The Legislature’s primary budgeting arm haggled over and then passed a 58-page draft bill on Thursday to dismantle the Wyoming Business Council after the measure was shared with Joint Appropriations Committee members, and the public, for the first time the night before.
The pace at which the panel moved drew a strong rebuke from a key adviser to Gov. Mark Gordon, who at one point bluntly told the committee, “This is nuts.”
Draft bill, “Wyoming business council-repeal,” passed by a vote of 9-3. Devils Tower Republican Sen. Ogden Driskill, Jackson Democrat Sen. Mike Gierau and Laramie Democrat Rep. Trey Sherwood voted against the measure. The bill will be introduced in the Senate when the full Legislature convenes in February for the budget session.
Gierau made a motion to table the bill in favor of prioritizing the matter as a topic to hash out after the budget session. The motion failed.
The bill, brought by Powell Republican Sen. Dan Laursen, attempts to prescribe how the business council will be dismantled and to codify the committee’s action earlier this week to defund the agency, which also passed on a vote of 9-3 along the same division.
Though both the budgeting action and repeal bill will get a hearing before the full Legislature, proponents of the effort to dismantle Wyoming’s primary economic development agency heard criticism for the breakneck speed of the effort, as well as what’s been described as an unprecedented and monumental move to eliminate a major state agency.
“We don’t know what the ramifications are,” Gierau said after several hours of debate. “I mean, this bill, in my view, is fatally flawed. That’s why I asked that we put together a task force to try to make it right.
“I hear this, ‘Oh, get the government out of the way’ [argument],” Gierau continued. “I have yet to hear one positive thing that’s come out of this about how we’re going to help business. If you think that passing this bill is going to mystically help everything out just by passing it, I think you’re fatally misguided.”
Though he voted for both measures, Wheatland Republican Rep. Jeremy Haroldson also expressed concern about the short timeline the Legislature has to decide how to hand off multiple accounts and programs under the business council’s management to other state entities.
“I also heard the Wyoming Business Council has done nothing good,” Haroldson said. “I disagree with that. I think there have been good things that have come out of this. You guys, honestly, with this conversation, it makes an incredibly large discussion point going into the next [legislative session] because a lot of this is politics.”
Proponents, including Sheridan Republican Rep. Ken Pendergraft, argued that dismantling the economic development agency stands to benefit businesses.
“This is nuts. This is crazy. You’re attempting to [eliminate] an agency that has been around for over 20 years and what appears to be a rushed bill. It appears to have a lot of questions.”
Randall Luthi, Gov. Mark Gordon’s office
“The concept, the underlying idea behind this, is to get government out of the way and allow businesses to find their own way and work for themselves, to survive on their own,” he said.
Reshuffling the deck
The bill to dismantle the business council prescribes where to transfer accounts, how to administer active loans, which programs under the council will be terminated and where other programs might be reassigned among various state agencies.
For example, the Main Street and Small Business Investment Credit programs would be eliminated, while others would be transferred to agencies such as the Wyoming Office of Tourism, Wyoming Workforce Services and Wyoming Energy Authority. The Wyoming Broadband Office, currently under the business council, is managing some $400 million in federal funds. That work would be shifted to the governor’s office.
None of those agencies, according to Legislative Service Office staff, have been consulted about how or whether they can handle the new duties.
Sherwood noted that, if the bill passes, the Legislature is essentially asking the council’s staff of 38 full-time workers and two part-time workers to dismantle the organization, knowing that their jobs are being eliminated.
“Have we contemplated what happens if they all walk on day one — that this bill is signed and then, who is left to do this work?” Sherwood asked.
Though the pre-markup version of the bill didn’t contemplate a severance package, several members suggested that such an offering could help ensure employees’ cooperation to dismantle the organization.
“This is nuts. This is crazy,” Gov. Mark Gordon’s Policy Director Randall Luthi told the committee. “You’re attempting to [eliminate] an agency that has been around for over 20 years and what appears to be a rushed bill. It appears to have a lot of questions.
“There is a way to go through each and every question that you have and be able to find a home for where things might go or where we no longer need them,” Luthi added.
Gordon’s Communications Director Amy Edmonds reiterated to WyoFile that the governor will continue to defend his budget recommendation to fund the council into the future.
“We don’t believe [the defunding effort] has had the full vetting of the people in the state,” Edmonds said. “It’s just not how we do things in Wyoming. This should be done fully noticed with multiple opportunities for the public and other entities to come and to speak on it.”
The Legislature will convene Feb. 9.