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Wyoming Senate adopts conference budget with university funding restored, Business Council trimmed
Summary
The Senate adopted the Joint Conference Committee report on the state budget (Senate File 1), approving funding that restores employee compensation and funds the University of Wyoming while trimming much of the Business Council's grant program; the package was reported as about $53 million below the governor's recommendation.
The Wyoming Senate voted to adopt the Joint Conference Committee report for Senate File 1, the state's general government appropriations bill, on March 2, approving the conference package by roll call 28–3.
Committee chairs told the chamber the conference report restored several priorities from the governor's original recommendation and Senate requests. Senator Crumb said the University of Wyoming is "fully funded" within the package, with a $100,000 study exception. Senator Salazar and floor leaders emphasized employee compensation was restored toward the governor's suggested level and itemized distributions were provided for executive branch agencies (for example, $64,191,153 cited for distribution among executive agencies).
The conference package reduces the Wyoming Business Council's budgetary footprint: the Business Ready Community Grants Program was eliminated (about $54 million in savings) while the council received an appropriation to continue in-house operations for approximately $12–14 million for one year. The report also conditions certain university matching funds (for example, a $10,000,000 state match for a permanent endowment and $2,500,000 conditioned on match for the College of Agriculture initiative).
Other budget details noted on the floor included the addition of 15 full-time equivalent state employees in the biennial budget, appropriations for cloud services ($875,929) and specific appropriations for public laboratory services ($607,227), federal fund IT items ($3,145,000 with $555,000 for IT), and a $325 million transfer by the state auditor to the legislative stabilization reserve account identified as a final budget balancer. Senators observed the conference package was approximately $53 million below the governor's "wreckt" (governor's recommendation), with general funds near $3.4 billion and total funds about $9.989 billion.
On some contested line items, the conference report adopted House language on a statewide trails initiative as a compromise: $800,000 from the tourism fund, one-to-one local match, and availability for the life of the budget (roughly 27 months). Senators expressed differing views about the trade-offs, but the joint report was adopted by a 28–3 roll call.
The Senate then recessed for lunch to take up additional committee business in the afternoon.
