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- Welcome to "Capitol Outlook", I'm Bob Beck.

Today in the program as usual we'll be talking with the Senate President Dan Dockstader, and Speaker of the House, Eric Barlow.

This week, we're gonna be talking on the budget which lawmakers started working on this week.

And we'll also talk about a number of other issues.

A little bit later in the program we're going to discuss juvenile justice issues.

We'll be joined by the Co-chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committee Senator Tara Nethercott, and Jared Olsen.

The State Representative here in Cheyenne.

And then later in the program, a discussion about economic development, we'll be joined by Representative Mike Greear and Representative Shelly Duncan.

Join us for "Capitol Outlook", here on Wyoming PBS.

(fanfare orchestral music) - [Announcer] This program is supported in part by a grant from the BNSF Railway Foundation, dedicated to improving the general real welfare and quality of life in communities throughout the BNSF Railway service area, proud to support Wyoming PBS.

- [Announcer] And by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation, thank you for your support.

- Welcome to "Capitol Outlook", I'm Bob Beck.

As usual, we're gonna start the program off with the Senate President Dan Dockstader and the Speaker of the House, Eric Barlow.

Welcome gentlemen, back to the program.

- Good morning.

- It's budget week, which always, you know, I don't know if I would compare it to Christmas, and in fact I wouldn't, but there is some people that are getting presents with some of the budget amendments.

I wanna start off and maybe go with you, Speaker Barlow, whatever the House of Representatives gets an opportunity to do budget amendments, it takes a while, there's a lot of discussion but how did you think it went last night?

- Well, actually we had 54 proposals, some of them substantive with money involved and some of them were philosophical with policy type discussions.

I thought it actually went well, we started at 1:30 and and got done at 10:30 in the evening.

So it was a full day, lots of discussion, robust debate on numerous issues, whether it's more money for our providers in the community, whether it's adult services for the disabled or juvenile services, actually added money into those things, added money for employees, state employees, so there was a lot of good discussions.

And I think, you know, I think that's what the body does.

Our appropriations committee gets four or five, six weeks to chew on these things and go and then the body gets to come together and say, "Hey, what are our priorities as a body?"

And then of course, we work with our Senate colleagues to come to that final budget bill.

But I thought, I mean, I thought the discussions were robust and cordial, which is always good.

And a lot of meaningful policy options were thrown out.

- Senator, what about your side?

- They went well, what we do with the budget when we come back in with amendments, we find places not just to, it's not just a gift situation.

We run into situations where over on the west side I have two schools that'll come in over budget, with COVID times everything costs more money.

So we had to go in and make some tweaks to say, "Let's proceed with our construction plans but we have to do it through amendment and do an adjustment to the new normal of everything costs more money."

- Can I ask you about something that happened in the Senate?

It was an amendment to stick Medicaid expansion into the budget bill.

- Certainly we had to decide does that fit?

And so we had a Rules Committee, we went in and discussed it under the scenario of that proposal last night, it probably was still questionable.

So we came out, said what our vote was, three to two but last night it was withdrawn perhaps for further consideration.

Do we put a full bill like that inside the budget?

And that's what the body was questioning.

- I've seen that done before.

And so I guess I was surprised by that ruling - And thus, they are very concerned that we're getting too accustomed to running legislation in a budget bill and members of the body are starting to call others out on that and say, "Is this truly a budget measure or is it a full standalone bill?"

- I want to ask both of you while I brought up Medicaid expansion, what is it?

Do you ever see a scenario where that type of legislation would ever pass?

I'll start with you because I think it's a tougher- - It's a tough- - Task in the Senate.

- Yeah, it's a tough run in the Senate.

I don't know that we have the it's for it, there.

I'll let the Speaker address the House, but at this point there's, it's probably close but I don't see that we have the votes for it.

- What seems to be the problem, why?

- Concern about the long term spending.

We start something that will eventually come back to us with expenses that will take us into years with multi-million dollar costs.

- Well, couldn't you just get out of it if the federal government?

- I would hope it'd be that easy.

- Speaker.

- So, Bob, I think the House on just a majority vote it would pass whether it was a budget amendment or a standalone bill, it did last year, as you know.

