CHEYENNE—Wyoming lawmakers are rounding the corner on House and Senate budget deliberations, while the difficult task of negotiating a single, unified bill lies ahead next week.
Both chambers began sorting through third-reading amendments Friday morning after having to push the budget bill back a day.
House lawmakers brought a record number of amendments this year on both the second and third reading of the budget. The 241 total amendments far surpasses the number of proposed changes in any previous budget year since at least 2002, when the Legislative Service Office began keeping a digital record of amendments.
The heap of amendments put the House a day behind schedule after its second reading of the budget. The chambers were originally scheduled to do second reading on Tuesday and third reading on Thursday. But the House dragged its second reading until close to midnight Wednesday. Because the chambers are required to wait 24 hours between these two readings, that pushed the third reading to Friday.
Lawmakers in the lower chamber tried a number of times to move the process along at a quicker clip. Rep. Ocean Andrew, R-Laramie, attempted to end debate on amendments shortly before midnight Tuesday. Doing so would have killed the remaining second-reading amendments. But the move requires a two-thirds majority vote, and it failed.
Then Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, asked his colleagues Wednesday morning to keep debate on amendments brief. The body subsequently spent nearly two hours debating one amendment. Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, had intended to bring a rule change on Friday to limit debate on bills and budget amendments. But he said he didn’t have enough votes and withdrew the rule amendment.
After slogging through 122 amendments on second reading of the budget, House lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Friday morning with another 119 proposed changes awaiting their consideration.
House sticks (mostly) to the JAC course
As expected, the House has — with some exceptions — stuck to the budget bill developed by the Joint Appropriations Committee, the Legislature’s primary budgeting arm. That committee raised eyebrows last month when it voted to make significant cuts to the University of Wyoming while attempting to defund the Wyoming Business Council.
House lawmakers have so far declined to restore $40 million in block grant funding for the University of Wyoming in the first round of budget negotiations. They also declined to restore funding for Wyoming Public Media and matching funds.
They did, however, restore $6 million in funding for the school’s athletics, which was the biggest change to the JAC’s version of the budget that lawmakers in the lower chamber approved during the budget’s second reading.
Lawmakers in the lower chamber also knocked down efforts to restore funding for the Wyoming Business Council. They also denied efforts to add millions of dollars in funding for the Department of Health, the Department of Family Services, the Department of Corrections and other state agencies.
Of the 122 amendments they considered in this first go at the budget, house lawmakers adopted 10 changes. Not all of those changes added or subtracted money.
Third-reading amendments include proposals to add millions in funding for Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources, the state’s wildlife and natural resource trust, the transportation department, the health department, the family services department and other agencies. They also have another slate of amendments to consider for the University of Wyoming and the Wyoming Business Council.
Late Friday afternoon, the House approved a third-reading amendment from Rep. Steve Harshman to invest $100,000,000 from the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund to give the transportation department loans for constructing highways picked by the transportation commission. The Casper Republican had tried to pass the amendment during the second reading of the bill.
“We’re struggling now to fund our highways, water systems, all those things, and we have the ability then — and we do this with water and other things in our infrastructure — to invest in ourselves.”
“This was really a close vote the other day, and that’s why I brought it back,” he said.
House lawmakers had also adopted amendments to pay for additional state employee positions in the Wyoming Department of Audit and for the Riverton state office building.
By the time the Senate had wrapped up its third-reading amendments, the House lawmakers had worked through 23 of theirs. They still had 96 to go.
The Senate
As it did on second reading, the Senate made quick work Friday, sorting through amendments at a much faster clip than the House.
By 5 p.m. Friday, the upper chamber had sorted through all 51 of its amendments. Senate lawmakers adopted 28 revisions, withdrew 11 and rejected another 12.
Several of the amendments sought adjustments to the sweeping amendment — dubbed the big, beautiful amendment — the Senate passed Tuesday.
Sponsored by 16 lawmakers, the revision largely reverted the budget back to the governor’s recommendations. Senators voted Friday to fix at least one technical error that resulted from the sweeping change.
Seven other amendments dealt with UW. Lawmakers approved two additions, including an appropriation of $1,000,000 in matching funds to be evenly split between the school’s rodeo and debate teams.
“Both these university teams have been performing at exceptional levels for many years,” Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said.
Another $500,000 in matching funds was approved for a rural medicine training initiative as part of the school’s family residency program.
Meanwhile, lawmakers rejected an amendment from Sen. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, to reduce roughly $27.5 million in the school’s budget requests.
The Senate also made three changes to the Department of Health’s budget, an agency which came under extra scrutiny in the Legislature’s offseason.
One of those amendments related to the agency’s program that supports individuals living with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and certain adults with an acquired brain injury. The appropriations committee prioritized studying how to improve the program in the offseason. Ultimately, it was one of the few areas in the budget where the panel sought to increase spending.
“If we want to talk about the most vulnerable, this is it,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, said.
The amendment restored the committee’s position to spend a mix of about $10 million in state and federal dollars to increase the program’s provider rates, and roughly $9 million in mixed state-federal funds to decrease the program’s waitlist.
Lawmakers also appropriated $203,000 to boost salaries for public health employees in four counties that had fallen behind pay rates at public health offices in the rest of the state. Another $1.8 million was approved for senior care.
What’s next?
Once both chambers complete third reading on their respective budget bills, negotiations move to a joint conference committee. That panel of lawmakers will be responsible for working out differences between the House and Senate to craft a unified bill to bring back to their colleagues for final approval.
The process could prove to be challenging. Two years ago, leadership appointed a second joint conference committee when the first one failed to reach an agreement on the budget. In 2025, the Senate altogether rejected passing a supplemental budget. But this being a budget session, lawmakers are constitutionally obligated to pass the state’s next two-year spending plan.
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