- As the new legislative session began, many expected a battle royal on the biennial state budget, but it turned out not to be nearly so contentious as many had forecast.

One reason could be that Governor Mark Gordon submitted a frugal, sensible budget that many lawmakers decided didn't need a lot of changes.

We'll speak with Wyoming's two-term Governor Mark Gordon.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS, join us for "Capitol Outlook".

(bright upbeat music) Welcome to "Capitol Outlook", and to Governor Mark Gordon.

You're not a member of the legislature but I could almost be said, I think, that you had a good legislative session.

Would you agree?

- Well, Steve, I think Wyoming had a good legislative session.

It wasn't the prettiest thing, but as I've pointed out over and over again, when people say, "My gosh, you know, you got more than 90% of your budget back in, aren't you happy?

It's a big victory for you."

And I was saying, "Well, you know, when we put a budget together, we really think about what's essential for the people of Wyoming."

And that's where we focus, and I'm glad people started to see it our way a little bit better.

And I'm happy, there's still some things that I wish had gotten there, I can't believe this legislature can't figure out how to feed kids, for example, but, you know, we've done pretty well.

- In a message announcing, I guess, the signing of the agreement, the concurrence on the budget.

You said it's a victory for Wyoming.

What was won for the state?

- Well, I think what was won is that the people of Wyoming spoke up and said, "These are things that are important to us."

The legislature really couldn't ignore that.

You know, we went into this legislature with a lot of hyperbole about we're gonna find waste, fraud and abuse.

And we came out of it saying, "You know, actually we're pretty well run."

When you look at our SNAP waiver fraud rate, it's less than 1%.

And in the Department of Health, you had this whole DOGE committee that was gonna dive deep and find all these savings, and they came away kind of going, "No, you know, it's pretty well run department."

And so I think what was the victory was understanding that Wyoming is not a Florida, Wyoming is not a Minnesota, Wyoming is Wyoming.

We're a transparent government and we should be handling our own problems, and I think that message came through loud and clear to the legislature.

- We've had several members of the legislature on this show, and a couple of 'em said they had received more feedback this session than maybe they'd ever had in their careers.

A lot of times it's fairly commonplace for a legislator not really to get all that much.

They would listen to each other, the committees, the lobbyists, the activists, so to speak, but the average person, they always say, "Well, someone comes up to me at the grocery store, but maybe it doesn't happen all that often."

This time, though, tied to what you just said, it sounds like they were getting some messaging from back home.

- Yeah, I think absolutely.

You know, you're gonna cut UW and you're gonna cut the business council?

I think people in Wyoming, our elections usually start, you know, in August with the primary, and I think a lot of people kind of have come to sort of think of Wyoming politics as being pretty stable, as being, you know, people with good intentions are gonna get there.

And I think most people that get elected are coming with good intentions, but this time has sort of blew up.

I mean, those were touchstones that I think really set people off and went, "What in the world is going on down there?"

And that's why you heard what you did, I think, the number of people that came out and said, "No, UW is important, business is important."

We need to make sure we have energy, that was one of those things that, you know, we were gonna cut too with this- Yeah, there were just a lot of those things.

- You've been governor, you're in your eighth year as governor.

You were treasurer for almost that long prior to that, so you've been around the capitol for a while during budget sessions.

Something happened this year that I think was nearly unprecedented, say, at least in this century, I'm sure you know what I'm getting at.

You submit your budget in November, I believe, and that gives people a lot of time to tweak it and pick nits and swing at it, and rip it to shreds in some cases.

And during the state of the state, you say, "Well, I call on the legislature to restore this and restore this," having seen the Joint Appropriations Committee version.

It has a little bit of an aspect almost of, forgive me, of sort of going through the motions.

You have to get up there and say, "Implement my budget, 'cause I-" This year the Senate decided to do that, accept your budget as the starting point.

I don't think I'd ever seen that before.

Had you?

And, I mean, must've been satisfying for you when that happened.

- I was pleased and, you know, I've never seen that before.

I think it points out that we started from a pretty solid place and, you know, I think that's one of the dangers we see in modern politics.

We overstate and then we can't deliver, that sort of overpromise and under-deliver piece has been missed, and Wyoming's always been a "show me what you got, you know, and demonstrate it to me."

And I think what we got was enough nonsense in the pre-budget session that- and I really don't know exactly how it all came about but I think the Senate basically said, "No, we started from a pretty good place."

That created the dynamic.

