“We’re doing just fine,” was the pronouncement by Gov. Dave Freudenthal in a recent interview on Wyoming Public Television, concerning our revenue picture entering the 2008 legislative budget session.
It’s not the picture awash in surplus revenue we’ve had the previous three budget sessions. But everyone agrees there is money to cover the “standard” budgets of state agencies – which have just about doubled since 2000 -- and half a billion dollars more for cities, towns, counties and highways.
Anyone who starts complaining is urged to think back 20 years. The Legislature was still catching its breath from an energy boom that brought in revenue almost faster than auditors could count it. Then, seemingly overnight, the market for uranium disappeared, and the price of oil dropped from $30 a barrel to $15 and then
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After years of construction inactivity and several false starts, some wags in Wyoming’s coal rich Powder River Basin began to refer to the proposed billion dollar Two Elk power plant project 40 miles southeast of Gillette as "No Elk." 
