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- Welcome to Capital Outlook on Wyoming PBS.

From Wyoming's Capitol here in Cheyenne, I'm Craig Blumenshine.

This week, education is front and center in both the House and the Senate, K-12 education, that is.

And we're gonna spend a lot of time this evening visiting about that topic.

We're gonna start the discussion with Senator R.J. Kost.

He's a 40-plus year educator here in the state of Wyoming.

Spent a lot of time teaching, and also being an administrator in Park County, and he has interesting insight into the discussion.

We'll continue talking about education, with leadership in the Wyoming legislature, Speaker of the House, Eric Barlow.

And this week, the Majority Floor Leader of the Senate, Senator Ogden Driskill.

Senator Jeff Wasserburger, from Campbell County, is our Capitol Outlook Profile.

And we'll end tonight with a discussion with two members of the minority party, that's Representative Andy Schwartz, and representative Mike Yin.

All that follows on Capitol Outlook, which starts now.

- And as we begin this week of Capital Outlook, it's our pleasure to be joined by Senator R. J. Kost.

Senator, welcome and thank you for joining us.

- Thank you, it's my pleasure.

- We wanna continue our discussion about education.

You're in a unique place, I feel.

43 year veteran of educating in Wyoming.

You were a teacher first in Dubois, longtime teacher in Powell, then you became an administrator.

You also served on the joint recalibration committee over the interim here.

So I think that your perspective is one that that's pretty unique.

You told me that you have some concerns and wanna correct a few misconceptions that are out there, and I'd like to start there first.

What are some misconceptions that are really on your mind?

- Well, a couple of misconceptions I have are, first of all, the performance of our schools.

When you look at the facts out there about the NAEP and the NAEP of course, is the National Assessment.

We have increasingly climbed through the years.

And when you look at the number, it was said the other day on the floor, 73% of our kids are basic or better.

And would you really want that?

Well, they didn't say better, they said 73% of our kids are basic.

And the bottom line is, it's 73% of our kids are basic and above.

And yeah, that doesn't look real impressive if they look at the number 73 is possibly as D in some grading situation.

But if you look at the highest score, which at that time was a different state at 75, two points between the top score and our score is certainly not anything that's saying we're bad.

We've moved up.

At one point, we were 25th in the ranking and then we've moved up in the fourth grade.

We've also moved up in the eighth grade.

They don't take the test at our high school level, so it's not given there.

We have the ACT for our juniors.

We are in the group of states that required of all of them.

And so that score can be compared and see how we're doing there.

The important thing to think about is money doesn't equal performance.

And so in our education system, we have to understand that the money that we're being paid doesn't guarantee you're gonna 100% of your kids proficient.

The money only guarantees that we have the ability to get quality teachers in here that can teach our kids.

And that has proven very effective.

At the same time, when we look at poverty level and the different challenges that teachers have, it's not as easy as just saying, "Well, we should be at the top."

The bottom line is there's a lot more to it in, it's a very complex structure that we've got to work on.

- It certainly is Senator, but then you wrap around this fiscal challenge.

This $300 million a year, projected budget shortfall for K-12.

Money isn't the big answer, but there has to be some cuts and others have advocated there also has to be some revenues.

So where do you see Wyoming ending up here?

It's right on your plate right now.

- It is and we have to get it under control.

And I have not been adverse to cuts, we need to make cuts.

When you hand somebody a pot of gold and then you say, "I wanna take it away," it's pretty difficult to get them to just openly say, "Oh, yeah, sure, take this."

But on the other hand the important part is we can make some cuts.

We have to be aware of two things that are really important.

Number one, our students in this state are very important.

And so we've got to make sure that we don't adversely affect their education to where they're not going to be successful.

I don't think we're gonna do that with most of the things that we've talked about.

Not all of them, there's some things out there that could be detrimental.

And then we need to have good quality teachers and we need to have longevity of those teachers, so that they can be in the systems and create the continuity of growth for our district.

If we would look to pay for our teachers, where they are and to get rid of the ghost teachers as far as that supplementary that helped the school districts be able to make the different salaries, it would make a difference.

Is it gonna make a lot?

The numbers are hard to tell because you've got to see what the results are before you really know.

And so from this point saying, "Well, it looks to be," and then from the other side when you're actually have the ones that you're actually paying, and here's what it actually is, becomes two different stories.

So we need to make the cuts.

We need to find good places to make cuts.

The insurance that's being paid can trim back to the ones that use it.

We can trim back the ghost teachers and say, "Okay, let's make sure we're paying our teachers "a fair salary."

- What are the administrators and school board members telling you?

I'm guessing your inbox has had more than one or two emails about this issue.

Are they saying that, we've come to depend on this money for A, B and C and now you might cut that money, it's gonna impact our kids.

- Well, the first thing that we're gonna hear is it's gonna impact our kids.

And, you know, there's an argument to be had.

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about a custodian, a groundskeeper, a bus driver, a teacher, or a principal, they all are instrumental to the success for our kids.

Because you never know which kid one of them may have talked to, that gave them a boost or gave them encouragement to keep going.

So that's true, but where's the biggest impact of our kids?