For me, Steve, I've always felt, and you mentioned how long.

This is sort of an embarrassment to me, I never intended to be in government for that long, but I've always felt that the best leaders are the ones when everything's said and done, people say, "We've done this ourselves."

And so I'm really delighted that the legislature came as far as they did.

- Many times I've seen, and you probably have too, the executive's budget arrives and the legislature makes a big point of saying, "Well, this is dead on arrival," and put drop in our waste basket or something.

And "We can do better, we'll do our own."

And it is a give and take, that's part of what goes on.

So that's a little bit different this year and that's part of the victory, I suppose.

- Well, yeah, and I think one of the things that this also demonstrates is how young our legislature is.

And when I say young, they're not average age young, they're really just young in the job, the most of them are less than four years.

And so you had some sort of careless comments like, "Well, I was in the Army and we always doubled our appropriation so we can cut it in half and we'll be where they're supposed to be."

And I think once they started dissecting it and started looking at it, and started understanding that, "No, the cuts that you are gonna make are gonna hurt seniors, they're gonna hurt your neighbors, they're gonna hurt kids.

I think suddenly more maturity kind of entered the conversation.

So it was a good learning session.

- You mentioned a couple of items, let's talk about them in a bit more detail.

The University of Wyoming, big, big initial scoop out of the state funding from the university.

You urged against that and gotten most of that money back, is that correct?

- Yeah, I think we have.

I think it's important, one of the things that I've worked very hard on, really, ever since being treasurer has been how do we make our university much more of an economic driver?

It's our university, it needs to be connected with our community college, that educational mission is absolutely essential for all age groups in Wyoming.

And I think that the attempts to kind of cut its funding and sort of micromanage what it was going to do were problematic, and I think what we came away with was mostly an understanding that our university is a good institution, it needs to continue to improve, and that's by reflecting on itself.

It's good that the university's hearing about, you know, from concerns from all over Wyoming and it will continue to thrive.

So I think that was good.

- Well, I mean, business council, again, coming into the session the budget that the appropriations committee had submitted, at least, was essentially gonna chop off its head and maybe would even cease to exist.

You told us in an earlier interview you thought that was not a good idea, that business council had real value.

Didn't get it exactly, didn't leave it alone completely.

Where did it come out and are you satisfied with that?

- Yeah, I would say, Steve, if there's one place that I'd take a certain amount of pride, it is in the fact it was dead on arrival.

Both the Senate and the House were committed to killing it and I really don't think that's a good idea.

I fought hard to preserve it, I think it's also wonderful that there was enough of a wake up call to the business council and all that it does, that I think it sort of prompts a good reflection on how broad is it, can we narrow its mission, can we refine it a little bit better.

I think these are all very good things for Wyoming, but in the end what I thought was gonna be left on the operating table actually is now, I think, in a better place than maybe it has been for a while.

And the fact that it's even alive is amazing to me, I will take some personal pride in that.

- A worthwhile entity can stand some scrutiny, and maybe start there rather than- - Absolutely.

- State employee raises was another thing that you felt strongly about.

The state's finances, rate of inflation, et cetera, it sort of crept ahead of where the raise of pay were for workers.

It came out pretty well for you as well, in your opinion.

- Yeah, that was remarkable when the House voted to keep that.

It was a close vote and I understand it, it's always easy, particularly in an election year to talk about, you know, we have bureaucrats, I remember seeing a couple of videos of legislators sort of taking pot shots at the "bureaucrats".

We've worked hard over the last several years to make sure that we brought our pay tables a little closer, make sure we got rid of the compression that happens when you have to hire somebody at a higher rate than maybe somebody been there 30 years, so he's got a little bit more fairness in that.

And so the fact the legislature recognized that was hugely welcomed by my office.

I will also note, I mean just for the sake of noting it, the legislature's not unaware of how important it is to be able to pay, and to make sure that you have adequate staffing.

If you look at what they've done in that House Bill 2, which was what we refer to as the feed bill, the LSL bill, and I'm not taking any shots at LSL, but they've grown that capacity by 40%.

Their compensation is markedly higher than what the state employees are.

And so it's always interesting to me, you'll remember maybe a few years ago that I took a pot shot at it, the legislature's very protective of their staff and they're very protective of their mission.

They should be, we should all be but, you know, I always have said charity begins at home so let's make sure we understand that we're doing the same by both.

So I think they came some distance, I'm really thankful they did, but appreciate that.

- Still, we're able to put away a fair chunk of money into savings as well.

