- Welcome to Capitol Outlook.

I'm Craig Blumenshine from Wyoming PBS.

This is our first Capitol Outlook of the season, back in Wyoming's beautiful capitol.

This evening we'll visit with the leadership of the Wyoming legislature, Senate President Dan Dockstader, and speaker of the house Eric Barlow.

We'll also visit with Senator Charlie Scott.

We'll take a deep dive into education with him.

He's the chairman of the Senate education committee.

Our first profile of the season is with representative Mike Greer from Washakie County and we'll end tonight's broadcast with a discussion about Gillette College.

Should the citizens of Campbell County now move forward and vote to tax themselves to create Wyoming's eighth community college district?

Capitol Outlook starts now.

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- It's our pleasure to be joined by the leadership of the Wyoming legislature, Senate president Dan doc setter, and the speaker of the house.

Dr. Eric Barlow.

Welcome to you both.

Thank you for joining us.

We heard the governor in his state of the state address on Tuesday, say this, and I would like your feedback.

He said that" I'm sure there will be temptations to get sidetracked with politically oriented legislation but this year we have to keep our eye on the ball."

What does that mean to you?

And how does that indicate to you how this session might progress?

- So Dr.Barlow, - well, I think Craig, I think we do keep our eye on the ball and, and there's just a lot of eyes on it on it.

Meaning there's 90 legislators between the two sides and a lot of things, local industries interests but you know, next week we're going to be keeping our eye on the ball.

It's the budget.

And I think, you know, with the understanding with the Senate, we're going to start on our K-12 discussion.

And I think that's going to probably focus a lot of our energy and attention for a few days, for the week about where we are and where the challenges we have.

Certainly this week, we're working through bills.

You know, you're going to, you're hearing a lot, lots of bills and lots of things you're getting covered in in the media the week after.

Of course, then we start hearing each other's bills.

But I think next week is probably the heart of what we do as a legislator is appropriate money for both general fund needs and for K-12 education.

And so I think that's where the heart is from my perspective is we're going to be spending a lot of focus as the governor is talking about that.

Is there one of our primary duties?

Is it appropriators?

Absolutely.

We're we're going to be - Focused on it.

- I read that as baby talking about two things.

One was certainly the, the budget and fiscal issues of the general fund and then K-12 education funding.

- I think the ball was the budget.

That's it we've come down here.

And we worked the committee bills early, got those set up in an earlier session, took a break.

Now we're back at it, working, sorting through the individual bills, but looming back there is that budget within that budget, all of that education funding.

And you can almost feel it coming up.

You can almost feel it.

Okay, here we go.

We're taking on the budget in one of the most historic times of this state tied in with the schools, how do we protect the teacher, the classroom, the product of the education, but deal with the reality that the money's just not there.

Like it used to be - Later on in the show, we're going to have a deep dive into education with this president, or excuse me the chairman of the Senate committee.

That's a Senator, Charlie, Charlie Scott.

He says two things that I would like your feedback on.

He believes that while we still can decrease education funding and increase student outcomes is that your perspective generally that there is money to be cut.

There are improvements and efficiencies to be made and those two can live together in your work.

- Well, since it's the good presidents chairman I'll let him go first.

- Go ahead - Please president - Improve the outcome of the students.

I think we're doing a good job now with our teachers we are across the state they're doing an excellent job and those who have it in their heart to teach and change that student's life.

Those are the ones who are succeeding.

Can we do it with last?

We've asked our businesses we've asked our state agencies all across the state to do it with less.

We'll find a way they're already there.

They're trying to sort out just what that cut will be.

My superintendents are calling calling me and saying six, 10%.

Could it be 20?

You know, those types of things those are the questions being asked.

Once we set that standard for them to work with and we are doing that, they'll know exactly what to do but to say that we decrease the quality of the product.

That's disservice to our teachers across the state.

They're already doing an excellent job.

- Senator Scott is going to bring forward statistics that he derived from a summer's worth of hearings from the work with consultants that say this.

He believes that his, that our performance the state's performance relative to the national average has not improved as much as it should have.

Second that just doing better than the national average in and of itself is not a great success.

And third that the NAPE assessment on their own test show our K-12 system is not doing an adequate job of preparing students for success in the modern world.

And that's with funding in the levels that it is today.

What are your thoughts on pending potential cuts in education relative to student performance?

Dr. Barnes?

- Well, first of all, I think I agree with the president that we want the best opportunities for our children and we want the best folks providing those teachers.

I think the, probably the, where we're having the most push and pull is, is the state funds public education.

We're up, we're obligated to have adequate equitable and cost base education.

And then we send those funds to the local districts 48 of them who make decisions make decisions within their districts.

So we have to have a bound.

So maybe it's part of the discussion is are we giving too much authority or not enough authority?

Or should we reassess how we give latitude at the local level, if we have expectation of different outcomes, do the outcomes, outcomes that I think the good Senator is talking about the chairman of a standard education or statewide averages but there are differences between districts as well.

So how do you take into account where you're having success?

It's part of what the consultants did is they look for those, those high performing schools.

And they tried to say, okay what are they doing that we could learn from as a whole?