We know that teachers have the biggest impact and then principals are next.

So it's important to make sure that we have good solid leadership to lead our teachers and then a good teachers that are gonna perform.

A lot of our school districts because of the situation with ghosts teachers and trying to create some more money flexibility, have chosen to go with a little higher class numbers.

At one time that was a waiver you had to apply for, and then it was done away with.

We're still paying right now at the levels that were set from previous years.

And when you bump that level up, that removes obviously some of the teachers.

But where it hits more than anywhere else is our large schools.

Because our smaller schools just don't have that many.

So that becomes a real critical issue and we've got to look at that as well.

The block grant is a real complex structure and trying to get a better understanding of the whole thing is extremely difficult.

And I don't wanna say that with the idea that it can't be understood, because it can.

But at the same time, trying to figure out what that means for each of the different districts in our state becomes a real challenge.

And small schools have to have some importance because if we don't have small schools, we don't have those small communities.

And those communities are just as important to those areas as the large schools are to the larger areas.

The most important thing for me, is this is not a district created problem.

Legislator created the problem when we funded it the way we did.

And so, it's as much what we did, because the school districts are not breaking any rules, they're not breaking any of the conditions of the block grant.

They're using the block grant in the best way that meets the needs for their district.

And I think that's important to understand.

So to criticize the school districts for that is really rather difficult.

But at the same time, trying to cut that back becomes a challenge.

And we all have to find a way to do that.

And the legislature needs to say, "Okay, we understand where we were, "now we've got to move back."

At the same time, I think if we work together, the school districts can work with us to make a compatible solution to this.

- So we have to then maybe talk about your revenue sometime, if you want to have a sustainable discussion about K-12 funding.

What is your view on the need to have these revenue discussions sooner, maybe a year or two from now, or down the road?

Where are you at there?

- To be honest with you, I really feel like it's pretty difficult for us to stand here and say, "We need to cut, we need to cut," and never look at the other side.

And I'm not a fan of taxes but, at the same time we need to seriously take a look at taxes.

When we have a beer tax that hasn't been touched since 1937, we probably need to say, maybe it's time to look at that a little bit.

But at the same time, just taxing to tax is not the best answer.

And I'm not in favor of that.

It's got to be a reasonable.

I think it's got to make sure that we're not hitting our people in the hard, most difficult ways.

Things such as the corporate tax and a few of those things could be put in, that would not affect us as much and still start bringing some revenue in.

If we're asking the districts to cut, which we are, that's okay.

But at the same time, if we're not looking at the other side and trying to say, "Okay, together, these two need "to kind of merge to get to a reasonable spot."

I don't feel like we're doing justice to both sides.

- Before we turn away from education, quickly, is consolidation a good idea?

You're in a County that has multiple school districts.

- No, consolidation isn't a good idea.

We're not gonna save the kind of money that we need to save compared to what it's gonna do to communities, and what it's gonna do to districts.

Putting a single central administrative group to each County or whatever, which has been talked about, would maybe be $7 million.

But when you start looking at, okay, how do you deal with, if you wanna take three schools and one school is the highest paid and another school's middle to that, and another school's the lowest paid.

If they're all in the same district, do you pay the highest to all of them?

Do you pay the middle to all of them and cut some and raise some?

Do you pay the lowest and cut both?

There's a lot of unanswered questions there that you really don't know where those are gonna go.

So in the end, I'm pretty confident that that 7 million is gonna end up being much less than that.

- [Presenter] In the case that you're talking about.

- Yeah, and it's just not gonna be of any value.

- I wanna turn a page and talk about Medicaid expansion.

You're in a unique position also, I think to bring some quality of discussion to the table.

You're currently the president of Powell Valley Healthcare.

You've been a long-time member of the board of trustees.

You've been through some tough times and some good times with Powell's Hospital, if you will.

Is now the right time for Medicaid expansion in Wyoming?

- I tried supporting it last year, excuse me.

And it wasn't quite as effective as I was hoping it would be.

I firmly believe that we need to look at Medicaid expansion.

There's a misconception out there with Medicaid expansion that a lot of people are just gonna quit paying their insurance and get on Medicaid expansion.

And that's really not true.

This is a group of people in the middle between Medicaid and paid insurance, that don't have the funds to be able to get to insurance, but at the same time, their jobs only paying them X amount.

So they have to make a decision, do I pay for food or do I pay for insurance?

And that's pretty easy decision.

- And what about on the provider side?

Have you been able to analyze what this might mean to smaller, rural health care centers?

- Our critical access hospitals, which most in the state are, would have a definite gain.

Currently we're writing off anywhere from, sometimes maybe 150,000 up to 350 to 400,000 per month on the lost income that we can't collect.

- This is just in Powell.

- That's just in Powell.

And so when you start talking about that kind of money that you have to write off and if it would fit, if the Medicaid expansion steps into that, it's definitely gonna help the bottom line for those hospitals.

We wanna look at it in a larger situation than just the hospitals.

Because the healthier your community is, the healthier they're going to be towards different jobs, towards bettering themselves and making a better life for themselves.

So we're not only helping the hospital with some encounter, we're helping the economy of this state because these people are gonna be more productive in the state.

