Wyoming Senate rejects supplemental budget with wildfire funds, Natrona County attorneys

CASPER, Wyo. — The Wyoming Senate announced Wednesday it was rejecting Gov. Mark Gordon’s supplemental budget request for the two-year period ending July 2026, saying it was embracing the trend of downsizing. The budget had passed the House and Joint Appropriations Committee.

Last November, Gordon said an unprecedented wildfire season had cost $58 million, depleting the two-year allocation and reserves. He requested a $50 million appropriation for the firefighting account and $130 million to restoration efforts for the 850,000 acres that burned last summer.

The governor also asked for money to help retain obstetrics and mental healthcare providers through higher Medicaid payouts, shore up property tax relief programs created by new legislation and address costs due to inflation. It also supported one of his signature programs aimed at workforce training for the tourism and hospitality sector. The budget book released last December contained the full account of departments affected and fiscal breakdown.

The fiscal note on the state website says the bill contained about $320 million in appropriations for the $3.8 billion, two-year budget passed by the legislature last March.

“As fiscal conservatives, we know that spending hundreds of millions of dollars while debating massive tax cuts, is not the conservative thing to do,” Senate President Bo Biteman said in a letter released on Wednesday.

Legislation that would dramatically reduce homeowner tax rates on the first $1 million in value has passed the Senate, and counties and municipalities are concerned about the direct reduction in their operating budgets.

Biteman said the state should wait to see the impacts of the “successful rightsizing of the federal bureaucracy by the new administration.” He added that the Senate was already addressing inflationary costs through active legislation.

“Unfortunately, this legislature has overlooked emergencies and ignored unanticipated expenses in a quest for political talking points,” Gordon wrote in a statement Thursday. “This is what occurs in a ‘no compromise’ environment.”

Gordon urged the senators to consider the things that might tangibly benefit their constituents. “It is hard to raise a calf or drill a well on rhetoric alone,” he wrote.

Natrona County District Attorney Dan Itzen told Oil City News the supplemental budget had secured two additional attorneys and an assistant that were sorely needed for the office. He said the office is down four positions, given the professional standard on caseloads. The Seventh Judicial District prosecuted 2,628 felony cases in the last fiscal year, according to state data.