- As his two-year term as President of the Wyoming Senate nears its conclusion, State Senator Ogden Driskill of Devils Tower says the Senate is facing obstacles to passage of the Wyoming biennial budget that he calls unprecedented.

We'll speak with the leader of the Wyoming Senate.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

Join us for "Capitol Outlook."

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- Welcome to "Capitol Outlook."

We're here at the state capitol in Cheyenne this morning with Senate President Ogden Driskill, state senator from District 1, northeastern Wyoming.

Senator, you've had a difficult session.

I think that's fair to say, isn't it?

- Morning, Steve.

Yeah, that's probably an understatement, actually.

It's been interesting.

- This is a budget session, and the statutory, constitutional requirement is the biennial budget gets passed this year, and that's proving to be difficult.

It's never smooth as glass.

But this year you've noticed processes and votes and obstacles that have made it more difficult than it typically has been, and you've been here a long time.

- Yeah, you know, it's been difficult.

We've probably got, you know, I'm kind of a historian, but we're probably in a semi-historic time as far as splits.

In the past, it's kind of been Republicans and Democrats, and our split's Republicans and Republicans as a whole.

And, you know, the state, we're here to set policy, and there's definite difference of opinion in how the state moves forward.

Our body's governor presents a budget to us.

He did, he gave us a good solid budget, I thought.

Our joint appropriation committee worked that budget, and I thought did a good job.

They got, I believe, 100 to $140 million out of the governor's budget, roughly.

- When you say worked the budget, you mean before the session began?

There's committee hearings.

Time and again, you try to get it into a workable form before the session starts.

- Yes, sir.

So our committee with the House committee actually brings in all the agencies, asks 'em to justify their spending, look at where it goes, and they decide up and down where we go.

And this year was a tough one 'cause we're following COVID years.

What the state had done was kind of interesting.

Last year's supplemental budget, what we had done was actually taken funding out of a lot of our agencies and used federal funds that came in under the ARP and various federal monies.

And that allowed us to actually put $1.4 billion into savings last year.

It was the biggest amount in Wyoming's history.

Wasn't done through a time of really great windfalls other than federal government, which, like it or not like it, it came.

We put that money away.

Roughly half of it went into permanent savings, half of it went into some accounts to actually save us.

Got us back on a really good, solid fiscal ground.

They worked over multiple times in the summer, and then they actually meet for a week at a time right prior to session.

Developed a really, what I thought was a pretty solid budget.

The House side, I'm not sure what the vote was, the Senate voted 5-0 to bring that budget out, as was for the floor.

And, traditionally, that budget when it comes out that way, particularly the 5-0 vote, the committee vigorously defends their work.

I had replaced the Appropriations Chairman, Senator Kinskey, with Senator Nethercott.

And she was chair through these negotiations.

That being said, there was no complaints registered on either side or budget cuts.

We just came out with a budget.

First day of the session, they replaced Senator Nethercott with Senator Kinskey again.

And he immediately did not defend the budget.

In fact, he started tearing it down.

So then we go into the next step of the budget is to amend the budget, and that gives the floor the ability to change the budget.

And those are done through a series of budget amendments.

We have one on second reading, one on third reading, same as we do in other bills.

These budget amendments are brought by individual legislators, and then they're voted on by the body.

And so second reading amendments was fairly benign, and we actually, I'd done something that hadn't been done before on second-read amendments.

They came out on a weekend, and so the public all had a chance to see all of those amendments 12 hours ahead when they came out.

- Which we think is a good thing, right?

- I'm a believer in transparency, and when we came out of that before going into the third reading, that was one of the decisive floor votes we had, was I asked that we allow at least eight hours.

I wanted to have it in the morning, which also helps our staff, so the public could actually see what these were.

And I was overruled and overturned.

Those series of amendments over the two readings, the Senate cut approximately $600 million out of the budget without the governor having knowledge of it, without the agencies having knowledge of it.

This just came out on the floor with no ability.