They're gonna have a different outlook on what they can do to maybe move up.

So, there's a lot of wins to it.

If you look at some of the surrounding states such as Montana and a few of the others, they've had a substantial growth in the amount of money that they've been able to bring in because of that.

This year with the possibility of using COVID money to help cover that, would mean the state wouldn't be out much money at all compared to what it would have been in the past.

- Well, that Medicaid expansion bill is on general file in the Senate.

We'll see when it might surface, perhaps that might be sometime next week.

- Could be, and that would be great to be able to talk about it.

- Well, Senator Kost, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much for joining us on Capitol Outlook.

- Well, thank you very much.

I've enjoyed it.

- We wanna continue on now with our weekly discussion with the leadership of the Wyoming legislature, that's next.

Stay with us.

- And as we continue on with this Capital Outlook we're joined by the leadership of the Wyoming Legislature, speaker of the house, Dr. Eric Barlow and Majority Floor Leader of the Senate, Senator Aidan O'Driscoll.

To you both welcome.

And Senator Driscoll, thanks for pitching in today.

We appreciate having you on the show again, welcome back, Mr. Speaker, I wanna start with you, yesterday in second reading of the house education bill you started the day around $31 million.

Do you ever take or sell of cuts in the bill and 12 amendments later?

Where are you?

And then we're going to talk about where this might be going.

We, we talked earlier in the show to Senator RJ Kost relative to education issues.

Now we're talking nuts and bolts with the bill.

Where are we?

- So 173 house bill 173 is the bill.

And the second reading as you mentioned yesterday is actually 12 amendments but one of them got divided five times.

So now we're at seventeen amendments.

And, and truly when I left the building yesterday they were still trying to figure out one, what we kind of did in total, because we did several things.

We kept revenue.

We brought in, took off a tax exemption for a particular industry and brought that toward the school foundation program.

So there Is multiple moving parts.

I think we're probably in that $60 to $70 million range for a net, if you will, net, both revenue coming in and or additional revenue and cuts, but quite honestly they were still working on it.

The other thing they're working on is how it affects each district.

Because when we start getting into the components of the funding model, adjusting, you know - [Host] Tutor - Tutor - All those different things it affects different districts differently.

And so that's what people will look at today and say, okay how big a hit did my district take?

And that's when people start saying, Oh, maybe that wasn't the right.

You know, this isn't the right formula.

Let's try another one and see how that turns out.

So those are the little tweaks that can make a significant difference depending on what district you're in.

- And before we go to the Senate side here the majority floor leader said yesterday.

He said, look, you know, we start with $30 million in cuts, brought in 10 million bucks a year.

I can maybe go to 60 million or so in cuts, but I'm not going above that.

A hundred million would be too much for him is what he was saying.

And I'm paraphrasing.

Is there a number in your mind Mr. Speaker, that the house needs to center on at least this year to move forward.

- [Barlow] There isn't, I don't have a number in mind.

I think that the house has been basically the bill.

If you look at the bill, we have of course we can have revenue in our bill our Senate colleagues can't initiate a revenue so that we can have revenue, but that's one component one leg on that stool.

Second one is diversions.

We have current revenues flows of funds that we can adjust you know, modify and effect our paper deficit.

As you'll hear a former speaker Harshman talk about.

And the third thing is what the program is what we're actually going to fund and what the cost of that is funding.

So the house is, I think what you're saying from the house is we're trying to look at those three components and how they fit together.

That makes a lot of moving parts now.

So for me there, isn't a number.

What there is, is adequate equitable and defensible educational program when we get to the end, that's what I'm looking for.

Three things, adequate ,equitable, and then defensible both to the public and to our constituents.

But also if somebody wants to take it to the judiciary - [Host] This majority floor leader in the Senate side I know you've been keeping an eye on him that what the house is doing as well - I followed her closely and you can't lay it out much better than speaker Barlow did.

Particularly the tail end of his statement is truly there is how do we fairly do this?

We know we have a structural problem in education and how do we get a handle on it?

And for me, I saw in this session the first time in my opinion, the house is really looking at it and saying we're looking hard for solutions.

And we realized part of those are gonna be some cuts.

And, and I'm seeing that.

And I'm really happy about it.

Cause I think it's the path to get Wyoming as a whole budget, not, not just education but the whole budget where we can balance it out.

And we can start talking about how we diversify our economy go on for them and, you know, our revenues are picking up.

So it's not quite the crisis it was but it's really serious discussions about how do we meet in the middle on this and do the best we can and have the best education we can.

- How do you two envision this moving forward in the coming days and weeks?

The house has its bill.

It's different from the Senate's bill Senate's bill is going to come over to the house side.

If it passes on third reading, the house bill is going to go over to the Senate side that passes on third reading but they are different in the cuts.

And then there's that revenue piece in the house bill that you're gonna have to talk about.

How do you see this going forward?

Mr. Speaker?

Let's talk to you first.

- Well, going forward.

We just got to get through third reading on the house side.

I mean, bottom line is, there's a lot of discussion.

If you watch the debate yesterday a lot of those amendments that came on were 31 votes or 28 - [Host] Yeah, very close.

