The Freedom Caucus is so bereft of new ideas that might keep it from losing control of the House that all it can offer voters before the Aug. 18 primary election is recycling its foolhardy vendetta against the Wyoming Business Council.
Opinion
It’s the same snake oil concoction that the far-right group managed to sell people seeking change in 2024, when it promised it would deliver the keys to a booming economy: Cut government spending to the bone, and lower or eliminate taxes.
But after watching the Freedom Caucus get its proverbial butt kicked in a showdown with the Senate’s traditional wing of the Republican Party during this year’s budget session, it’s evident that it’s worn out its welcome in Wyoming politics in record time.
Two years is all it’s taken to show that when it comes to governing, the state couldn’t have put anyone more inept in power.
The Freedom Caucus came to the budget session with three goals: Take away a huge chunk of the University of Wyoming’s block grant, lay waste to much of the state Department of Health’s budget and defund the Wyoming Business Council.
The Freedom Caucus members of the Joint Appropriations Committee, thinking no one was paying attention, tried to pull off these actions that would hurt thousands of Wyomingites.
That was a fatal mistake for the first two goals. UW supporters hammered Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, the Freedom Caucus chair emeritus and co-chairman of the Joint Appropriations Committee, for proposing $61 million in budget cuts. All were restored.
One of the House’s chief budget hawks, Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, insisted at legislative hearings that the department’s budget was bloated. The vast majority of cuts the panel made were restored, and some even received additional funding.
The Freedom Caucus didn’t succeed in completely eliminating the Business Council’s funding and its statutory authority to do anything, but the caucus took consolation in the fact that money was cut.
The agency submitted a request for $110 million, Gordon cut it in half, and the two chambers finally approved $15 million to keep the council functioning while legislators pondered its future during the interim.
Let’s get rid of one bald-faced lie straight from the lips of the Freedom Caucus: Despite all of its criticism of the Business Council for supposedly standing in the way of the free market’s ability to determine what enterprises succeed in the state, economic development in Wyoming is virtually the last thing it cares about.
Time and time again, the Freedom Caucus passes legislation that either doesn’t help promote economic development or stands directly in its way. Usually, it’s the latter.
Wyoming has an affordable housing crisis that gets exponentially worse each year. If people can’t afford any place to live, they won’t settle in communities to raise families. Economic sustainability, much less growth, will be nonexistent.
The Freedom Caucus has done nothing to alleviate this crisis. Zip.
For those who can find an affordable house, the Freedom Caucus has led the charge to give residential owners an across-the-board 25% property tax cut. Wealthy homeowners, naturally, receive the highest reductions.
The Legislature could have approved backfilling the loss of revenue from property tax cuts so services provided by local governments, schools and special districts could still be funded at the same level, but it didn’t.
That lost revenue has led to myriad reductions in cities and counties throughout Wyoming, including law enforcement, fire protection, ambulances, infrastructure, hospitals, parks, libraries and many others.
Does the Freedom Caucus seriously think corporations will jump at the chance to come to the “business-friendly” state of Wyoming when communities are providing far fewer services and reducing the quality of life for executives and the potential labor force?
Wyoming also has major healthcare problems. Six Wyoming hospitals are at risk of closing within the next three years. About one-fifth of the state is considered a “maternity desert” that lacks a birthing center or an obstetrical physician. Wyoming’s suicide rate is one of the highest in the nation.
Josh Dorrell, the Business Council’s CEO, told lawmakers last month that lack of skilled, available workforce is the top deterrent for businesses hoping to launch or expand in Wyoming.
A council analysis showed 60% to 70% of Wyoming-born residents permanently leave the state by age 30. People, Dorrell said, are “voting with their feet” to leave.
Where does that leave any chance of economic development and diversification in a state that desperately needs to find tax revenue from a sector besides the fossil fuel industry?
If the Wyoming Business Council is eventually defunded, the Equality State would be the only one in the nation that does not have an economic development agency.
The competition for businesses and industries to relocate is intense, but the caucus wants the council to stop “picking winners and losers” through grant programs and let communities go it alone to recruit and retain businesses without state help.
It’s an unrealistic change. Pendergraft believes the government has no role to play in economic development and it should be up to businesses to succeed on their own.
That’s simply not the way it works these days, with all states looking to recruit every business sector they can. With Business Council programs and recruiting strategies tailored to communities’ needs, Wyoming has been competitive with other states.
The Business Council secured a significant investment from Microsoft for a data center in Cheyenne. It attracted the expansion of the oil and gas sector with incentives and support. And the council supported the growth of renewable energy projects, including wind and solar farms.
Last December, before the Joint Appropriations Committee voted to defund the Business Council, Pendergraft said it’s not the role of government to build infrastructure.
“Leave that to the free market. Leave that to the businesses to develop that,” he said. “Leave that to the consumers that want those things.”
Such stale arguments have been getting increasingly aggressive counterpunching by Dorrell. It’s about time.
Dorrell said many examples across the state indicate that the state’s minimal “investment in infrastructure” is working against Wyoming.
“The idea that the state or that the community shouldn’t pay for infrastructure, that experiment is sort of running right now, and what it’s saying is that people are leaving and what it’s saying is our economy is in decline,” he said.
If the free market system works so well, why don’t companies just come here on their own and create a thriving economy? That’s not happening, and it’s the Freedom Caucus’ outdated economic theories that are hurting Wyoming, not the Business Council’s approach.
Business Council board member Mark Christensen had some pithy words for the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee last month.
“Wyoming has lower taxes and Wyoming has all these other things,” he said, “but that’s not what drives people like what drives the quality of life. I feel like sometimes we don’t address the hard problems.”
The Freedom Caucus not only doesn’t address them, it purposely runs away and pretends those hard problems either don’t exist or are the fault of a state agency. It’s time for caucus members to look in the mirror and admit that the roadblocks they put in the way of economic development are what’s really hurting Wyoming.
BOTH harm Wyoming’s economy. But the WBC harms it far more than the FC. Time to dissolve it.
The freedom caucus is just like the Trump presidency. Everything they touch dies.
Not sure how many of them are from out of state, but they do not represent Wyoming values
Enough said
Not worried at all. I already know the freedom caucus will be rewarded well from this deeply red state. We can’t have the fascist, socialist, communist, Marxist Dems running this state.
I hope your comment was just facetious and not serious Chris. You sure gave the democrats a lot of credit for being fascist, socialist, communist, and Marxist all in one sentence.
Thank you Kerry, for a stark and accurate “State of the State” message, with the loss of all these necessary Public Services brought to us (unfortunately) by the Freedom Caucus.
When will get smarter about who we elect?
We are addicted to boom and bust and are unable to envision a cure! Life in Wyoming is hard and has always been so since man first walked here. Our frontier lifestyle, whether by choice or necessity, appeals to very few. Sure, many of us would like to see a change that includes steady well paying jobs so our children can grow and prosper here but propping up dying industries by sacrificing our clean air, water and pristine forests as our current political leaders would have us do is untenable.
Meanwhile, Canada orders 12 submarines from Germany, and MAGA acolytes are trying to understand how Trump is getting wealthier on their dime, while their MAGA investments are going down.
It’s time to abandon MAGA and move forward.
Regarding the 12 submarine deal with Germany, unfortunately, we -the US, probably wouldn’t have been able to build them for Canada even if Trumpty Dumpty hadn’t gone out of his way to piss them off. We no longer have the shipbuilding capacity to sustain our own naval needs, neither in the area of building new ships nor in maintaining existing ones. That insufficient capacity will be put under further strain if we go ahead with the deal to build nuke boats for Australia.