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Lindholm: budget remains stable, for now

The 2019 Legislative Session was a successful one, says Representative Tyler Lindholm, but he feels Wyoming should stay wary of its future when it comes to state finances. The budget might balance for now, he explains, but it still depends on income sources that will never be completely stable.

For the most part, Lindholm says, the cuts that have been made over recent years remain in place.

“We’re still a much smaller budget than a decade ago, so a lot of those efficiencies are still in place and we’re still able to run state government in a manner that’s appropriate,” he says.

“Our budget is on time and in place and, as far as the supplemental budget, I was pretty proud of Governor Gordon with some of the vetoes that he did, that he didn’t view as quite passing muster. I thought it was pretty impressive. I think it was a total of 29 line item vetoes and in the House we only pushed back on four of those and the Senate agreed with two of them.”

Every potential tax that was floated during the session having been shot down, Lindholm is unsure whether the future will bring further cuts. That depends on the situation, he says.

“What’s really saved our bacon in the last couple of years is our capital gains. The State of Wyoming invests and saves a lot of money and that saving of those funds has allowed for our capital gains to really be huge for us – this year it covered a third of our total budget,” he says.

Those capital gains were made possible by the constitutional amendment voted in a couple of years ago but, while they have so far proven a boon, Lindholm warns that the state cannot rely on capital gains any more than it can on mineral prices. Boom and bust is equally problematic on the stock markets.

“It’s really shaky ground and it’s a really scary piece of ground we sit on. The last big bust we had was the biggest deficit the State of Wyoming has ever faced and it was because it was a double punch of coal and oil,” he explains.

“Both of those big players that our state depends on so much at the same time was unprecedented and that’s in large part why 2016-18 were pretty full of cuts. Going forward, now we’re also looking at what our capital gains have done for us in the last year with the big bump in the DOW that really benefited the State of Wyoming, it was right around $1.1 billion.”

Right now, he continues, coal and oil are still low. “Let’s hope the DOW holds,” he says wryly.

“Is there a possibility we could see a year where oil, coal, gas and the DOW are down? Sure, and God help us in Wyoming if that ever happens.”

Other Options

This uncertainty is why Lindholm would like to see the Legislature continue to look for surgical cuts, diversify the economy and seek more efficiencies, rather than simply hope for the best. “We call ourselves conservatives; well, conservatives pay our bills,” he says.

Regarding diversification, he would like to see more businesses encouraged to move to the state.

“Wyoming has great business laws. By far, we’re world leaders in regards to our business laws, we’re ranked time and time again as the most business friendly state. So where are they?” he says.

Understanding there is a need for stable income does not, however, mean he would support tax bills should they come up in the future. For almost any new tax, he describes himself as “a hard no”.

On the other hand, Lindholm’s attitude towards the state’s unreliable income is why he supported HB-220, the corporate income tax. It’s the only tax bill he’s ever supported, he says, and he regrets it failed.

To explain the thinking behind the bill, he points out that a particular item in a Wyoming branch of a national superstore is priced exactly the same as that item in an Ohio or California branch. That’s because the income tax paid by the superstore is applied evenly, not limited to the state in which it is paid.

“Forty-eight out of 50 states are collecting this,” he says. “The reality of the situation is they apportion those taxes that they pay elsewhere across the baseline of all their products. Wyoming consumers are paying a corporate and sales tax rate in other jurisdictions. That’s the way it works, and that sucks.”

It makes good sense for Wyoming to have its own corporate income tax and benefit in the same way as those 48 other states, Lindholm says – let’s pay our own bills rather than pay another state’s. The bill went through the House with no problems, he notes, “but then the Walmart lobbyists showed up.”

School Funding

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the 2019 session. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Legislature this session, says Lindholm, was in regards to the education funding deficit.

“That’s one of those issue I feel we’ll be working on for several more years – it’s not one of those things you want to just go into one session and cut your way out of and hope for the best. A huge portion of the state’s budget is K-12 education, we’ve got to make sure it’s done right,” he says.