- One way or the other.

I mean, some didn't get adopted and it was very close.

And the other, other side, now some were wider margins and that's fine.

But a lot of the really, you know, the ones that, yeah the ones that were more challenging, they were close.

And so now we've got a bill that really displeases probably three different groups in some way folks that don't want any revenue in the bill.

They're displeased folks that don't want the diversions.

they're displaced folks that don't want to adjust the educational program.

they have reservations.

So now we've got to get those three folkses and the bottom line for me is do you want us to continue to have a conversation or not?

Do you want to continue this conversation or not?

Because if we don't have 31 votes on third reading which likely will be today, our conversation or our ability to engage the conversation goes away.

And then if the Senate kicked something our way then we take up whatever they whatever they provide and they'll do the same.

I would hope for us.

Now, do we double up, do we each consider each other's bill?

I think that would be a discussion that leadership would have and say, let's pick one let's focus on one, the other body focused on this you know, and then we can go to a conference committee hopefully on one bill, you know, we're getting the, as you know, we're getting to the end of committing the whole house of origin it's next Monday based on our current schedule.

So, you know, we don't have lots of extra time after that too.

And you know, we're at day 20 today 21 today of our session.

So there's only really two weeks of work left.

- I wanna talk to you in just a moment about the impact of not having two days this week to do your work.

Mr.

Majority floor leader.

Is that kinda how you see things progressing here?

- Absolutely.

There'll be a bill.

I think we're at a point one bill will come from both sides, very likely unless they die and what speaker Barlow has said is very true.

Our sides, the same as you know, our bills a pretty robust bill.

And it's got a lot of that ease on it, and it's hard to do this.

We're gonna lose jobs in our home towns.

We all know it.

Speaker Barlow was cracked.

Everybody pulls the sheet out looks what it does to your local districts.

You know, our bills got some districts get hit 20%.

There's gotta be a way to fix that within those bills.

And that's that's gonna get worked on because there is no way.

And none of the legislature I believe wants to go on and cuts on our schools.

You know, I've visited at length with my people and, you know particularly these rural districts - [Host] Yeah, set a different dynamic right here at this table, small districts, large district within your purview.

- And they hit him very much differently, small districts in my opinion, I think they're very honest with me.

Really.

Can't take lots more.

They're stressed where they're at.

So, you know, we're gonna have to figure out how we make provisions and still fall under the court rulings and under what we have for budget.

So education surprise you at small schools.

- [Host] Yep.

- And that's one of the hard arguments we're having.

Do you, continue to have 30 and 40% and 50% high schools is they're hard to really justify if you're gonna bring a paring knife out.

So tough decisions.

And they've been there for almost, since I've been in.

We've been having the same discussion.

Now it's really come to the place everybody's serious.

And I do think we're gonna hit good solutions.

One of those bills will be the vehicle and we're gonna come out with something that's reasonably substantial with my opinion.

- [Host] Pass a word on education Mr. Speaker.

- Yeah.

It's challenging.

And this, dynamic of larger districts they have more capacity.

They can absorb and move things around and small districts actually, my biggest concerns and I do represent part of Converse County, which is a medium sized district if you will.

And, they probably, you can be as nimble as anybody, small district, you start paring at resources flood out resources.

It's a challenge.

Bigger districts has more latitude.

So that's when you look at those spreadsheets and you see what it does to different districts.

And it's challenged, really a challenge, - Senator Cassidy said it earlier and I think it's something that is often lost is that the school districts didn't make this issue.

The legislature made the funding model and now the legislature needs to fix this coming down the road.

So I think that's it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out.

- I think that's correct to a certain degree but they're blocked granted, they've got flexibility.

So some of it it's, it's hand in hand and that's gonna be part of what this is how do we really determine who does it and how do we do it efficiently?

So it really is.

Let's not point at each other.

- [Host] Sir.

- Let's hold hands and say, how do we figure out to work together to get a solution?

- I want to ask you how the weather in China now is gonna impact the, what happens in the legislature moving forward.

You lost two days, Monday and Tuesday of this week because this town was paralyzed because of the amount of snow that it got.

And just kind of getting away from that right now any change in the schedule, you delayed some deadlines.

Is the legislature still gonna likely adjourn April 2nd?

Do we know?

- So I think that the two days aren't lost as legislative days, they were just lost within the week of work.

I think the discussion right now between leaderships Senate house is, we make it up one day on a Saturday and maybe one day in April or two days, you know, tagged onto the end to see it's not gonna be this coming Saturday cause I think a lot of us that didn't get home this past weekend want to go home, but I think we will use those days.

They will come in at some point.

I just, we just, haven't kind of settled on where (indistinct) - At the end of the day that you're looking at a Saturday, at least.

- Without a doubt, we'll have a Saturday but what I told our body, which we haven't talked with house leadership, we're gonna tack an hour a day on every day here on out and hopefully do one more Saturday.

We've actually made a really hard effort this year to be done fairly early in the day so everybody can be sharp.

We'd been trying to quit around 5:30 to 6.

We're gonna tack an hour on that every day.

Guys need to go to bed earlier but it's gonna buy them a Saturday back down the road - [Host] Real quickly.