So my question is back to ourselves, to myself, is are we learning the lessons that are out there in our own communities?

Are we learning the lessons where maybe we can be more efficient or where you can do the same with more and get a lot more performance?

So are those the lessons we're learning?

So, and I'm not going to, you know I can't debate that statistics or what what the good senator would bring forth, but with those in the discussions we need to have adequate, equitable and are we cost based?

That's our charge - By the state's approval - By our, by the constitution subsequently the Supreme courts have given us that.

And then how do we have a discussion about efficiency about control, who, who sets the standards, et cetera?

We have a very, I mean, in my view, we have already complex enough educational system with it.

You know, the superintendent of public instruction a state board of education with local school districts legislature, trying to, you know, provide the resources to those things and give guidance.

So it's plenty complex.

It's a, it's a very diff challenging discussion and probably one of the most important ones we have.

- Absolutely, he also will visit briefly about how are we going to build schools and maintain schools now because that pot of money from Cole's bonus money is gone will this become, again, back on the, the taxpayers through bond issues and other things to build schools in the future, what are your thoughts on how Wyoming might build its schools in the future now - We have lived a wonderful life compliments of that Gillette Campbell County, coal - Almost $4 billion a month.

- I take people on tours through my Valley, out West in my district alone.

I got to North of the snake river Canyon and got a beautiful brand new elementary school South of the snake river Canyon.

I've got three wonderful state-of-the-art elementary schools.

When I take people around I'll drive past and say that schools compliments the coal from mountain Campbell County.

We appreciate our neighbors from the Eastern side of the state, helping us with that.

But now it's changed.

We reach out and look at States that surround us Utah and Idaho using these bond issues.

It gets a little touchy because then people all of a sudden are stepping in and saying do I really want that school or not?

Or can you live with what you have now?

But I foresee that because where will the money come from?

Otherwise?

- I think the other thing is, you know also look at our demographics of our state.

Some communities are growing, of course we'll get census numbers hopefully sooner than later for our re-distracting conversation this summer but we're going to see communities changing in size and and the dynamics changing.

And so, and then the other thing that we've experienced and this is a COVID pandemic thing is this explosion of online learning.

And what does that do to brick and mortar?

What, you know, what does, what are the longer term impacts to that to brick and mortar?

You know, we have state agencies, half of their folks are working virtual and some of them I don't know that a half of those will come back because they'll not because they're not working because they've found alternate means of doing it.

So education K-12 education might be part of that conversation about do we need as much brick and mortar to your point but I wish there were more Caldwell Schultz monies.

I mean, let's be honest.

I wish there were unless there's some other windfall type monies and that's what Cole Bennet bonus monies were.

It was, you know, something that, you know we're fortunate to have.

I think we are gonna have tough decisions.

- We'll have - conversations about new brick and mortar.

- Last question in this segment to each of you does the state need to make revenue decisions this session within the next four weeks to write the fiscal ship that we talked about earlier or can some of those revenue decisions wait and I think the governor talked about we can't kick the can down the road.

It's broke was the metaphor he used in his state of the state address.

Do either of you believe that now is the right time to deal with revenues, especially in the K-12 funding side.

- I sense that it is right now.

We cannot delay this any further.

There are going to be decisions that are going to be difficult and unpopular, and that will affect perhaps the future of political careers, but we have what we have and we have to address it right now.

And that's where the courage is needed.

We have to take care of the needs of the state and put that forefront and balanced the budget.

And then we go home and get ready for another year.

Next year - Mr. Speaker in the house bill, it has a conduit for revenue in the K-12 education, recalibration bill.

- Yes I think that all, all things are on the table and as you know, all revenue, but I'll start in the house.

So as, as I got 70 new bills on my desk since the last night I've probably 15 of them have some revenue component.

And so sorting through, I mean there's revenue discussions we've had and we've had multiple times, they've never gone anywhere personal income tax, you know, there's things that are just but there are some other things that we haven't talked about before.

And so I'm trying to at least think about getting those to the forefront.

There's some more unique approaches that we can take that maybe folks will be not receptive to but at least give thought to.

And on the case, you know, the different the general fund side and K12 general fund, unfortunately unfortunately right now, oil is better.

Natural gas is better.

So all of a sudden are, you know, we were all already basically balanced on the general fund side.

Now it actually looks rosier.

So that, that doesn't help us grab a hold of the can that allows us to push the can a little bit.

K-12 very different, but different revenue sources, right?

Different revenue sources.

And so, you know, I think we want to make sure we're optimizing the revenue sources.

We have fridge K-12 education.

I'm personally not convinced of that.

I mean, that's just me personally, are we getting the all the mills that we should be getting, you know across this state, the local portion.

And then secondly, are we getting the value we should be getting our state trust lands.

There's a bill up right now in the, in our in our side that would exchange that property in in grand Teton.

One of those properties at grand Teton for, you know, $70 million well that $70 million goes toward K-12 education.

So are there things we can do that?

Are we getting the value we have out of the revenue sources?

And if we not to the pros and his point earlier do we have to start thinking about whether it's school construction or, or just operations?