And you gotta keep in mind, our interim committees vet all of these ideas.

So generally when something comes up, it's been hotly debated.

People have got the facts, both sides.

This was merely a hot-button item that you come up, and these traditionally have been minor tweaks, maybe a million or $2 million.

We literally gutted the governor's energy funds.

We took all of the energy funds away.

Didn't have the ability to have really a high-end debate on 'em.

So those energy funds, the impacts, I can talk a little bit about them to you right now.

Those involve hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of research.

But even more, up in my district, there was 6 or $7 million of those funds that are to help match, two or three time match, with coal companies, that amount to, from one company, I don't know on all of these, on one company, it's gonna be $80 million of revenue to the state of Wyoming over the next three or four years.

Those monies now, if we go into extended sessions and go on, the state may actually lose multiple millions of dollars of revenue because of our actions.

- So it's not just the budget cuts, it's the effect.

- These are coal miner jobs.

We may have coal miners that get potentially, and everybody says, "You're saying the sky's falling."

And I'm saying, no, these are the results of our actions.

And from my end, I fought vigorously to, "Let's be very measured how we do our cuts and do it."

Not saying that we shouldn't go more conservative, but knee-jerk fashion very often comes up with tough results.

And that's one thing I've always been proud of our processes.

The good thing about government?

Things don't happen very fast.

The bad thing about government?

Things don't happen very fast.

And it leads to not making really rash, bad decisions.

We've done that.

This is a rash decision we made this year, in my opinion.

- So the House passes its version of the budget, the Senate passes its version of the budget.

They're never the same.

And this year, the chasm was very wide.

The two bills that were passed were a billion dollars apart still.

- 1.1.

- Yeah, and so, and then you don't have very much time to try to join the two.

- Yeah, we're 1.1 billion apart.

The Senate, as I said on the floor, had spoken very clearly that they wanted a very conservative budget.

So when I appointed our Budget Committee to negotiate those differences, traditionally it's the Appropriations Committee, but the chairman, Chairman Kinskey, was obviously upset that that committee was represented probably three to two when you count in the Democrat.

So I decided that they ought to have a chance to negotiate a budget that was exactly what we'd done.

So I gave himself and Senator Salazar seats on that body, and then I appointed three of the very, very conservative members.

Caught a lot of grief over it that I'd put inexperienced members on it.

I kicked back on that.

Senator Larson's been in both the House and Senate for more than a decade, or I believe more than a decade.

Senator, trying to think who else I put on.

McKeown is a new one.

He hit the ground running.

And Senator Bouchard's been almost eight years in the Senate.

Actually experienced people that understand what was happening.

We handed him the keys to the car and said, "You know, go to the House.

"Constitutionally, we have to meet in the middle, "and I'll give you your ability to do so."

And the first day or second day, I'm not sure which, the House submitted an offer, and albeit it's the way negotiations often go, it was a pretty offensive offer.

Knowing that budget veto override was gonna be on Monday, that we had to actually pass a budget by Monday in order to be able to reverse something the governor had done, our committee chose not to meet with the House committee again.

And on Monday morning, they met, and we did an offer, or at least part of one.

But as they went into it, it was clear it wasn't gonna happen.

So I didn't cause the impasse.

The House walked out, went to their speaker, and said, "There's no way.

"It's not possible with two days left, three days left "to come up with a deal."

So the speaker got ahold of me and said, "Look, we're at an impasse.

"We're gonna have to go to another committee."

Second committee.

I appointed the committee that was Senator Nethercott, Stacy Jones, who was a new senator but had a big interest in what was going on in the budget, Senator Dockstader, who I sat on Appropriations with in the old days.

He's a solid as a rock, great conservative man.

And myself.

And we went to the House and did what I was hoping Senator Kinskey would do and literally sat down and said, "Let's open up where we're at "and go line by line through it."

And it actually wasn't done by me, it was done by Senator Nethercott primarily.

