The Wyoming senate has passed a bill making early retirement available for state employees.
Senate File 95 was initially drafted to include UW employees, however, an amendment to the bill adopted before it passed the senate excludes the employees of UW or any Wyoming college.
“The Senate File that passed today specifically excludes UW employees,” UW Vice President Chris Boswell said. “The Bill is vastly different than when it was originally drafted.”
Wyoming has roughly 8,000 employees that work for the state, 3,000 of which are at UW.
According to the bill, agencies affected by the bill would only be allowed to fill half of positions vacated by early retirees. UW petitioned for the bill to allow for more to be filled.
“The original bill said that an agency could only refill 50 percent of positions when it was drafted, we wanted 75 percent” Boswell said. “We petitioned for the change and in the second reading they just excluded UW completely.”
Governor Matt Mead made $250 million in cuts last summer, leaving the Wyoming Legislature with about $150 million to either cut or use savings to fill.
“I think the cuts we made in June that started July 1, they have largely been paper cuts,” Mead said during a news conference. “People have not felt the full effects of the diminished services.”
According to Senator Curt Meier of LaGrange, the bills primary sponsor, Workers would qualify based on a formula that considers their age and years of service.
“If you look at [SF 95] you do actually save money,” he said. “That was one of the problems with the bill in the ’90s, it didn’t have a provision to not hire some of the people back. At the end of the day, in about three years, most people were hired back and it cost the state money.”
Boswell said UW will be looking to initiate its own retirement program depending on the success of SF 95.
“We’ll be interested to see how this might dovetail with existing UW early separation incentives underway right now,” he said.
