CHEYENNE—When Gov. Mark Gordon signed Wyoming’s current two-year budget into law last March, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus immediately called for a special session to override his line-item vetoes and several other rejected bills.
That special session never happened. But Friday presented another opportunity for lawmakers to push back when the Joint Appropriations Committee met to discuss the supplemental budget.
“The bodies, both House and Senate, were unable to come back and override these vetoes, or at least have a chance to override these vetoes,” House Appropriations Chairman Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, said at the meeting. “So we’d like to look at these vetoes.”
The committee did more than look, voting to “override” many of the governor’s line-item vetoes by adding the crossed-out language back into the supplemental budget.
In even-numbered years, lawmakers craft the state’s upcoming two-year budget, also known as a biennium budget. In odd-numbered years, lawmakers work on the supplemental budget — which, as the name implies, supplements the financial plan currently in effect.
Gordon’s line-item vetoes to the budget last year varied in degree and topic. He struck language related to employee compensation, and border assistance, as well as funding for a Wheatland water tower and a Riverton recreation center. He also used his pen to keep 24 state positions the Legislature voted to axe.
At the time, Gordon said his red pen was mostly used to uphold the separation of powers and limit the scope of the budget bill to regular government expenses.
But that didn’t satisfy the Freedom Caucus, whose hard-line members and allies now control the House and make up most of the Appropriations Committee. Perhaps the committee’s most notable vote Friday was the decision to add language related to diversity, equity and inclusion programming at the University of Wyoming that Gordon had struck in his vetoes.
More specifically, the committee voted to prohibit any state funds from going toward “any diversity, equity and inclusion program, activity or function.”
The committee’s lone Democrats — Rep. Trey Sherwood of Laramie and Sen. Mike Gierau of Jackson — were the two opposing votes.
Gordon had struck the language last year because of concerns that it would endanger roughly $120 million in federal grants for Wyoming’s sole public four-year university.
“These grants are vital to research and other core purposes of the University, but with the condition that the recipients extend opportunities to participate to underrepresented and underserved populations, including veterans, people with disabilities, Native Americans, and others,” Gordon wrote.
“These grant-required inclusion efforts are much broader than LGBTQ+ or others that our Legislature may believe are the only populations for which inclusion efforts are intended.”
None of the committee members at Friday’s meeting addressed Gordon’s concerns about losing out on millions in federal funding. Meanwhile, Sen. Darin Smith, R-Cheyenne, voiced his support.
“I think that’s great language,” Smith said. “We want to remove that philosophy, which is anti-American at its very core, from anything that’s being taught in our state.”
The committee’s decision is not final. The supplemental budget must still gain the approval from both chambers. Plus, the governor gets another chance to reject any part of the budget when the bill makes it to his desk. But that could provoke another attempted override by lawmakers.
Gordon took questions from journalists Friday at a Wyoming Press Association sponsored luncheon. When asked what he made of the committee’s actions that morning and what he thought it meant for the executive and legislative branches working together this session, Gordon said, “it’s a long ways till the end of session.”
“I found now, being in this a few years, that you have to let things kind of simmer for a while before you really get too terribly worked up about it,” Gordon said, adding that he would be meeting with the Appropriations Committee that afternoon.
Gordon also raised concerns about the makeup of the committee.
“My biggest concerns are you have a Joint Appropriations Committee with a lot of new members,” Gordon said. “And I’m not clear that they all have a full understanding of exactly what happens when you get rid of this or add that, and what the implications are down the line.”
That same morning Republican Rep. Ken Pendergraft, a second-term lawmaker from Sheridan, asked the committee to reconsider a motion it voted on earlier in the meeting.
“I’m not comfortable that I understood it enough to move one way or the other,” Pendergraft said. “And I guess I’m asking for a little bit more explanation.”
The Joint Appropriations Committee is set to reconvene at 8 a.m. Monday to continue discussing the supplemental budget.
“I’m not comfortable that I understood it enough to move one way or the other,” Pendergraft said. Pretty sure this is true of all of the new JAC members, they really don’t understand the budget or how things work. However, that won’t keep them from nickel and diming us into a crisis.