What do we do next.

- As we close today?

Just briefly, do you are you concerned that in a interesting way, the potential for another federal bailout, which as we speak today likely will include funds to the States is going to push back even farther, these hard conversations.

- Be very careful with that money.

It's just too easy to take it and spend it that has to be thoughtfully prepared and planned.

And we just can't say, well, here's this quote-unquote windfall.

What are we going to do with this?

That will mean perhaps a legacy treatment to the state.

- And the president I've talked about this.

And I agree with him.

I really do think there's some potential legacy things we can do with potential monies that would not come through in the federal government.

And we should, I think, I think Ellis MSRA is part of that that we, the legislative table, the reserve reserve account from the tarp monies out of 2008, nine.

I mean, that's why we have, we, we, we were able to do that.

That gives us the flow, the state the flexibility right now.

And I have a backstop, a cash back stop.

We're not borrowing money to have it backed up.

We're on cash back.

Yeah.

So I think if we get, if we get funds there's going to be a patch, some holes stuff.

There's going to be some things programs that we're cutting.

We're like we look back and say, Oh maybe we should try to backfill patch some holes.

And I think there's some medium range stuff.

Carbon capture invest in it now.

And hopefully it's paying off for us in five or 10 years.

And then there's some straight out legacy stuff.

As the president says that, you know what can we do that really does make a difference 10 15, 20, 30 years from now.

And I think, I think all three are possible.

And then we leave a little bit on the table for all of the other good ideas that come up because I'm going sure we don't have all just the good ones.

(laughing) - Well, we'll leave it there for now.

I'm many, many good ideas are brought forward.

Some, some better than others perhaps interesting week next week.

We'll keep our eyes on it.

We'll look forward to seeing you both back here next week on Capitol outlook.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thanks, Craig.

Next is a deep discussion on K-12 education with Senator Charlie Scott, the longest serving legislator in the history of the Wyoming legislature.

That's next.

- And now we're pleased to be joined by the longest serving legislator in the state's history.

Senator Charles Scott.

Senator welcome back to Capitol Outlook.

- Well, it's great to be with you again and I found your program to be very valuable.

So I'm flattered to be here.

- Well, I'm pleased that you're here senator.

You're now the chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

- That's right - We're gonna kind of do a deep dive into what is obvious to most of us and to the whole state.

The biggest issue facing your legislature is what to do about education.

And if I can set the stage for just a minute, let me put throw out a few things then I'm gonna turn you loose.

First, the state has a $300 million annual deficit in K-12 education funding, largely due in part to decrease revenues from the extent extraction industries but currently education funding is backed up by Wyoming rainy day account.

That's a Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account or it's called LSRA.

It's the backstop for education funding.

And that is still there today.

And lastly roughly 92,000 children in our state are served by nearly 19,000 district employees in over 300 schools almost in every city and town in Wyoming.

The governor mentioned the word education eight times and his state of the state speech.

It's a big issue of Senator what's to be done.

¦- The key to it is that we need to do some things right now and redoing the funding system for education.

Because not only do we have the financial problems that you mentioned, but we also are frankly not getting what we're paying for in terms of the quality of education being provided.

You look at the performance of our school system on the various assessment tests, both our own, and the one the federal government does the national, the NAPE test National Assessment of Educational Progress that the us department of education does.

And the results are simply not satisfactory.

We're slightly better than average.

We have improved slightly.

We increased our spending from little over $5,000 per student to now almost $16,000 per student.

And we have had a tiny tiny amount of improvement in our performance.

And the consultants we hired to do our, School recalibration were very blunt that we're not getting our money's worth and that our results when you look at them and look at the number of students and things basic like reading and mathematics, who are not proficient it ranges from 40 to 60% of them are not proficient.

And the consultant said very bluntly that that's not adequate.

If you gonna live in this high-tech world and get the kind of performance for our economy that we're looking for.

And I think it's not adequate for the results that our current industries need in terms of education - Just real quickly, the consultants are hired by the legislature every five years as a result of previous court decisions to come up with a funding model for education.

- And they were very blunt on that score and we're charged by the constitution with providing a thorough adequate system of education but also with providing an efficient system of education and ours clearly is not.

And it is my judgment that our poor results are in part caused by the nature of our funding system.

And we are paying in particular for we've got about 6,000 teachers, we're paying for an additional 800 plus who do not exist.

And we're paying.

We were paying a charge for health insurance for the employees, but that's... We pay it to the school districts for everybody.

And it turns out that 27% do not take it up.

where the money's going to three places.

It looks like there's been a vast expansion in administration and administration salaries.

There's been a vast expansion in the athletic programs-- - And activities.

- And activities we have in the finance model.

We have provisioned for those, but they're spending a lot more than what's provided for.

I'm hearing as much as a hun, they're spending at the rate of 160 to 170% when you account for all they're spending and not just what the accountants find.

Those two are our problem we're also paying for...

Some slush fund money is going to hire teacher salaries.

- Is that to be more competitive or to be more marketable - Well, and there's some trade offs there you have a better insurance plan.

You don't have to pay quite so much you don't afford to pay so much.

