we didn’t anticipate.”

Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, told the WTE on Thursday that in his chamber, lawmakers have been open about budget discussions the entire session. He also said the Senate’s aim was to be “upfront and honest with the House leadership” about its position not to pass a supplemental budget.

“After discussing it with our members over the last couple weeks, it became more and more obvious that we probably weren’t going to get to a deal on the budget, because it wasn’t needed,” Biteman said.

Biteman noted that an appropriation of $1.5 million for a wildfire relief loan program, to be administered by the Office of State Lands and Investments, has been added to Senate File 152, “Wildfire management-task force and state forester.”

A $48.8 million external cost adjustment for K-12 education has been added to House Bill 316, “School finance-model recalibration- 2.”

“Those are the two emergencies we had to fund. They are already taken care of,” Biteman said. “You look at the rest of the budget, and it’s a lot of added spending, a lot of added positions that weren’t needed.”

Senate Vice President Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, said his focus has been on communicating with his fellow senators, and “most importantly, we were going to treat everyone with respect. The Senate wanted stability in the decision- making process, and we’ve fulfilled that.”

“The policy and how the Senate decides on major issues may be different than in the past, but it fits our caucus and what we want to accomplish for the people of Wyoming,” Salazar said. “We are delivering on our promise, which was property tax cuts, but responsible, conservative spending policy.”

Funding amendments start coming

On Thursday, amendments to insert funding into other bills began to hit the House floor. Representatives voted to add $550,000 from the general fund to the University of Wyoming to provide medical education and training, as well as administrative costs, for the first cohort of five students under an agreement with the University of Utah School of Medicine, to Senate File 103, “Terminating and defunding diversity, equity and inclusion.”

That amendment was brought to the floor by Rep. Lloyd Laursen, R-Lander. Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, said he could not support the amendment or a path forward that included amending proposed legislation beyond its scope to include funding that should be in a supplemental budget bill.

“I totally sympathize with what has occurred, and where we are at as a body, and what has happened down the hall,” Brown said. “This, in my opinion, is blatantly unconstitutional to alter this bill beyond its original purpose. I appreciate, very much so, the situation that we are in … but this ... just because something has happened, does not mean we go into crisis mode and start doing things unconstitutionally.”

Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, said there will follow “a lot of attempts to shoehorn some things in that were in House Bill 1 and Senate File 1, and I am going to ask you to resist some of them, because I am all about saving money.”

Bear said the University of Utah School of Medicine’s stance on DEI programming does align with SF 103, but that he would prefer that the funding be passed in an upcoming budget year. The House adopted the amendment to SF 103 in a 32-27 vote.

The Legislature has until Tuesday to amend and pass bills on third reading.

This story was published on February 28, 2025.