Kudos to her.

But probably got 80% of the way in less than six hours.

Didn't leave us in a position other than to say, "Look, let's follow our constitutional duties.

"Let's get this put together.

"If we want to really go on down the road, "we can go back next year.

"We come back and you can do further cuts "and do other things."

We have done it in the past, and this is my advice to everybody, is we can go back and actually undo part of this budget next year.

It's a biennial budget, and we've still got time and a whole 'nother session to do it.

But it's really reckless to go into, potentially, a special session.

We've got today and tomorrow.

And if we do not come with a budget, we'll go to a special session.

If we hold our line on the Senate on what we've done or continue that, the end result will be one or two special sessions.

- Possibly two special sessions.

- Could be two.

Don't know the dates.

- But it has to be before July 1, right?

- So when July 1 hits, if we have not reached an agreement, we've all seen what happens with the federal government shut down.

And I'm being told, "You're fearmongering."

I'm not, I'm telling facts.

Should we not be able to reach some type of agreement with our other body, should we not, first week of July, every state retiree, which I believe pushes 40,000 in the state of Wyoming, every school teacher, every snowplow driver, every WYDOT employee, will cease to get their paychecks.

Government will lock up in Wyoming and stop.

I don't believe that's gonna happen.

But if this hard end insists that it goes their way, it's an incredible game of chicken whether the House blinks or doesn't blink.

I, for one, and I'm one of the ones that sit here, and I've said it over and over, I don't want that on my tenure as far as what I've done.

I've fought vigorously to come up with something and say, "If we're gonna do something, "let's further go into it next year."

But let's do what the Constitution told us to do, which is to come up with a budget, find an honest way to compromise, and get on down the road.

I think it's incumbent on us to be statesmen and find a way to reach some type of decision, and then if we don't like that decision to go to work next year when we come back in.

And you're gonna see some new faces, it'll be after an election.

And work to get where we're in the right place for Wyoming.

- In your experience, which now is lengthy, you've never seen anything quite like this year, right?

- I haven't.

You know, we started the session with the President of Senate getting overturned, and that's fair game.

I fully understand it, and I take responsibility.

I'm responsible for the Senate, and I felt like I made a decision that was very necessary.

Body disagreed, they went back.

But what really happened, it started a trend that they realized that they could overturn decisions of the President of the Senate.

And consequently we're into, I can't tell you how many, but basically even to the point of appointing conference committees now, which I've never seen challenged in my life or heard of anyone else.

I feel very comfortable that I've been very fair to the body.

I have not shown any propensity.

When you look at my conference committees, what I've done, there's been no vindictive actions whatsoever.

- Well, there have been some discussion while Senator Driskill deliberately chose a conference committee that he knew couldn't get the job done so that a few days later he could get his own committee, so to speak, in there.

What do you say to that?

- Chairman Kinskey had the ability to craft the budget in any way he saw fit.

It could be done 99% by him sitting with members on the other side.

Then you have to vet it through both sides.

But you clearly had the ability to do it.

I can tell you, for us, I brought Senator Jones on with zero experience.

She was stellar.

Didn't take her a few minutes.

'Cause you're not developing the budget, what you're doing is negotiation.

We're down to just a handful of votes, and the truth is, I hope...

So the bloc that's been tough has voted as a bloc It reminds you very much of Washington, D.C. politics when you watch, and if people do, they'll watch 'em change votes 'cause they tend to align all in one piece.

I actually have really implored, and it's part of what's got me in trouble, is to actually listen to debates.

Not sit there.

'Cause it's almost, at this point, mute to make a debate 'cause you already know what the vote's gonna be.

So debates on the floor are done for a reason so somebody can change somebody's mind on where they're at.

You know, the process will go to a special session is the governor's probably gonna develop another budget.

So staff time on the governor.

Rather than worrying about Wyoming's business, they're gonna divert all their fiscal end to their people and the governor on, how do we come up with a budget?

And by the way, it has to happen just overnight almost.