IAD tolling was on the floor of the Senate this week, the Senate move forward.

As I understand it in committee of the whole an idea to look at the process have approval to have that process looked at to potentially maybe three or four years down the road then have a solution maybe to provide funding for a highway that supports 24% of Wyoming's traffic.

You talked about that quite a bit on the floor yesterday.

- Absolutely.

Interesting.

IAD tolling, it's been up almost every year since I've been in the legislature.

It's failed.

It's one of those bills just goes away.

We've had some change in federal law that it allows a different model on it.

You know, like say a quarter of the traffic in Wyoming goes down IAD 7,000 cars a day but it's equaled by 7,000 trucks a day truck - [Host] Truck Sandwich.

That's my favorite quote of the day yesterday.

- Yeah, 80% of that truck traffic does not stop other than to buy fuel in Wyoming.

And basically the debate yesterday was, every County in the state.

When you fuel your trucks or cars up, you're paying for maintenance on IAD.

Do you wanna continue to pay that?

Or do you wanna go to a user type fee?

That's actually the people using it and get that other money back out into the counties where we can get our roads where they're not deteriorated in better shape.

And it was a compelling argument yesterday and it also was not let's do it.

It was let's pull a study out and look at the actual economic impacts.

So we can have an honest debate on, do we want to look at toll roads in Wyoming and what are their impacts?

And the feds now are letting us, we may be able to have it where the people that live down there run pretty much toll free and for the rest of us, if you're using it to use tax once again, the same as education with the advent of low carbon cars, better gas mileage.

We just don't have the budgets in Wyoming to keep our highways.

We're searching for ways to make everything work on the best low impact solutions we can find.

And this was one to look at - This is majority floor leader again thanks for joining us today.

We really appreciate it.

Always great to speak with you, Mr. Speaker.

- [Barlow] Thank you, Greg.

We'll turn our attention to the capital outlook outlook profile this week with Senator Jeff Wasserburger that's next.

Stay with us.

(upbeat music) - And as we continue on with this week's Capital Outlook, it's time for our Capital Outlook profile with Senator Jeff Wasserburger from Gillette.

Senator welcome, and thank you for spending time with us today.

- Well, thanks for having me Craig, I've always enjoyed the PBS shows and documentaries and over the years I've watched some great stuff that you guys have done and I've always been a bit of a historian after teaching American history for 16 years.

I've enjoyed Wyoming history and so, Wyoming history is really kind of neat stuff sometimes and you guys have done a wonderful job, showing off all of that.

- Well, thank you.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Senator, if my math is right, you are now the third on the Totem pole, the third longest serving legislator in the Wyoming Senate, is that correct?

- That is, actually with the retirement of Senator Bebout and Senator Coe, I bumped up a few years but you're actually adding the years I had in the House, which was 12 and now I'm on year seven in the Senate.

So relatively a new Senator still but I've been involved in the legislative process for a long time and one of the things that happened, many many years ago when I first ran for the legislature in 1994, I was elected and in 1995, I was sworn in.

I was the youngest legislator in Wyoming for 10 years and I was just like 36 at the time and now, I wouldn't even be in the top five, there's lots of young people over in the House and even in our Senate that are younger than I was and so it's really neat that we have that influence of young people in our legislature and that they are outstanding legislators in their own right.

They've done extremely well and so eventually, I think in 2007, I retired from the House because I had promised term limits and I was at 12 years and so that was my term limit.

That didn't mean I couldn't step out (clears throat) and then run again like I have for the Senate but I have already told my constituents that I don't believe that I will serve past 12 years in the Senate so, that's kinda where I'm at and I've been around a long time.

- Long-tenure service.

Okay so I'm looking at the roster now and I see Wasserburger down there at the very bottom.

You get a vote last, all the time.

Is that a blessing or a curse?

How does that work?

- Well, that's a really great question.

You're very observant because I do pay attention to my vote count many times and there has been numerous times in the last seven years, where literally I know where the President of the Senate is going to vote and he votes after me.

So typically, yeah, I'm the last votes and five or six times during the session, my vote has been the 16th vote or the 15th vote knowing that the president is going to push it over the top.

So it's really kinda a difficult spot to be in but it's also a fun spot to be in, depending by how you look at it, you know and I think the other one that is very difficult, is the very first vote and that is Jim Anderson out of Casper.

- Yeah.

There's two sides to that coin, isn't there?

You're a Senator born in Lusk.

You're a tiger at heart, is that right?

- Well, I am a tiger and yesterday we celebrated 50 years of my wrestling coach, coaching wrestling at the state wrestling tournament and actually it's a town in my district, Wright, won the State 2A Wrestling Championships and actually upset Moorcroft who had won, I believe seven or eight in a row.

And so that was a big accomplishment for Wright and so I'd like to compliment the people of Wright and the wrestlers in Wright for doing such great job at state wrestling.

Today is 3A and tomorrow is 4A.

- And I should remind our viewers, we're filming this in front of the legislative session so that we can actually read and see how everybody did.

A little Lusk kissery there.