That's always been an objective of yours.

Didn't wanna spend it all and that's now paying such huge rewards for just general operating funds that's gonna continue.

- Yeah, no, it's monumental that Wyoming has been able to do this with discipline.

Other states that have had similar programs, like Alaska, have, you know, gone on benders from time to time, and Wyoming continues to sort of hang in there, building.

And we always refer to it as savings but, as I've mentioned to you, it was (indistinct), they're invested and they bring a lot of return back.

40, 44 million, something like that, that was put in savings this year, we had recommended 250.

Yeah, and that's fine.

I do want to bring a bit more definition to the famous LSRA account, the rainy day account, whatever we call it; because it's just growing a lot and that's all money that's available to the legislature to spend.

It backstops so many things that we do, for instance, the Hathaway, you know, there's a capacity there for it to draw out of it.

And if we don't put some definition around when we're going to use pieces and parts of it, we may wake up like Alaska did and find ourselves spending heavily out of it, and suddenly doesn't look quite as big as it used to.

- I think a week ago many people were expecting this absolute knockdown drag out fight on the last portions of the budget.

Turned out that really didn't happen.

I wasn't in the room, maybe those battles were fought, but the result was pretty quick resolution of it.

That gives us more time to concentrate on this other huge piece of legislation, which is the K-12 recalibration.

- Yeah.

- To me that's sort of a victory as well, because some word that rushing through calibration was not gonna be a good idea.

They're really hustling on it anyway, but now there's a bit more of a- I'm not gonna say relaxed but a slower pace to try to make sure that that gets done right.

- Yeah, I think that that's gonna be a useful time spent.

Gosh knows we've worked on school finance for decades and it's always a challenge, so to sort of think that it can be easily solved is challenging.

As I've mentioned, Steve, my concern is what are the unintended expenditures that are gonna come from school finance?

Things like what are we gonna do to fund our charter schools and what capacity is that gonna be?

How is just Steamboat Scholarship gonna weigh into these things?

These are all concerns that I think complicate, don't necessarily challenge but complicate that discussion.

And I think it is worthy of more time to kind of work it through.

- I noted the last time I think that a full recalibration bill was passed was 2011, and one of the significant parts about that is 2011 was a 40-day general session.

And just struck me as a huge challenge to try to cram that into this, but there's a pressure from the courts to get this done quickly.

Think we're gonna get there or we need another year on it?

- Well, I think they're gonna try to get there, I certainly hope they can.

I've argued repeatedly that this is an important enough issue that it really was meritorious of an interim effort.

And of course this last year everybody wanted to cut the interim time short.

We've seen experience where interim bills just don't make it very far in the legislature and, again, that speaks to the fact that we just don't have very many seasoned legislators, and maybe they learned a lot this time and they'll find some value.

- The old axiom, do it fast or do it right.

- There you go.

- Comes into place here.

Let me ask you just a bit about this incident that's become known as Checkgate, which nobody saw coming.

Absolutely nobody wanted it involved.

Party activist, donor activists coming onto the House floor and handing out some cheques to the legislators right there.

Do you remember when you heard about this, what some of your initial reactions were just at the first blush?

- I quite frankly was aghast.

Just the appearance of that, it brought back, I used to work for an oil and gas company, Apache Corporation, and one of my colleagues told me about an incident he'd witnessed on the Louisiana House floor where, you know, lobbyists would routinely walk down the aisles with pockets full of cheques and handing them out to people.

And he was talking about, you know, the absolute sort of lack of decorum I guess is the best way to put it.

Maybe there's some other things a person could put to it, but to me that just- I think one of the nice things about Wyoming is our accessibility.

I take particular pride in the fact that people know me, they know our legislators.

When I talk to others, you know, they're often isolated.

And our government is right there, and so I hope that we don't lose that character.

But on the other hand, when it becomes as casual as I'm gonna hand out campaign cheques on the floor proceeding a vote, just the appearance alone is something that nobody in Wyoming should ever want to see.

And so I'm glad that the House took it seriously.

I'm disappointed that, you know, we're try to shoot the messengers on that and I think- my father always had this saying that I hope I can keep, which is, "Whenever you're wrong admit it, and whenever you're right shut up."

And, you know, I think that's the character that Wyoming has and we're not seeing a lot of, "Boy, I did something that really was bad taste, if nothing, probably bad form, at least.

And I embarrassed the House."

- Sort of had the feeling that had they done that, wouldn't been nearly this big a brouhaha as it became.