- Which they thought they had already done over the course of months.

- And then the approps meets again.

So now we've got the expense of the joint approps meeting.

They're gonna bring agencies back in.

'Cause you're gonna have a new governor's budget, they're gonna bring 'em in, so we're gonna go through it.

And then you're gonna come back into a session, and my guess is it's a half million dollars plus.

And if things haven't changed, we're probably still at about a 15/15 regardless.

So it's, at some point, we all need sober up, and say, are we gonna do the right thing for Wyoming or are we gonna play a game of chicken with all the people that depend on us to make hard decisions?

- Let me ask you about a procedural issue that's being talked about a little bit more.

We're here during the budget session, and the only thing the legislature has to do is get the budget passed.

There are these other bills that can come up with a higher threshold to be introduced that you try to get done, and a lot of those are being dealt with now.

Some are saying, "Maybe we should make that even more difficult."

Namely, keep the two thirds vote required for a non-budget bill to be introduced, but don't introduce any of those, don't consider any of those until after the budget is done.

What do you think about that based on what you're seeing this year?

- Fiscally not possible, I don't believe, 'cause really how the process works is we read in those bills.

The budget lays on our desk the first day, and it takes about three days for 'em to read the budget in.

They go section by section, explain what they've done.

In those three days, if all you're doing is the budget, what we would actually be doing is you'd have short days.

So what we do is we have assigned bills to committees, and they're working those other bills.

And then when we get to the budget, we basically really restrict that flow of bills and go right back to the budget.

So they're almost a sideline filler on the thing.

And this year, you know, we came with two big goals in mind, in my opinion.

And that was property tax relief and the budget.

So we almost did have a secondary one going.

And then there's a third one that goes, and that's our capital construction budgets.

And those ended up killed on both sides.

Those ones, again, have grave consequences.

This budget that's coming, part of what's making it tough is, you know, we've put part of the school cap con back in and some of the other.

And the courts have dictated that we're gonna continue to build and maintain our schools.

And, you know, it's really highly irresponsible for us to stop that process dead for a year.

We're in a lawsuit right now with the state and schools.

This type of action is exactly what's got us sued in the past, is inaction is not an action by the legislature.

They positively have to deal with school and school funding.

- Senator Driskill, you've got a lot on your shoulders, a big couple of days ahead of you.

And who knows I mean, the weeks and months ahead might bring?

As always, and I wanna say on camera, how much I've appreciated your willingness, virtually every single time we've asked, to make time to come in and sit and speak with us and help the people of Wyoming understand what's going on, what you're trying to do, what the legislature's trying to do.

You did it again today.

Thank you for that.

Senator Driskill, Senate District 1, appreciate your time with us on "Capitol Outlook."

A long-time senator from western Wyoming has announced his retirement after 10 years in office.

We'll meet Senator Fred Baldwin of Kemmerer on this segment of "Capitol Outlook."

(upbeat dramatic music) We're joined today by state Senator Fred Baldwin, Republican, Senate District 14.

That's in the western part of the state.

Senator, welcome.

Thanks for being with us this morning on "Capitol Outlook."

You were in the state House first, and now you're in your second term as a senator.

Thinking back to those earliest days, what lit the fire in you to decide to seek elected office?

- You know, and I would give you a real silver bullet kind of an answer, but I don't have one.

My mother-in-law actually held my House seat before I ran for it.

- Is that so?

What was her name?

- Kathy Davison.

And she retired.

And she caught me at dinner one day and said, "What do you think about running for this office?"

And we contemplated it.

My wife and I talked it over, and she knew a lot more about it than I did.

But that was my decision basically.

And I was never sorry that I did that.

It was a good decision.

- What's your zip code when you're not spending week upon week in Cheyenne?

Where do you live?

- Which is not very often during the year, but I live in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

- And you have one of these districts that covers a huge swath of territory.

- You know, it's very sparsely populated.