Some of those districts have a lesser insurance plan and pay more.

Most of the districts they do not go to the small class sizes we advocate that's where the discrepancy comes from but they pay their existing teachers more for higher workload.

So there's some trade off in there.

It's my judgment that if we eliminate those sayings and some other problems in our funding system we will get better results out of our education system, because there will be fewer administrators distracting the classroom teachers from teaching with paperwork requirements that are put into justify people's jobs.

There it is my judgment that if we have less busing, less some of the activities some of those sorts of things that take kids out of the classroom and we have them in the classroom more of the time we'll get better results.

- Governor-- - Now there's some other things - And we'll get to those - Just proving too.

- I just wanna be clear.

The governor said it's not clear that more money necessarily equals better education or that less does either.

You're suggesting less does.

- Less does and the governor's statement was reinforced by what our experts that did the recalibration report.

The outside experts said very bluntly.

We're not achieving the results we're paying for.

So the governor was dead right about that.

Now the financial side if we do not get our spending under control we are going to run through our reserves to the point where we will reach a trigger point where this school districts have to live on the money that is dedicated to education that I'm told will result in a 30%.

- That's a cliff that would automatically-- - We fall off a cliff.

You'd have a 30% reduction in funding for the school districts.

And that would be a catastrophe.

I'd hate to think what we'd have to do.

If that happened.

I think it would be an awful mixture of taxes and cuts that nobody would like the sensible thing is to make a reduction now, my guess is, we'll wind up somewhere in the vicinity of 10%, because that's what you... if you start going over much over that then you might start to hurt the quality of what goes on in the classroom.

But I'm pretty sure we could take about 10% and we'd still be improving what was going on in the classroom.

And if we do that, that will I think get us down to where we will avoid that cliff or at least put it off long enough.

So we'll have time to adjust our economy improve our revenue and be able to get rid of the structural deficit problem we've got that is driving us to the cliff.

- Couple of questions.

There are things that school district finance within their budgets school resource officers for example nurses for example that are not covered currently by the model today.

So they're arguing that we need that money to keep our schools safe, to keep our schools healthy the way they use facilitators and other things (indistinct) - They've there are a bunch of those things.

There are some excesses in what they're doing.

Some of that is in the growth of the administrative staffs.

I think some of those things are exaggerated but we're at the point where we can't have all the luxuries that we have had.

- Second do you stand on school district consolidation senator - We have a proposal that you're gonna see in the bill that we're gonna bring forward.

- This is a backup bill that we'll talk about here in just a minute, but go ahead with this part.

- The backup bill to consolidate the administrative functions on a County level that will save about $10 million.

I think that's worth doing there's gonna be some spirit over that.

And we may or may not be able to get the votes for that.

That's, a very live issue.

There's a bill in the house that would consolidate the school districts that would lead to larger savings.

But I know there's plenty of opposition to that.

And then we have the problems with school capital construction.

- It's a whole different issue.

But go ahead.

We have spent since the Campbell 2 decision that really set up.

The Supreme court set up the current system, which was the legislature has to fund all this school construction in the state.

That system has been a disaster.

- Well, there's been a lot of money.

- We spent 3.9 billion - With a B.

- Billion with a B dollars.

Since that decision, you can justify you look at what the identified needs were.

When that decision was made.

You can look at what we need to prevent some of the building deficiencies from recurring.

We have not had overall growth.

We've had a few districts that have grown enough to justify another school but there hasn't been very much of that.

You can justify about a billion dollars of that spending.

So it's just short of 3 billion saying it's wasted is too strong saying it was unnecessary.

And we built some very wonderful schools.

I've heard many of them described as palaces.

We've built some that proved to be unneeded.

The legislature has not been as good a job judge of what the schools actually need.

As the people were under the old bond issue system I've got a constitutional amendment proposed a version of it passed the Senate in 2018.

Couldn't get anywhere in the house but I'm bringing that back which will go back to the old bond issue system with a mandatory equalization, because there was a reason the Supreme Court made the decision they did.

They didn't state this as strongly but you had a number of districts about a quarter of them that arguably could not afford to build facilities that they really did need.

Under the old system, our wealth is not distributed equally.

And the Supreme court has rightly been critical of wealth based disparities.

And this, we need to get away from that.

And the constitutional amendment would do that.

But the pork barrel system that they foisted on us, every legislator, defendant is homeschool district.

We feel we have to, nobody knew enough to look at somebody else's school district and says, you're asking for too much, you don't need what you're getting.

Plus it would be remembered when your district needed something and we've done emptied the pork barrel.

The source of funding has gone away.

It was-- - Coley (indistinct)money, - Coley (indistinct)money, and that's gone.

It isn't coming back.

- Governor said this also a mini state of the state speech.

He said, we've tried to we rely on it for years on a funding model.

That's no longer sustainable.

The handwriting is on the wall.

The can we kicked down the road every year is broke.

And then in the printed copy that I received he underlined and bolded.

We have to deal with this issue meeting now - He could not be more correct - But doesn't that mean some additional revenue to support some cuts senator.

- We may eventually need some more revenue.