Two bills fixed a large part of that deficit, Lindholm says. One returned some of the funding that had been cut for school transportation – something that hit the school districts in northeast Wyoming hard; the other, he says, was about planning for the future.

“With education, we’ve always been able to pull in a lot of federal mineral royalties and cover our baseline. It’s no longer the case that we can depend on those royalties, so what HB-308 did was essentially spread out our education funding to other funds and utilize some of the returns on those funds in order to put a stronger baseline underneath education,” Lindholm says.

Calling school funding “a bear to put your arms around,” Lindholm concurs with the general view that it’s an important part of state funding and adequate funds need to be in place. Now it’s no longer possible to rely strictly on minerals for that funding, he says the state will need to be more creative.

“Nobody likes the idea of the Legislature going into the session with the knife out, looking to cut in random and erratic ways, and in some ways we have done that,” he says. “Going forward in education, it’s just keeping an eye on those funding levels. I think we’ve got a lot of it figured out now, as far as moving forward and how we’re going to cover those deficits, but it’s a long row to hoe.”

Notable Bills

The Legislature did take a stance on attracting new business to Wyoming this year, Lindholm says.

“We passed some legislation that I sponsored in regards to expanding broadband in rural areas and I’m pretty excited about that. I think it’ll help, those pieces are all somewhat about deregulation, and hopefully that will lure in some of those [communications] companies wanting to build out their broadband infrastructure quite a bit more,” he says.

“It is 2019 and folks are looking to buy properties in rural areas like ours so they can work from home and have their own little slice of Heaven and that all means property taxes and adding income to the area and adding jobs, so broadband could be a real economic driver for our area.”

Lindholm, with the assistance of County Clerk Linda Fritz, also successfully passed legislation inspired by a local resident who experienced the issue of having both his own name and his wife’s on two vehicle titles, only for her to become incapacitated by illness. The resident was forced to obtain power of attorney in order to sell the vehicles.

“I got to looking at the title laws in other jurisdictions and a lot of other states have an option on a title where you can say “and” or “or”,” he says.

It required some work to get the language right, he says, but he is pleased with the result. The bill also cleaned up some of the notary requirements for titles, he adds.

Another important bill to pass was SF-57, “a rewrite of the public records act”, Lindholm says, inspired by issues that have cropped up recently regarding how public records are being requested by certain groups and how they are being answered by some political subdivisions.

“I think it adds another level of transparency and should make it easier to view a lot of these public records and be able to provide for a lot of our smaller special districts and smaller governing bodies the ability to work with the Governor’s Office on answering those public records requests,” he says.

The bill set up a new timeline for answering public records requests; dictates who specifically should be responsible for answering them; and allows an ombudsman within the Governor’s Office to intervene if necessary if a person is unable to obtain a record, rather than a court of law.

SF-111 meanwhile allows community colleges to turn a two-year technical trade school degree into a four-year baccalaureates degree.

“We think that will really help a lot of these community colleges get more enrollment and folks who are working in trades to get their four-year managerial degree and move up into managerial positions,” he says.

“Otherwise, it was pretty much a meat-and potatoes kind of session where you just dig in and get on with other people’s work.”

Wrapping Up

Lindholm ends by extending pride in his two interns, both of whom were from Crook County: Lauren Haiar and Micah Rogers. “Guaranteed, they worked longer hours than any other interns there, mostly because I made them show up at 7 a.m. and they weren’t done until 5 or 6 p.m.,” he grins. “Lauren and Micah worked their tails off, did a great job and really did our area proud.”

For the community, he leaves a message.

“I’m once again honored to be able to serve you down in Cheyenne. It was a pretty long 36 days, on the last day we didn’t quit until 2 o’clock in the morning,” he says. “I’m honored to be able to do it.”

For Senator Ogden Driskill’s take on the session, see page 5.

 
 
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