Kaleb Poor
Staff Writer
Following warnings from the city manager about an overworked police force, deteriorating local infrastructure and the need to support a growing population, Laramie could be facing $191,000 in losses to state funding this year.
Laramie Mayor Joe Shumway painted a bleak picture of Laramie’s outlook under the continued funding cuts.
“We’ve been cut so many times, we’ve looked under every rock for funding,” Shumway said. “We’re in a situation now where we really don’t have a choice but to reduce services.”
A budget bill recently passed in the state Senate, known as SF0057, reorganizes how state funding would be distributed to city and county governments. The bill awaits a vote in the House of Representatives.
SF0057 is intended to boost support for Wyoming’s smaller communities, many of which face high risk with small budgets.
“The smaller communities don’t have the ability to raise their sewer fees or their water fees,” Sen. Eli Bebout (R-Riverton) recently told the press. “In my part of the world, we have communities like Shoshoni, Pavillion and Dubois that could have their entire budget taken up by one water leak.”
The current scheme of allocating state funding to city and county governments was introduced following the elimination of Wyoming’s grocery tax. To offset the loss in revenue created by the repeal of the tax, the state legislature allocates money from a $105 million fund.
Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) pushed back on the changes and introduced an amendment to the bill which would have curtailed Laramie’s losses from $191,000 to just $117,000, a reduction of almost 40%.
“This appears to exacerbate the problem of where the poorer communities end up giving money to the richer communities as a result of this change,” Rothfuss said during the bill’s first reading.
The amendment failed, gaining only six supporting votes. The bill then went on to pass the Senate.
Casper and Gillette stand to reap some of the most significant benefits from the formula changes. According to documents circulated late last year by Laramie City Manager Janine Jordan, Casper and Gillete have seen funding increases of 23.9% and 25.9%, respectively, since 2017.
By comparison, during that same time, Laramie has seen a 14.1% decrease in funding.
Jordan warned late last year that the city was already underfunded, writing that police patrol staffing levels had fallen to levels on par with those from 1980.
She also noted that Laramie now employs just one full-time employee for every 1,250 residents, and “pavement conditions are at the lowest level since 1988” and have noticeably deteriorated since 2014.
“Laramie has grown steadily for twenty years and all signs indicate this growth will continue,” Jordan wrote in November. “The deep reduction in state funding has required the municipality to reduce services at the very time when services should be expanding with demand.”
Shumway said spending in the state legislature has increased sharply in recent years.
“It’s not that the state has no funding,” he said.
Laramie will now have to rely more heavily on the uncertain world of grant funding to provide for city projects, Shumway said.