Right now, I would think that a majority of the Senate is of the opinion that if we do more revenue now it will just be subsumed in increasing the spending on education without any real return to the kids for it.

So I think it is essential.

We get the spending under control and then we can see where we are.

We clearly have financial problems.

And so, I'm focused on this year's task, which is to make the reductions that we can in our education spending that I think will improve our efficiency and will improve the quality of education that we are delivering in the classroom.

- Senator we need to leave it there for now.

obviously the discussion is not over in this legislative session for the next four and a half weeks or so.

And Senator, you told me before we went on air you were the author of a fictional novel in the nineties about a pandemic that started in Fort Collins.

And here we are today, what happened to that novel Senator?

- I couldn't market it.

(laughs loudly) Maybe it would sell now.

It was fun to write.

It was exploring something that was very different but the next pandemic we have will be very different from this one.

That's about, I will guarantee you two things we'll have another pandemic and it will be quite different from the one we just experienced.

- And I hope that quite different means not worse.

And in your novel you were telling me-- - It was a good (indistinct), Senator again, it's always a pleasure to visit with you.

Thank you for joining us on Capital Outlook.

We look forward to seeing you again.

- Thank you for having me.

We turned out to our first Capital Outlook Profile of the season with representative Mike Greer.

He hails from Washington County, that's next.

- And as we continue on in week one of Capitol Outlook, it's our pleasure now to be joined for this Capitol Outlook profile with Representative Mike Greear.

Mike you hail from Worland.

- Welcome.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

I appreciate it.

- You represent House District 27, the constituents in Big Horn in Washington counties, and you're now speaker pro temp of the Wyoming House.

What, what does that mean to you now that you've stepped into this leadership role?

- It means I'm not very smart.

(laughing) You know 10 years in the legislature and starting to be one of those folks that have some of that experience and that knowledge and, you know.

When Tyler Lindholm lost his a race, a lot of people reached out to me and said, Mike it's probably a time that you get in and get in.

And so I did and was fortunate enough that the rest of the, you know the rest of the House elected me to it, but I, you know, I really enjoy my position as the chairman on the minerals committee.

I very much enjoy the, the minerals, the business and the economic development side of that is a real passion of mine.

- We'll talk about some of those priorities and some of the work that you've done with that here in just a minute.

But I visited with a former colleague of yours, and I think you'll know probably who she is.

And she described you in this way.

She said that you're a quiet guy, that you're pretty serious about your work.

She perhaps has baked you bread once or twice at Representative (inaudible) But you're meticulous in not taking on too much.

Is that an accurate description of you?

- It is.

And a very flattering description, quite frankly.

And I have been very cautious not to take on too much.

And so when you were asking me about what it means to be speaker pro temp, you know, I take those duties seriously, and it was a concern not to overburden myself.

And, but I also there's a responsibility, and I'm seeing some of that now, and I'm glad some of the new legislators take me seriously.

Like send me your legislation.

I will read it, I'll tell you what I think is wrong with it, I'll help you get it passed.

And more importantly, is I'll be very honest with you and tell you if I think it's awful.

(laughing) - Here's, here's how she described that moment when you were working with her.

I'm talking about former Representative Elaine Harvey who is from county to the north of you.

Your, your are so honest.

You don't mean to hurt your feelings, but if your legislation's crap, he'll tell you that it's crap.

(laughing) Is that right?

- But it saves time, right?

(laughing) - You are an alumni of Arvada-Claremont High School.

- Yeah.

- How many were you when you graduating class?

- It was a very large class.

There was 13 of us, and, you know, and I only graduated second in the class.

(laughing) - Still top 10%.

Right?

- There you go.

Top 10%, you bet.

- You told me off camera, you played sports, you were a Panther, and you were a Bison.

How did that work out?

- Yeah, so it was a great opportunity.

You know, one small town, small gym, you know filled with cowboys and sheep herders.

Basketball is just awesome in that environment, and I had loved that sport from a very young age.

And then the opportunity came up to, for Buffalo to reach out, and a couple of us went and played, and it ended up for my junior and senior year, I was the only one playing, and a good friend of mine, he blew out his knee in junior year, but I was the last one to finish up.

And great, great experience and was able to be a member of a state championship.

So that was good too.

- And on you went to the University of Wyoming.

What caused a small town, young Wyoming boy to want to major in economics and finance?

Or you went to the army and, or Sheridan College first, I should say.

- Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, you know, first person in my family to go to college.

My dad worked for Burlington Northern Railroad.

That's why we were in Claremont, old railroad town.

And you know, that's, the army was a path to be able to pay for school and maybe helped me mature just a little bit, went back home, Sheridan College, a wonderful, wonderful campus, a great opportunity, experience.

Then went down to, to Laramie, kind of, kinda fell into economics because I wanted a business degree.

Accounting was not going to be in my future.

I can tell you that.

And I just, I just enjoyed the economics courses, but my real goal was to go to law school from there.

And so, yeah, so I did - Spend much time in the student section at a Cowboy football and basketball games, Representative?

- Just a little bit.

Yeah.

And I was well behaved.

- As we all were.

Our memories are clear about that.

At least, at least we can, - Pretty clear.