Ron Thon, who was a tremendous teacher, wrestling coach et cetera in the Riverton area and for which the largest tournament in Wyoming is named after is also a Lusk alumni, so there you go.

Before he wrestled at Nebraska.

- And I coached against Ron, I knew Ron very well.

I went to his folks' house in Lusk many many times when I was a boy.

I knew who Ron Thon was, I idolized him as a little kindergartener watching him wrestle in Lusk and, might be one of the nicest men to live the state of Wyoming and just a phenomenal guidance counselor.

- Yep, he was a dear friend of mine.

I miss him dearly, a wonderful person.

Your daughter had an interesting, little bit of history with COVID and the vaccine.

We thought she might've been first but I think I've learned now from you that she was actually the second person in Wyoming to get the vaccine.

- Yeah and she, Hayley, my daughter, graduated from the University of Wyoming with a nursing degree and she went into nursing last year, she earned her Masters degree, she moved to Cheyenne and was working in the ICU unit with COVID patients all summer long and so she was one of the most at risk in the state of Wyoming and when the first vaccine came to Cheyenne she was asked to be a part of a press conference where Governor Gordon actually came and they came in and doctors, nurses, and other people within Cheyenne Regional Hospital were given shots and there was one person who could not make the meeting that day, and so she was actually shot at about 10 o'clock in the morning and then Hayley was the second, second shot in our state but right now she has moved to Minnesota and she is attending the... She wants to be a certified nurse anesthetist, a CRNA is what it's called, which is essentially like a physician's assistant or nurse practitioner.

- Well, we wish her well with that.

So back to your teaching, you were a coach, and you have told me you've coached football, you've coached wrestling and baseball.

What type of coach were you?

Were you a screamer, or were you a little more laid back or how did that work for you, on the sidelines there?

- Well, I'm pretty known for my... how loud my voice was.

- Okay, okay.

(laughs) - I had great teams and I had great kids, you know, we won the very first wrestling state championship in Gillette in 1993 and then again in '95, you know, in baseball, my kids ended up winning three state championships in baseball, you know, we never ever won it in football when I was coaching football but we got to the title game twice and I let Coach Harshman put it to me that particular... - Oh oh, oh oh, we'll have to have a... - The game was actually at Natrona too so.

- The home field advantage was his big advantage there, we'll say that for him.

Senator I wanna visit with you about something personal if you don't mind.

You've had cancer, and I think it has been publicly known that you've been battling cancer for some time.

You've been part of a clinical trial and you're still battling that today.

Give us an update and tell us how you're doing.

- Well, it's very interesting.

Well, it's very interesting to me obviously, but you know, I was having some problems breathing in the last political campaign and I was out setting up my campaign signs and I passed out, then I was having trouble breathing and essentially what was happening was, my heart was having difficulty pushing blood over to the lungs so it was just really a difficult time and finally, they thought it was my heart, doctors did early but they finally sent me to...

They did a CT scan here in Gillette at Campbell County Memorial hospital and they found about a golf ball size mass in my right lower third lung and lobe.

And so we went to Denver, we went to the University of Colorado Anschutz and at that point they operated on my right lung and removed a third of it actually, and they were unable to take the mass out because it was attached to a lung wall.

So at that point in time, we've had all kinds of research that these doctors have done for several years now, probably 10, and it's all immune, called immunotherapy, essentially what it does is...

They have what's called ENA markers, there's four of them and my DNA matched all four of their markers.

And so they started me on a drug which is called TAGRISSO and TAGRISSO puts your immune system on steroids and it comes into your body and it attacks the cancer and it kills it.

And so essentially what was a golf ball size mass of cancer in my right lung disappeared.

And we have had a little bit of a setback.

This has been almost three years now and it appears that there's a very tiny BB-sized spot of cancer in my right lung and so during the session I will have to miss a couple of days to go down to Denver to have an MRI, a CT and blood work.

And so it's just a really crazy thing that our medical science is that advanced and the doctors that have helped me through this process and the nurses have been wonderful and I don't know how much longer it will last so...

But I'm healthy, I look healthy.

- You do.

- And I work out so I'm breathing fine but it's kind of a, you know, you really don't know how you're gonna respond the first time, since the university at Colorado was a medical training center for doctors and five of them came into my room and told me that I had cancer and that was a pretty tough day.

We felt pretty sorry - I'm sure.

- for ourselves for about 24 hours and then finally we decided, stop crying in your beer, pick up your ball and let's get going.

- You know, from my interactions with you Senator you're one of the more upbeat people I know and I think that if people were to visit with you, you certainly don't carry that outwardly on your shoulder so we wish you the best of luck in your continued battle with that and please continue to go on.

- Thank you.

- Well actually, my next checkup will be March 25th actually and so I'll be off the floor for that day.

- All right.

Well, let's hope that you get as good as new as you possibly can.

We're rooting for you.

You now work, you've had a long history in the Campbell County school district and from being a teacher to an administrator, to an a central office worker, and you now work with what is called the BOCHES of Campbell County.

And you were telling me off camera that you essentially work to support 7th through 14th grade folks and you have been obviously very active in the movement to allow Gillette College its independence, if you will.

We talked about that earlier in the session with you and Senator Biteman.

