Late Thursday night, the senate side of the Wyoming Legislature’s management council walked out of the committee’s final meeting during a discussion on education funding.
“The motion I made was for management council, so that the majority of both chambers would have to agree on the final action of anything for it to become law,” Senator Michael Von Flatern said.
The seven house members voted against the motion and all six senate members of the management council voted for the motion. Meaning the house side could pass anything they wanted.
“So that’s why we left,” Von Flatern said. “They could do whatever they wanted to do and we would have no say in it so why stick around.”
The state legislature management council directs the interim topics and guides the committees on what type of work they want done.
“They basically direct the work of the committees,” Senator Ray Peterson said.
This interim session, the senate and the house disagreed on what steps the legislature need to take in order to address the education funding shortfall. The annual short fall is in the area of $375 million a year, Senator Chris Rothfuss said.
“Its just a philosophical difference in how you go about funding this next year next session their may be motivation to look at increasing revenue,” Von Flatern said.
Speaker of the House Steve Harshman wanted to reopen the discussion on education to look at possible solutions to the education funding shortfall discuss options for additional tax revenue to fund education and possible additional savings that could be made with in the budget. His concern was that the council had not given education funding adequate discussion, Peterson said.
“The idea that you would try to cut your way to that solution would really eviscerate education in Wyoming,” Rothfuss said
The approach that many legislators who have been involved in education came up with as an appropriate path forward is to break the problem up. The budget shortfall is too large to be solved with one measure without harming K-12 education, Rothfuss said.
“We need to make cuts, there is no question about it,” Rothfuss said. “I don’t like that we’re making those cuts, we have to do that, I am very disappointed though that we just made cuts and dint raise revenue.”
Rothfuss said he hopes that next session there will be more legislators willing to look at additional revenue options.