- We can say that.

How did you end up in Worland?

- You know, so I really wanted to stay in Wyoming.

Just going somewhere else didn't appeal to me.

I've got a couple of years in Europe when I was in the service.

Great, great experience just like Wyoming.

And so, (coughing) you know, so 1994, if you recall, things weren't all that hot in this state.

There weren't that many jobs around.

And so a small firm here in Worland was expanding.

They had advertised.

I met with them, really liked the people, and took the job here and moved up with my family.

I had a, I had a whole family by that time.

I was married and I had a, a one year old son and a daughter just about ready to be born.

And a Worland's been my home.

- You were a practicing attorney and then became involved with the Wyoming Sugar Company.

Give us insight into how that worked.

You're now, president and CEO of the Wyoming Sugar Company.

- Yeah.

That's, you know, I have a, it's funny, I have so many attorneys ask me, how did that happen?

And so in 2002, Imperial went bankrupt, and our community banded together.

There's, these were old wine, our old sugar employees, our growers, members of the community, businesses in the community banded together, and they purchased this old factory.

I started doing legal work for them and continued to do more and more, was involved with their board work, got involved a little bit more on the national scene with the Sugar Program and, and other companies.

And one day the CEO that replaced Dick McCain, he said, Mike, would you be interested in maybe transitioning into more?

So we tried a part time for a year to see if it would work with my practice.

I was in the legislature by then.

And I thought, this is, this is really intriguing.

It's challenging.

I enjoy very much.

I didn't like particularly giving up my law practice.

I very much liked my clients.

Nice thing about it, a lot of my clients were farmers.

And so in one way or another, I'm still trying to help them out.

- What, what has the Wyoming Sugar Company done to support directly Washakie and Fremont County farmers?

- Well, existing.

And, and so you think about Wyoming, and we talk about diversity and manufacturing and trying to add value to products, and so we're, we're taking a crop, and we're processing it here, and it's turned into table sugar.

I mean, the sugar is ready for consumption.

It's one of those few value added commodities that we have in Wyoming.

And so, you know, we look at, you know, 40 million in gross sales, and because we're a co-op, and how we're structured being owned by our growers.

that money goes to our growers, our employees, and, and we tried to do, you know, all the procurement and purchasing that we can do locally or within the state of Wyoming.

You know, we, we have to buy from elsewhere.

- Generally speaking, I've looked at national forecast for beet sugar and they seem to be good.

Is, is your outlook one of a positive one as, as you look forward in the next five to 10 years for sugar beet farmers in Wyoming?

- Yeah.

For, for the next five years, we have a stable, solid market.

A lot of that has to do with recent agreements that have gone into place with Mexico, that, that have helped ensure a stable consistent supply of sugar in the US, but kept us at prices that we can reinvest in the industry.

Our growers can reinvest.

We can pay our growers well for their beets, and we're able to invest in our old factory, invest in our employees.

So the next five years have pretty good outlook.

Yeah.

- I recall as a child, I'm going to beat dumps with my dad and my brother just kind of checking them out, and it seemed to us that, that at least in the central Fremont County, beet farming was a big deal.

Not as much maybe today, and I'm curious if you think things will come back in different areas of Wyoming, or if it's pretty static now where beet farming is.

- It it's, it's very static.

And I have been very sensitive to our Fremont County growers because they are they're, they're about 16, 17% of our, of our overall acreage.

But the, they're extremely important because of the geographical diversity.

I mean, you have all kinds of risks, but our Fremont County growers are our longtime growers, very dedicated.

Although we picked up a couple of new younger guys, which is, which has been wonderful.

Part of the reason our industry is stagnant is because we do have domestic marketing allotments.

And while we've got some room for growth, there's, there's not a lot, there's not a lot there.

And we also, we've got excess processing capacity.

You know, I, I'd like to see us grow into that, but it's, it's slow.

It for, for a grower, it is a very expensive crop because it is a specialty crop.

It's very expensive for the grower to enter into, into sugar beets.

- You can put a filter on your inbox, and filter out all of the noise and only hear from your constituents and just see their emails, which I'm sure you get to finally, but I know the hundreds and hundreds of other emails that you get.

What's on their mind?

What are they most concerned about today?

- If I, if I narrowed this down to a couple of main issues, one is, is education funding, taxes, and then really now are, are cuts to some of our programs that, that they're seeing that are out there.

And, and, and of course everybody is concerned that we protect their second amendment.

- You wrote in while you were running for reelection that you, and you talked about taxes a little bit, that you don't like taxes.

None of us, none of us do.

But you said this, which I found interesting that you also know that if I don't have a good community to attract people to, I can't attract, I can't attract employees here.

I can't keep employees here.

So it's a give and take.

Are you feeling those pressures as an employer?

When, when people come to look at Worland or at, at at a larger level, come to look at Wyoming.

That they're just not certain about Wyoming's tax structure and hesitant if you will?

- So about, so I hear your question being two questions with that, but, you know, the first question is, yeah, we feel pressure recruiting to Worland.

And, and I hear that from other employers around the state.

