Budget issues and tough topics were tackled during a Lusk Town Hall meeting held on Tuesday, February 6. The meeting took place at the Lusk Fairgrounds with House District Two Representative Allen Slagle and House District Two Senator Cheri Steinmetz among those in attendance. According to Steinmetz, Wyoming has a big budget, which means there will be issues with how the money is spent.

“With the n and state funds, we’re at $11 billion,” Steinmetz said. “We’re usually at $8.5 billion or $9 billion. So, that’s quite a big increase an there’s a pretty big increase in the number of FTEs (full-time employees). So, we need to look at that pretty closely. When we talk about property taxes, we need to have the discussion in conjunction with our budget. Otherwise, it’s not going to work.”

Steinmetz noted the need for prudence and thrift in any spending decisions. The senator expressed a desire to see the state government operate within its means.

“I’m a pretty strong believer that a budget shouldn’t just be spending everything you get,” Steinmetz said. “We need to start prioritizing our spending like our counties have to do. We need n talk about what our most important to least important responsibilities of government are. We need to actually start budgeting instead of saying, ‘Oh, we have this much here. Let’s create a project out of thin air.’ Quite a bit of that has happened this year. So, we’re really going to have to watch the budget closely.” 

Slagle and Steinmetz addressed many concerns currently facing Wyoming residents, including a hotly debated ballot initiative that aims to bring tax relief to Wyoming homeowners. The initiative, titled “People’s Initiative to Limit Property Tax in Wyoming through a Homeowners Property Exemption,” would permit Wyoming homeowners to apply to have their properties taxed at 50 percent of its assessed value. Proponents of the initiative assert that it would alleviate hardship for Wyoming residents overburdened with high taxes. Opponents say that, if passed, the initiative would decrease funding to emergency services and the education system. Naysayers have also raised the specter of a state income tax necessitated by revenue lost as a result of the initiative. The initiative has emerged in a time when complaints regarding high property taxes have grown louder. Whether the initiative succeeds or fails, tax reform is on the table, a fact Slagle acknowledged on Tuesday night.

“We’re getting a lot of pressure from people to do some sort of tax reform and I’m not sure what we’re going to see with that,” Slagle said. “There’s several bills, but I’m not sure how many of them are going to make it to the light of day.”          

Slagle stated that he had received nearly 300 emails in two days concerning House Bill 18, which would limit increases in residential property taxes. According to Slagle, the cap on taxes would amount to five percent, a number that is eliciting objections from many Wyomingites.

“Everybody’s emailing saying that they don’t even want that much of an increase in their taxes,” Slagle said. “The only thing that the bill will affect is any place where the property value has gone up more than five percent.  Our assessors are already doing the valuation. So, that’s where we are with that.”

The chief concern expressed by Steinmetz and Slagle was that decreasing taxes would necessitate decreasing the quality of vital services in Wyoming counties.

“The money has to come from somewhere or the level of services has to decrease,” Steinmetz said.

Efforts to keep Natural Asset Companies (NAC) out of Wyoming were also broached by Slagle and Steinmetz. This new type of company first appeared in a proposal advanced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Proponents of the NAC concept say that such an asset class would allow investors interested to protecting the environment to invest in the preservations of nature. Critics, however, hold that NACs could gain control of private and public lands through their power to quantify and monetize land, air, water, and other natural assets.

Slagle said that he has been drafting legislature to prevent NACs from gaining a foothold in Wyoming. According to Steinmetz, the effort to bring NACs to Wyoming constituted a “power grab” that could subvert private property rights and undermine Wyoming’s state sovereignty. Steinmetz credited Congresswoman Harriet Hageman with temporarily halting the encroachment of NACs upon Wyoming.

“Harriet Hageman was the one who led the charge on this and stopped them [NACs],” Steinmetz said. “She got 31 members of congress, many of them chairmen, to sign a letter to halt this and it was halted for now. Natural asset companies are companies that monetize land, air, water. It’s a part of the 30x30 initiative—the Biden land grab, you could call it. Those assets could be sold on the New York Stock Exchange and people would be allowed to own managing rights and things on our land. Farmland was a huge part of it and that’s vastly private property. They could own the rights to state and federal land. They could buy and sell the rights to conservation easements. It was a very insidious move and they had only given 21-days of comment parade on that rule. They were trying to rush it through.”