And I go all the way from Cora by Pinedale, and I go clear down to the Utah border, to Washam and McKinnon.

It's good experience.

It's difficult, it's challenging because I have coal miners, I have ranchers, I have college students.

I have a little bit of everything in my district.

And they don't always agree.

Matter of fact, they disagree a lot.

But it makes it a challenge.

And it's a challenge to get to everybody all the time.

That's a number of school districts, a number of city councils.

It's a lot.

- I'd like to bring the human element of being a legislator into some of these interviews.

Kemmerer is at least 300 miles away from Cheyenne, I believe.

- 354, I believe.

- 354.

Do you ever get to go home during the session?

- You know, when I first started this 10 years ago, I went home every weekend.

I'm a physician assistant by trade.

And I would go home every Saturday and hold a clinic for my patients.

I did that up until about two years ago.

And that just got to be overwhelming.

So I don't do that now.

I do get home, I went home last weekend.

But, in general, I don't get home like I used to.

- You mentioned you're a healthcare professional, and that has been reflected in a lot of your legislative work.

I imagine you're a trusted guy when it comes to these healthcare issues.

- Sometimes trusted, sometimes, you know, in modern days they don't trust medicine like we used to.

But as Chairman of Labor and Health, a lot of my focus has been on healthcare things.

And, you know, this year we had several that had to do with mental health as well as physical health.

- Satisfied with the outcomes?

Or, again, still a little uncertain here with 48 hours to go?

- You know, the outcomes of my bills have been very good.

Last year, I had a very unusual circumstance.

I had six personal bills, all six passed.

This year I only sponsored two bills, and they both passed.

- What's been your approach generally to legislative service?

Is there sort of an umbrella philosophy that you have toward this work?

- You know, my philosophy is twofold.

And one is that every bill's important to somebody.

No matter how bad I dislike it or how well I like it, it's important to somebody.

So I try to entertain every comment, every subject.

And I think it's important to hear everything that's been created.

So in my committee, I try very hard to hear all voices, hear all sides, but I also try to maintain demeanor.

We've lost some of that in the legislature, but I try very hard in my committee to maintain that.

And one of the ways of doing that, frankly, is being a little bit lighthearted and keeping things a little bit light.

It becomes very difficult when you're talking about some of the social issues.

It's not so easy to do.

- You have been elected by comfortable margins for the most part, but you've decided you're not gonna run again.

Two terms in the Senate.

And did you have one or two terms in the House?

- Just one.

- Just one.

And you've decided that that's gonna be the end of your legislative career.

For someone with a decade's worth of experience, what enters into making a momentous decision like that?

- Probably the heaviest piece of making that decision was the time I've had away from home.

When I sit down and figure a time I've had away from home, it adds up to well over a year, almost two years in total of time in a hotel away from home.

And that's a lot.

And you don't realize that until you sit down and put it on paper.

That was the heaviest thing.

Certainly, the changes in the legislature, you know, the changes in demeanor, the changes in the way the process has developed.

They influenced my decision because it's a difficult job.

It's not easy.

And I certainly enjoyed it a lot more in former years than I have this year.

So that was a piece of it.

But mostly it was the time away from home.

- Been satisfying work, though, for the most part?

- It is.

And I like to think that, you know, through my years I've accomplished some pretty good things.

- What recommends legislative service?

What would you tell a candidate in the position you were in whose mother-in-law maybe wasn't a legislator at the time?

What would you say to someone who's thinking about it?

- You know, I would encourage them, if they're thinking about it, to come sit in on some interim meetings, see how the system works.

Even go back and listen to some meetings, sessions, interim meetings, committee meetings.

Get a feel for what it really is.

And, secondly, I would tell 'em they need to talk with somebody that's in office now.

Talk with me, talk with whoever, and know what they're getting themselves into.

Understand that it's not, you don't come to work at eight in the morning and go home at five.

- Thanks for being with us on "Capitol Outlook."

- [Fred] Thank you, Steve.