And a little bit of that, you know, I go back and, and while I wasn't involved as heavily in Dow as I would've liked to have been just because of time constraints, but I did follow along with that very well.

And really this quality of life that the younger, here I am now saying the younger generation, right?

You know, it's difficult not everybody is built to live in a town of 5,000 people where the closest Walmart's 90 miles away.

And the, the next community is 30 miles away, and it's half the size of you.

It, it, it takes people that appreciate other things in life, other than, you know, a certain flavor of coffee and a nice place to go for dinner on Monday night.

But what we have been able to do in Wyoming because of the foresight of a lot of people that came before me and our minerals is we've been able to build very nice communities in, in in very sparsely populated areas.

And say, look, you know, Worland, you know, we've, we've got a wonderful aquatic center, our community center complex is great, the museum, you know that Neil Sergeant helped stand up here is first rate.

I was just at a meeting there this morning.

We, we have so many wonderful things in this community that we owe to, to the minerals industry.

That's helped fund all of that, quite frankly.

- So the second half of the question then, when employers who maybe want to locate, not just in Worland but just in Wyoming, take a look at us and wonder when's the tax hammer going to drop, and I don't know enough?

Is it, what do you think about that?

- Yeah, I, so I, I, I agree.

You know, we, I was, I was in on a panel with Eli and Steve Harshman everybody knows who Eli is, right?

Speaker Harshman.

And it was with oil and gas people from around the country.

And, you know, the, the, the conversation started talking about shortfalls and this type of stuff.

And you could tell it was making the room nervous.

Right?

And I said, no, no, no, we, we need to look at, we're, we're talking about shortfalls, but we're, we have mechanisms to deal with them.

Right?

We can look at cuts, we've got, we got savings.

We know the minerals interest is industry is a base to that.

And, you know so it's one of those things as we, when we have discussions, we have to make sure we don't make people nervous about tax increases on that.

Now, if you look at a manufacturing business where you come in and you get low property taxes, no income tax, you look at the history of Wyoming, look at even the discussions that we should be having now that we aren't, are going on.

You know, it's, it would be a very slow and gradual process with that.

I really believe that the number one hindrance to locating in Wyoming is workforce.

- Well, we'll tie it up here.

Pretty cool being a grandpa?

- Oh, geez.

I mean, I, yeah.

I had no idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, on my, on my darkest days all you gotta do is look at one of the videos my daughter sent me.

It's awesome.

- I agree.

Representative Greear, thank you for joining us for the first time on Capitol Outlook, (inaudible) - to visit with you many more times.

Thank you so much.

- Okay.

You bet.

- And in our final segment of Capital Outlook it's our pleasure to be joined by two senators, Senator Jeff Wasserburger, and Senator Bo Biteman.

Gentlemen, welcome back to Capital Outlook.

- Thanks for having us.

- The topic at hand here is is Gillette college.

Right now of course Gillette college is part of the Northern Wyoming Community College District, Sheridan College, if you will.

And the discussion is whether the citizens of Campbell County now might want to vote and establish their own community college district.

- Senator Biteman you're from Sheridan County, Senator Wasserburger you're from Campbell County.

So this is our version of divorce court.

(laughing) And that's a metaphor that Senator Ellis kind of brought to the table.

And she wondered, is this an ugly divorce or is this a new future?

So I wanna talk about first the need and I think Senator Wasserburger it would be best to visit with you.

Gillette college is not new to Wyoming.

Gillette college has been around a long time and you more than anyone understand its history.

- Well, actually we celebrated our 50th year, last year.

And so Gillette campus as it was called for 40 of those years where it was actually in an old elementary school when it first started and then it kinda moved around the town until finally they found a campus and started building buildings.

Now we have eight buildings that are up and running and most of those are owned by the citizens of Gillette.

We've invested $90 million in that campus.

And so essentially what's happened is, you know Gillette has just kept growing and it's gotten to be actually a larger community than Sheridan.

And so if our community decides to task themselves and take control of their own community college and have their own elected board that makes their own decisions then we'll go ahead and start that.

And we've Senator Biteman and I had an amendment that we set up that is gonna actually referee the whole thing and so it's going to be a very nice birth of a new college not the divorce of an old college.

We like to think of it as a birth.

- Senator Biteman you represent constituents.

- Yeah.

- In Sheridan County.

Is this a good thing?

- Yes, it is and I think we're well on our way to making this happen.

And this is definitely not a messy ugly divorce where we're, you know, fighting with our good friends over the Powder River and Gillette, Gillette's been at this a long time as you know Craig, they've been trying they've made a couple attempts and a couple of rounds at this in the past that have fallen short.

And that was back before they probably what doubled the size of Sheridan now in population.

So it's something that's been happening for a while and you know, we're working together, we've been working together from day one when this started.

When Dr. Trivedi called me and asked me to come in and and talk about the situation and maybe the need for some compromise with Gillette.

That's when I got more involved and I was happy to get involved and work with Senator Wasserburger.

And he's done a great job.

- So let's talk about that word compromise.

What does that mean right now?

- Well, the compromise essentially says that the money will flow to Northern Wyoming Community College District and the board there that has done an excellent job of governing the board two of the campuses they've done, they're good people they've done great work.

