Budget Session Recap

What really happened in Cheyenne -- without the media spin

If you exclusively followed the reporting of the Wyoming legacy press over the last five weeks, you’d have a skewed — if not wholly inaccurate — picture of what happened in Cheyenne.

Join us as we fact-check the fake news and highlight what really happened this session.

FAKE NEWS: The Freedom Caucus lost all but one of its priorities.

The media and their allies in the Legislature were eager to see the Freedom Caucus fail this session.

Despite their claims, this session was a success. Thanks to our conservative majority in the Wyoming House, we passed:

• A budget that slows the growth of government

• Historic school recalibration that requires dollars be spent on teachers and in classrooms, NOT administrators

• Pro-life protections for innocent preborn babies and life-affirming pregnancy centers

• Heightened criminal penalties for ghouls who stalk and sexually groom minors

• Common sense requirements for CDL drivers to prove English proficiency

• Funding and preparation measures for fire season

• Clear, transparent standards for pre-election voting machine tests

• Protections for homeschool access to school activities and sports

• Bills to bolster the Second Amendment

And we stopped countless big-government boondoggles, too.

FAKE NEWS: The House of Representatives “rolled over” to the Senate in budget negotiations.

Making no effort to correct the blatant falsehood claimed by Representative Harshman on the House floor and instead reporting it as fact, WyoFile unsurprisingly omits the truth behind the legislature’s budget negotiations.

The numbers tell the story the press won’t.

After second and third reading on the budget bill, the House came in $170 million below Governor Gordon’s request, the Senate just above his request.

The final budget landed $143 million below the Governor’s request.

During negotiations, (which lasted over five hours, not fifteen minutes) the Senate agreed to accept 84% of the reductions made by the House.

That’s not “rolling over.” And we’re proud to have held the line in the face of a liberal Senate and a liberal Governor.

FAKE NEWS: The Governor submitted a “frugal, sensible budget.”

Nearly drooling over the Chief Executive, Wyoming PBS’s Steve Peck characterized Governor Gordon’s $11 billion budget as “frugal” and “sensible.”

We disagree (and so do the facts).

State expenditures have increased 59% since Gordon took office in 2019, outpacing inflation. GDP is below average in Wyoming, inflation is above average and median household income is below average since 2019.

How many Wyoming families have seen their household incomes increase by 59% since 2019?

FAKE NEWS: There just wasn’t enough time to get conservative priorities across the finish line in the Senate.

Running cover for the Senate Minerals Committee, Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison falsely reported that WYFC Vice Chairman Chris Knapp’s bill to repeal Wyoming’s woke carbon capture mandates died because lawmakers simply ran out of time.

The truth?

Senate Minerals, stacked with liberal legislators (Senators Anderson (R), Cooper (R), Jones (R), Nethercott (R), and Rothfuss (D)) heard the bill in its entirety, took public comment, worked the bill, and then tabled it without a vote.

No time constraint prohibited a vote of the five members.

FAKE NEWS: BIAS BY OMISSION

The lack of coverage of the goings-on in the Wyoming Senate should tell Wyomingites that something worth reporting on was indeed happening in the upper chamber.

And there was.

On the last day for bills to be heard in Committee of the Whole, Senate leadership started the chamber’s work late in the day, took hours and hours worth of breaks, and quit early.

The Senate’s decision to dodge their workload resulted in ten critical, conservative priorities being killed without a single vote.

All the while, a small group of Senators shared a pizza with a left wing registered lobbyist who doubles as a legislative aide to Senate leadership.

That’s newsworthy. But for some reason, the mainstream lying Wyoming press won’t touch it.

But the Wyoming Freedom Caucus will.

Stay tuned for more updates as we work with the investigative reporting team at the Open Range Record to uncover what the legacy media won’t.