Wyoming Senate adopts supplemental budget, rejects PBS endowment cut; mixed results on energy, wildfire and school measures

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Wyoming Senate on Feb. 7 approved a supplemental budget bill that bundles emergency spending, transfers and several policy riders while voting down a proposal to strip funding from the Wyoming Public Television endowment and approving a set of contested changes affecting energy, wildfire mitigation and other programs.

The Senate passed Senate File 1, the supplemental appropriations bill, after a final roll-call vote. The clerk recorded the bill as having passed on third reading (final recorded tally: 28 ayes, 3 nays). The roll-call followed more than two dozen separate amendment votes and withdrawals over the day and evening.

Why it matters: The bill adjusts state spending between sessions and includes a set of high-profile programmatic decisions that lawmakers debated loudly — from restoring flexibility for large energy project matching funds to adding funds for wildfire mitigation. Many decisions on the floor were procedural (withdrawals and technical fixes), but several substantive items change how state funds can be used and set priorities ahead of the next fiscal year.

What the Senate did (high-level) - Passed Senate File 1 (supplemental budget) on third reading (final recorded vote in the Senate: 28 aye, 3 no). The bill included the fiscal “balancer” that pays for the items adopted in the session’s amendment process. - Rejected (failed) a proposal to remove revenue paid to the Wyoming Public Television Endowment account (Third-reading Amendment No. 8). - Rejected several amendments aiming to restrict university exchanges and to add immediate prohibitions tied to “foreign adversaries” (Third-reading Amendment No. 9 and related amendments failed). - Approved restoring the scope of the Large Project Energy Matching Funds to allow projects tied to carbon storage and sequestration (Third-reading Amendment No. 15 adopted). - Adopted a large change to wildfire/natural-disaster mitigation funding, converting earlier loan language into grants and increasing the grant amount (Third-reading Amendment No. 20 adopted to provide $100…