- Yeah, I think that's probably true.

- The investigative report from the House was debated yesterday and I think the language was, "Well, officially there's no misconduct," but they did say it was bad conduct, and I guess that's something.

You took action immediately from the executive branch to try to limit this or halt it going forward, right?

- Yeah, you know, in that cowboy code we always talk about, you know, doing the right thing and knowing where to draw the line.

And so, to me, I always sort of rankled at first with the cowboy code being in statute, 'cause I thought this is what people in Wyoming just had in their DNA, then we had to make it a law.

And obviously now I think we've gotta have something a little bit more formal, that's why we did (indistinct).

- Yeah.

You've got a lot on your plate besides legislative stuff, there's a little bit more legislative business confronting you immediately, if you wanted to, you have the power to veto bills and even veto individual lines of bills.

I'm not asking you to say what you're gonna do.

Are there some things that you're at least looking at and what's the rationale in deciding how to go about that?

- Well, yeah, in budget sessions it's always quite interesting because a lot of this has become kind of a habit of the legislature, I think, over the last few years has been, "If we can get a bill, that's great, but if we don't get a bill, let's put it in the budget."

Our constitution says you can't do that.

And all the time that I've been in the governor's role, that's been kind of a sticker for me.

You don't legislate in the budget, and every new action should have an appropriation with it if it's gonna cost money.

It seems to me that we're needing to be careful about that constitutional authority.

There's also a temptation, and it's one that's been well expressed by our founders, you know, even back to the original founding fathers in this 250th year, that the legislature always has the notion that they run everything, and they don't.

I mean, by the constitution in our Article Two, it really says that we have these separations of power and there's no way that they should be abrogated.

And so I tend to try very hard when we have these very prescriptive, you know, "We're gonna have two people here that are gonna do this, and then they're gonna issue this report."

Well, you're welcome to say we need a report but it's a little bit more difficult when you're saying you can only spend this for these people and they have to do these things.

That's really the role of the executive.

- Yeah, that's not really a budget matter, that's an operational matter.

- Right, exactly.

- Yeah.

- And as I've said before, you know, there's obviously a lot of things that come to the governor.

I really tried to stay in that lane thinking carefully about, you know, is this something that the legislature worked?

And if it did and it is carefully crafted, it makes sense, certainly sign it.

If it's close and if there's a thing or two that they should work on, and I really don't see that it's ready for prime time per se, but not worth necessarily a veto, I'll do a no sign letter and say, "Here are the gaps that I think need to be filled."

And then obviously I do the veto after that, it goes back to the House of origin and then to the other house.

And I can be overridden, so that's that.

- This is that separation of powers process.

- That's exactly right.

- You're in your final year of your second term, you've got the big budget behind you.

What's ahead for the rest of 2026?

I know this America 250 stuff is interesting, it's fun.

Your office has provided funding for a long list of community-based America 250 projects, which I hope people look at that.

There's a lot of interesting and enjoyable things people could do related to that this year, if they want to.

- Absolutely.

All across the state, every community.

This is what I love about Wyoming, every community is very proud about their roots and their history.

And so all these communities are coming up with really clever new ideas, and so I think it's gonna be a very, very exciting year.

The rest of the stuff we're continuing to work on is to make sure that we can get our resources off the West Coast natural gas, coal, oil.

We're going to continue to work to make sure that Wyoming is an energy leader.

It's been exciting to see some of the recent developments on all the financial work that we've done.

I've got a very, very busy year, and actually I'm anxious to make sure I get it all done.

- Well, we'll let you get started on that here right now.

Governor Gordon, as always, I say this every time because I mean it every time.

Your willingness to appear with us on Wyoming PBS, greatly appreciated.

Another busy day, busy week, busy month and year ahead of you.

But thanks for sharing your views with us today.

Always appreciate your appearance on "Capitol Outlook".

- Well, thank you very much.

It's always an honor to be here.

- This is our sixth and final installment of "Capitol Outlook" for the season.

Our videographers this year have been Matt Wright, Kyle Duba, and Noah Marshall.

And my thanks to our guest, Governor Mark Gordon, House Speaker Chip Neiman, Senate President Bo Biteman, Senator Barry Crago, Representative Karlee Provenza.

Our production and content manager is Jeremy Moore, and the CEO of Wyoming PBS is Joanna Kail.

New installments of "Wyoming Chronicle" begin in two weeks.

You're watching Wyoming PBS.

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