Wyoming Freedom Caucus plans on ‘DOGE-ing’ state budget

Several months into the Trump administration’s efforts to cut federal jobs and spending, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is taking inspiration from the Department of Government Efficiency as it sets priorities for the legislative off-season that’s now underway. 

“DOGE-ing Wyoming’s budget by identifying unconstitutional and wasteful spending” sits at the top of the further-right group’s list of priorities, according to an April press release.  

In the months between sessions, known as the interim, much of the Legislature’s work is accomplished as lawmaker committees meet to work through topics with stakeholders, gather public testimony and draft committee bills. In odd-numbered years, legislators also begin crafting the state’s next two-year budget. That’s one area in particular where the Freedom Caucus would like to use DOGE as a model. 

“I think there’s a huge desire to see waste, fraud and abuse tracked down and eliminated,” House Appropriations Chairman Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, told WyoFile. Bear previously chaired the Freedom Caucus. 

“It’s only natural that a bureaucracy would have waste, fraud and abuse. And if we try to turn a blind eye to it as a government, it does a disservice to the taxpayers,” Bear said. 

While the Appropriations Committee will dedicate its interim meetings to other topics ahead of December and January’s budget hearings — including sales and use tax distribution, developmentally disabled waivers and funding for wildfire response, prevention and management — Bear said he’s already got a few ideas “as far as DOGE-ing the budget.” 

“I think that there’s some really low-hanging fruit there,” Bear said, pointing to cuts the House proposed earlier this year before the Senate, in an unprecedented move, announced it would not pass a supplemental budget in the 2025 session. 

Model government 

Trump’s DOGE has faced legal challenges and been criticized for its lack of transparency. For months, it has remained unclear, for example, how many Wyoming-based federal workers have been fired or incentivized to leave their jobs. Reviews of the purported savings also found the claims were often riddled with errors.

Bear said he expects greater transparency at the state level since the same branch “doing the DOGE-ing, if you will” also holds the purse strings, as opposed to the executive branch calling the shots in Washington. 

“We’ll make it really clear to people where our cuts are going to be in the [next] budget,” Bear said. 

Meanwhile, the lawmaker with the most experience on the Appropriations Committee said he’s skeptical of the value of state lawmakers seeking to imitate the federal government. 

“I think it’s insulting, frankly,” Jackson Democrat Sen. Mike Gierau told WyoFile. “It’s just stealing a bad idea from Donald Trump and trying to impose it on Wyoming.”

Lawmakers have done a quality job of making “government as lean and efficient as we can make it,” Gierau said, adding that political buzz words like “DOGE” obscure that spending wisely can save money in the long run. 

“Think about early childhood education. Study after study after study shows when we spend on early childhood education, we save on K-12 education. It’s a fact,” he said. 

Gierau also pointed to spending on mental health services as having a savings ripple effect. 

“It also helps the general welfare and health and wealth of our citizens,” he said. “People expect that from their government. They expect that. They expect to have those types of services available to them.” 

What else to expect 

Bear pointed to the recent past to explain where he’d like to focus DOGE-like efforts in Wyoming.

“You can look at the supplementary budget that [the House] put together and get a clue,” Bear said. 

In particular, Bear pointed to eliminating funds for the Cheyenne arboretum and the governor’s energy matching dollars, as well as cutting vacant positions. 

“One of the most glaring things I see is vacant positions,” Bear said. “For instance, in the Department of Health, there are 388 vacant positions, or at least there were during the last session.” 

By eliminating vacant positions throughout state government, Bear said, “we’re not affecting any communities, or employed state employees. We’re talking about positions that have been vacant for a long, long time.”

But it’s not that simple, Gierau said, adding that vacant positions allow agencies to move money around more nimbly to address falling compensation rates. 

When state agencies saw record-high turnover rates in 2022, Gov. Mark Gordon successfully called on lawmakers to increase compensation for state employees.

“We stopped the trend of massive turnover. We slowed it down. We’re certainly not anywhere close to no turnover,” Gierau said. “But now we’re starting to fall behind again.” 

‘Research’

When the Appropriations Committee meets later this month in Gillette, Bear said “you won’t see anything about the budget,” or DOGE-ing it, in the agenda. 

“At this point, it’s simply research,” Bear said. 

That research took him across the state — at the invitation of Gierau — to Teton County to attend a county commission meeting where a housing development was being discussed. 

Bear said he’s also been keeping an eye on the Legislature’s Education Committee, while three other Appropriations Committee members attended the University of Wyoming’s budget hearings in May. The latter is another area that “requires more study,” Bear said. 

The Legislature provides UW with a block grant, affording a kind of budget flexibility to the state’s one four-year public university. That varies from other state agencies, where lawmakers have more line-item spending oversight. But that arrangement with UW is worth revisiting, Bear said. 

“I’m very interested in knowing whether we would get better information if each college had to come before the [Appropriations] Committee [to present] what the money is being spent on,” Bear said. 

At UW’s budget hearing, Sheridan Republican and Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ken Pendergraft weighed in with his thoughts on spending at UW and the state at large. 

“What I think we’ve done to ourselves as a state is we’ve got ourselves spread far too thin. We’ve got ourselves trying to do too many things, and quite frankly, we’re doing some of them half ass,” Pendergraft said.

At the time, UW Police was presenting its budget request to the trustees, which Pendergraft described as “critical” and in need of being “properly funded.” 

Pendergraft then urged the trustees to “look around the rest of the university and say, ‘What is not critical?’” 

“I think that’s where we’re at as a state. I think that’s where the university is. And nobody, like I said, nobody wants to tell anybody, ‘Hey, we’re going to shut you down,’ but we may well be confronted with that on every level,” he said. 

The Joint Appropriations Committee will meet June 23 and 24 in Gillette.