That's a really important issue for you.

- Well, you know, I, my very first year in the legislature the senior delegate in our delegation was State Senator Mike Enzi.

And Mike Enzi was a huge proponent of Gillette College being an independent community college system and I've always thought that Wyoming has sent its best legislators to the United States Senate and Mike Enzi is one of them, but Mike couldn't get the bill through.

He couldn't pass it here in Gillette and so for 30 years, we have wanted to have an opportunity to take that issue on again.

- You have also been, in my eyes, a little bit surprisingly upbeat about Gillette's future.

You strongly believe that the County will survive and survive strongly.

And give us a little bit of your enthusiasm here, why do you think that things are gonna work out okay, because from the 30,000 foot view you're right, you know.

Coal is not progressing as many Wyomingites had hoped even, just two or three years ago for sure and it has impacted Campbell County.

- Well, you know, I always as, I had a number of economics classes in college and how to judge the health of your overall economy.

And when I look at Gillette, I see a thriving community, I see about 700 students every two days, going through the Gillette Technical Education Center, learning, earning degrees in diesel, electricity, welding, computer science.

And I see a birth rate in our community that was higher than last year.

We are typically having between 650 to 700 babies a year.

We have our sales tax, which last month went up 45%.

We have possibly the hottest housing sales in the state.

We... - People will be surprised by that, I think.

- I mean, people are moving in because of the amenities that Gillette has.

- Well Senator, we're so thankful for your time again.

We wish you the absolute best of luck not only with the session, with your health, and with obviously the economy you're still concerned about in Campbell County.

Thanks for joining us on this Capital Outlook profile.

- Well, thanks for having me - And in our final segment of Capitol Outlook, it's our pleasure to be joined by two members of the minority party in the Wyoming House of Representatives, Representative Andy Schwartz and Representative Mike Yin.

Thank you both for joining us again on Capitol Outlook.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

I want to start with your votes on the budget bill, the general fund budget bill, the supplemental budget.

We have a yes vote and a no vote.

Let's start with you Representative Yin.

You chose not to support, one of ten votes if I recall- - Sure.

- That didn't support the budget that ultimately passed, why?

- Yeah, I think ultimately the cuts go a little too far than I'm comfortable with, and I think for me the focus needs to be on how we balance it in both directions, right, in cuts and revenue, and if we only do cuts, it's not really one that I can support.

- [Host] Representative Schwartz?

- Well, partly my vote is based on my membership in the Appropriations Committee.

And when you've worked on, in this case the supplemental budgets since December, I felt personally invested in it to a certain extent, and I don't disagree that there were a lot of the cuts I thought were more than necessary.

I thought we came to a reasonable outcome with which to now negotiate with the Senate, because ultimately we don't have a budget yet until we negotiate one.

- Representative Yin you talked about sustainability, and your no vote to me is maybe a vote that's not sustainable to the aspect that you thought there were too many cuts but with the pragmatic view, there's not going to be a lot more revenue.

How is this budget going to be sustainable then?

- Sure, I mean I think right now we have that rainy day fund, the LSRA, and as long as we have that, it's troubling to me that that we aren't willing to look at revenue as long as we have the rainy day fund.

So I think for now, if we can maintain the budget we have with the LSRA, that's what I'm comfortable with.

- We also have a fiscal challenge in education.

Both of you have spent the one day that the session has been in session this week, talking about that, as we talked about earlier in the show.

What are your positions on the cuts that have been presented to the education on the House side, and also the revenue options that have been placed out there on the House side.

Representative Yin, let's go with you first here.

- Sure yeah, I mean I think the focus right now has been on the number and not what the outcomes of what we want education to be, right?

And so if we continue to focus on the number and just cut that number, we're gonna go back to court to discuss what is an adequate education, when the focus should be okay, we need to have this set of education goals and priorities, and then how do we fund those education goals and priorities, which we're not doing right now.

- And then the revenue side of what has been offered on for the House from everything from revenue transfers to new taxes, et cetera.

Where do you think the house needs to land on a revenue piece in this session?

- In the session we have, I mean, we have an offering in the bill right now, which is the 1% sales tax when the LSRA drops below a certain amount.

I think that is, that's what is possibly passable this session.

I think the conversation needs to move towards what is a real sustainable, economic tax plan for the state of Wyoming, which right now we don't have that.

So, I don't think we're going to get it done in this session but I do think that conversation needs to start moving forward as much as possible.

- Representative Schwartz, what were your thoughts after the education bill now is, before you're now on third reading?

- I mean, fundamentally, I agree with my desk mate Mr. Yin, but I think we're looking at it in the wrong perspective because we are thinking in terms of a goal of how much we're going to cut, whether it's a hundred million is the number they just throw out, we need to cut a hundred million.

I don't know how that connects to providing an equitable and adequate education, which was what the constitution calls for.

I think we need to be looking at the model and finding out how that model can be adjusted to make sure we're still providing the good education, but maybe there are savings to be had.

But fundamentally I don't think the problem is what we're spending on education.

I think the problem is the revenue streams, and I'm not really that happy about using sales tax as the mechanism to support it.