They put in a lot of time on behalf of Gillette community and they're not even elected by us.

They're elected by the citizens of Sheridan.

And so the amendment says essentially the Wyoming Community College commission will be the referee so to speak that will make sure that Sheridan has the money that they need to service the students in Gillette.

The day that we earn accreditation will be the day that that money ends.

And so then at that point in time Gillette college will have to be sufficient on the mill levy that they levy.

And if you don't take any state funds, then you don't have to levy four mills.

And that's the situation that Gillette is in because of its high assessed valuation they can levy much less than four mills and probably actually my accountants say 1.75 mills would be plenty.

So no more than two.

- And as today we don't know about 10 years now we're gonna talk about that component in just a minute.

What's compromise mean from Sheridan County's perspective in your eyes Senator?

- In my eyes It just means that this doesn't this breakup if you will doesn't hurt Sheridan College, and where we're at right now today it doesn't like Senator Wasserburger said, they'll keep their local generated money.

Sheridan College will keep the state funding model grant up until accreditation.

- Including its own tax revenue.

- Yes including our own tax revenues.

So that was the grand compromise I think that's something Sheridan College is happy with and we can live with that.

It's not gonna hurt the students and at the end of the day this is what's best for the students.

And as long as our students are taken care of and Senator Wasserburger's Gillette College students are taken care of.

And we kind of nursed them through this process this birthing process, if you will, of a new college I think we're on the right track.

- Two issues that I wanna talk about that have been discussed.

One is, is that every other community colleges in Wyoming levies maximum mills, Gillette College because of its valuation today, likely won't have to do that.

So in one way, the citizens of Campbell County are getting their own college and paying less, than everybody else who has a community college within their district, is that an issue?

- Well, it is for some legislators, but the problem is that as I said earlier of the seven community colleges right now Gillette becomes the eighth.

We would be the only community college that does not receive any state funds.

It actually saves money that the money that was flowing to Northern Wyoming Community College District that money would all the Gillette students in that would stop and so the state will be able to save somewhere around $6 million.

And that money can be re appropriated by a future joint appropriations committee they can either cut it, which I hope they don't do or they can give it back to the other seven community colleges.

And if that's the case, it would be about $800,000 to the other seven community colleges.

Gillette will be completely independent of state funds we will totally finance our own school.

And so that's why it's such a positive for everybody.

- And the other argument that is Gillette can do that until it can't, if the assessed valuation in Campbell County falls and then it needs to become part of the state system that doesn't in fact then fund or support community colleges?

- Well, here's the answer on that, right now our assessed valuation is $4.2 billion.

One mill levies about $4.2 million.

And we are anticipating at 25% drop in our assessed valuation.

So we're gonna go from 4.2 billion to about 3.6 billion, okay?

By my figures, I figured that we have to lose 80% of our assessed valuation in Campbell County before we would go on state aid.

And I'm gonna submit to you that if Campbell County loses 80% of its assessed valuation, we're gonna be worried about what we're gonna do with K-12.

We're gonna be worried about what we're gonna do about the university we're gonna be worried about how many state employees we have left.

It would be an absolute disaster across this state.

- There is a lot of discussion on cuts that are going to be made to K-12.

And there's also some discussion on whether revenues need to be administered now the additional revenues to support K-12 and have a balance there.

Senator Biteman I wanna talk to you first, is now the time for the state of Wyoming to enhance revenues for K-12 education which would mean potentially more taxes?

- No, not in my opinion, Craig, I think we've got to look at the cost side and the spending that we're doing on K-12.

The cost keeps going up every year.

And if we were to raise taxes this year to let's say one penny what are we gonna do to capture those costs and keep them from continuing to rise year over year - I truly believe the biggest mistake we could make as a legislature is to spend down the legislative stabilization reserve account.

- Which backstops education funding today.

- Right and so by doing that we have been in capital investments actually getting about $400 million off of that fund.

If we completely spend it down then we don't have that money.

So that we'd have to cut that.

But I think that the most important thing for K-12 and unfortunately it's going to be very deep for me anyway to agree to cuts for K-12 education.

But there are going to have to be some cuts in some way we've attached our revenue stream to the most volatile revenue stream out there.

And so literally we are dependent on what happens in Saudi Arabia.

If somebody decides to flow oil and crash the prices, then we crash here in Wyoming.

And so we need to diversify our revenue stream some way we need to try and defend Israel if we can.

But that means a revenue raising measure of some kind, maybe sooner than what we have the votes for in the legislature.

- This discussion is not over certainly a lot of tough decisions and discussions coming in the legislature.

We appreciate your time today.

Thank you so much for joining us on Capitol Outlook.

- Thank you so much.

- Thanks for having us.

- You're sure welcome.

And that's a wrap for this episode of Capital Outlook.

Thank you so much for joining us this evening.

Next week is an important week here at the Wyoming Capitol.

All of the focus we'll turn now to the governor's budget and the work that the joint appropriations committee has done with that budget as it now hits the floor of both the Senate and the House here in the Wyoming legislature.

We'll see you next week.