By David Peck
The horse trading finished up last week, and the Wyoming Senate and House finally agreed on a 2010-11 biennial budget as the 2010 Budget Session of the Wyoming Legislature wrapped up.
Sen. Ray Peterson (R-Cowley) said he was generally pleased with the final budget, though he did not like the idea of taking money from reserves.
“I went down there with the goal of holding the line on spending and not dipping into reserves,” Peterson said. “We did dip a little bit from the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund Reserve Account to budget more for cities, towns and counties and to fund some legislative bills.”
Throughout the budget preparation process prior to the session, increasingly gloomy reports from the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group told the Joint Appropriations Committee, of which Peterson is a member, that spending cuts were going to have to be made.
“Going in, we faced the reality that spending would rise above revenue over the biennium by about $400 million,” Peterson said. “I was kind of under the impression that we were going to hold the line, which we did as well as we could. The governor chided us because he presented a budget that was a little tighter than the legislature’s.
“What saved us was the carryover from the last session that kind of provided a cushion. We were facing a $700 million drop in revenue, though spending had leveled out with the governor’s 10 percent cuts (in each of the last two years).”
In the end, the legislature approved a budget that was 25 percent smaller than the 2008-10 budget -- $2.9 billion, down from $3.9 billion.
Negotiations
When the House and Senate finished working their respective budget bills, Peterson said, the two legislative bodies were far apart after amendments were included. House amendments added $63.6 million to the JAC budget, while Senate amendments actually reduced the budget by $6.9 million. The budget went to a conference committee.
One of the largest budget items to discuss was funding for school capital construction. The Senate agreed with a JAC recommendation to hold over $50 million in capital construction money until the second year of the biennium, the equivalent of trimming four school projects from the School Facilities Commission priority list, including Powell’s West Side Elementary School.
“We talked about the burn rate and how fast schools could be built,” Peterson said.
Meanwhile, the House had restored $52 million for school capital construction and added $10 million to local government and $4.1 million to the Developmental Disabilities Program.
Senate amendments added $12.9 million for the purchase of a new state liquor warehouse but cut $12.1 million from the budget by having state employees participate in funding the state retirement fund. The Senate also cut $7.9 million by freezing the school transportation reimbursement program at current levels.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Phil Nicholas (R-Laramie) proposed cutting each body’s recommendation in half – chopping the House budget increase to $31.8 million and the Senate’s cuts to $3.4 million, and after conference committee wrangling, that’s essentially what the two houses concurred on.
Final compromise
Under the final compromise, Peterson said, the legislature added $1.5 million to the budget for developmental disabilities funding, $27,500 for an epilepsy program, $149,828 for a law clerk for a district judge in Sublette County, $15,000 for funding for the blind, $21.9 million extra for school capital construction (two projects, including the Powell school), $6.5 million for local government, $12.9 million for the liquor warehouse and $200,000 to fund new sex offender laws. The compromise also kept intact the Senate’s $12.1 million cut by requiring state employees to participate in the retirement program but eliminated the cut in school transportation funding.
Local government is taking a big hit, Peterson said. The governor recommended $60 million in funding and the JAC added $20 million more. The House had recommended an additional $10 million in funding, but the conference committee trimmed that increase to $6.5 million.
“That’s still quite a hit for cities, towns and counties,” Peterson said. “When you add in SLIB money, direct distribution, community facilities money and business ready communities money, they went from $441 million over the last biennium to $124 million in this budget.”
One thing that concerns Peterson is that the legislature included $89 million in federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money in the budget including $28.3 million for the Dept. of Health, $27 million for major maintenance at the University of Wyoming, $17 million in major maintenance at community colleges, $13.5 million in tuition mitigation funding to hold off tuition increases at UW and the community colleges and $2.2 million for the Dept. of Family Servies.
“We blame the cities and towns for spending one-time money on ongoing operations, but we did the same thing,” Peterson said. “We’re using ARRA money to the tune of $89 million, and that just broadens the gap between revenue and reality. My guess is that unless we get a handle on spending, that’s going to come back and bite us in two years.
“I was very conservative and voted against anything that would cause us to dip into savings. Everyone said it was a rainy day, but I wasn’t convinced and neither was the governor.”
Peterson said that, during the interim, the JAC will study ways to involve the public and more legislators in the budgeting process and study the Wyoming retirement fund, Abandoned Mine Lands funding, School Facilities Commission funding and external cost adjustments for school funding.
Peterson and Rep. Elaine Harvey (R-Lovell) have been named co-chairmen of the Select Committee on Developmental Disabilities.