I mean, just to begin with as the state grows their sales tax percentage it puts a burden on local governments, because they rely on the fifth and sixth and even potentially seventh pennies to augment their revenue stream, and if the state does a sales tax that much harder for the locals to do it, so- - Unless the state mandates that extra penny for locals, which has been talked about.

- Right.

Yeah, but even still that's one penny.

I think we need to be looking at new revenue sources statewide, both for the state and for local governments.

- Sure, let's talk about that, because you both have offered a couple different revenue sources.

You've talked about a real estate transfer tax.

- For years.

- Yeah, and you have talked about a 4% state income tax.

Why is it worthwhile to even have those discussions with this very conservative legislature, quite frankly, Representative Schwartz?

- Quite frankly, if we don't talk about it, nobody will, and I think that it needs to be heard that there are other alternatives to sales tax and property tax.

The state of Wyoming is locked in.

I mean, if you saw our emails, people are convinced they're already paying too many taxes, and I think we just need to make sure that there is an alternative conversation being held.

- So your real estate transfer taxes, I understand that would apply if counties chose to implement it, and that's a key there, if the voters chose to implement it, on sales above a million bucks, is that accurate?

- It's up to, any county could determine what the exclusion is.

- Okay.

- Because in Teton County, where the median price of a home is $3.7 million, you'd need an exclusion of a million dollars to make sure you're not punishing workforce housing, but in Laramie County, it wouldn't need to be that high.

- Realtors have come out against that.

What's your perception of why they oppose it?

- Oh, I won't speak to that.

(laughs) - Okay, Representative Yin, you've talked about a 4% income tax.

Why do you believe that's a good idea?

- Sure, yeah, I mean I think the only way that you really get an equitable taxation scheme that's sustainable across the population is through an income tax.

I think the 4% is a kind of a compromise position.

In previous years, the Democrats have run a tiered set of income tax rates.

So it would have been 0% for the first million and then another percentage for above that.

But I think ultimately the conversation needs to happen on what the pros and cons of an income tax are, and when you have this bill going forward we can have those conversations, let alone the topics where we can actually deduct property and sales tax from an income tax because we're required from the constitution.

And I think a lot of even legislators don't know that that's necessarily the case, and they won't, unless we bring up the conversation.

- And may I jump in?

- Sure, absolutely.

I'm actually presenting to the Revenue Committee today, an unearned income tax bill, which would tax capital gains dividends and interest.

But the base is $200,000 a year, and under 200,000, you don't even file a return.

And the estimate on that is $60 million a year, that I have dedicated to the School Foundation Program.

I don't expect it to pass, but once again, we need to have these conversations, so people understand there are alternatives.

- Last topic I want to talk about, Representative Yin, and I'll start with you, you've worked very hard on the state's Blockchain Task Force.

Wyoming is a leader in cryptocurrency laws and blockchain laws, and you're working on refining those even more in this session.

One thing I don't understand is, so will all other states just follow suit and then will it be worthwhile to have done all this work in Wyoming?

What's Wyoming's gain here?

I still don't understand what Wyoming can gain from being the leader here in- - Sure.

- These cryptocurrency laws.

- Yeah, so I mean, I think I've tended to be pretty reluctant to go along with a lot of it, which is part of the reason that they put me on the committee in the first place, because one, I have the expertise in the computer science portion and then two, I kind of held back a little bit.

I kind of reigned in a little bit the primary mover, of the initial Blockchain Task Force, but going forward I mean I think ultimately we do have that first mover advantage.

So even though I've been a little hesitant towards it, I think the first mover advantage still brings some economic benefit to the state.

And the question is, is there a negative portion to the blockchain laws that we've passed?

That's one that I wanted to make sure that there hasn't been a negative.

- And that's what you believe so far.

Am I correct?

- Correct, yeah.

And so if there's a positive benefit that we can bring some business into the state, I'm all for it.

I do think ultimately we still need to have that conversation about if we diversify the economy, but don't have a tax structure to support it.

We still need to work on that.

But I think with the blockchain stuff, we're doing fine so far where it brings in positive benefits with not that much net negative benefit, right.

And I also think that with the Blockchain Task Force, if we can prove that there is positive benefit for blockchain, we can start pivoting towards other emerging tech industries where we can try to make some first moves there too.

- And you talked about AI and autonomous vehicles and other things like that when we were talking off camera.

Last word, Representative Schwartz, going forward here for the last half of the session, what's on top of your mind?

- I mean the two big issues are education and the budget.

- Right.

- And we need, actually, we don't need to, I mean, we might not have bills when we come out of this, and that might not be the worst case scenario, because then we have a budget.

This is just a supplemental budget.

So we just receding authority to the governor on that, and with education, we still have a block grant.

We have a model if we can't come to an agreement.

That doesn't make me happy, 'cause I think it's our job to actually solve problems, and the problems still exist, but not the worst case scenario.

- Be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time, offering a minority perspective which I believe is important.

Representative Schwartz- - [Both] Thank you very much.

Representative Yin, thank you very much for joining us.

And that's a wrap on this week's Capitol Outlook.

We'll be back next Friday.

We hope you'll join us then.

Thank you.