The budget amendment issue that the president speaks about, about substantive law being placed in the budget beyond just spending authority, that's been a challenge.

And, and actually in my 10-year tenure in the legislature, there was a lot of that at one point and we've tried to pare it back.

So I understand, and the reservations that my Senate colleagues might have had and we had those discussions on the floor yesterday and had several amendments that looked far more substantive than just budget issues.

And so one was withdrawn, one was taken, was voted down, et cetera, and so I think we'll continue to have that.

As far as the path forward for Medicaid expansion, I mean, I guess, like I said, I voted against it numerous times.

I don't see any other options right now that folks are bringing forth, that Wyoming option, and I still think we have folks that are very challenged with access to healthcare, affordable healthcare.

So, I look forward to that day when a future legislature, maybe this one, but a future legislature says, "Hey here is, here is a path forward."

- I have often joked with people that, well, if you want to do a topic of the week kind of thing which passes first, Medicaid expanded, or legalization of marijuana in the state, your vote?

- My personal vote?

- Yes, which happens first?

- Mine will be no to both because I don't want to get into the expenses of Medicaid until we figure out a substantive way to fund it all the way.

And I just don't want to bring the social ills to the state with marijuana.

- Speaker?

- Well, so there's an initiative process that's already underway on the cannabis issue.

And if you buy into the medical part of the cannabis then maybe actually they're part of the same effort where you expand healthcare and you expand options within healthcare where they probably maybe actually go together.

- I've been paying attention to social media and there seems to be a little concern about in the budget a lot of savings and in some people's view, more savings than is necessary.

And I'm curious if you would both comment on that, on your respective sides, and maybe Senator, I know you were on Appropriations Committee and were very concerned about long term spending.

- Let's take us back two years, we were in trouble.

What were we going to do?

And then right behind that COVID, and now we have extra money.

And I just say to folks, look back just two years and look at the challenge we were having.

It's okay to have some savings.

- And I think the House position, as you may have watched the discussion yesterday is it's not that you, I want or don't want savings, it's is how you save it - Right.

- So do you put it in permanent funds or do you put it in reserve accounts or do you leave it in the LSRA, a legislative reserve account so that you have that liquidity so when you do have challenges as the good president spoke about from two years ago, you have options, you have options?

I understand and I think there's a balance.

I don't think it's has, it's not all one or the other, it's permanent, intermediate and then current needs.

And I think we can find that balance.

Part of the discussion I'll have with a bill up this morning in front of the Revenue Committee is how do we actually transition to a cash-based budget?

And part of that means in my view, you have to not put as much into permanent savings for a period of time until you can transition to a cash on hand basis instead of a hope to collect it basis.

So there is more than one thing moving here.

And, actually I'm at a significant disadvantage.

I've never served on Appropriations in my tenure and many of my senior colleagues, including the good Vice Chairman President who was also the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I mean, they have, so they understand those intricacies at a level that I just don't.

So I'm looking at more a philosophical perspective of, hey, let's let's make a change here.

And they're looking at some of the more practical because they've lived it.

- I may need you to explain that.

So we have viewers that have no idea sometimes what we're talking about, how would that be different than how you currently do the budget?

- Well, currently, what the State of Wyoming does is we budget based on forecasted revenues.

So we say we're gonna spend this money and we hope to actually collect it so we can spend it.

We're at a unique place right now where our general fund obligations are as low as they've been in 10-plus years.

Our overall general fund obligation is smaller than it's been in 10 years.

And we have an influx of revenue.

Our commodity prices are better and we have federal dollars that have flowed in.

So we're at a unique place where we could at least on a one year basis, go money in the bank pays the bills for the next year.

And as you go forward you're accumulating money, cash on hand to pay the bills, instead of, here's what we wanna spend, let's hope the cash rolls in so we can spend it.

And that's how you end up in the cyclic pattern.

The cyclic pattern is what we, I believe we want to avoid.

I think we wanna avoid it from a perception perspective.

I also think we want to avoid it from a practical 'cause what happens when our forecasts go down, when we start cutting programs, we start cutting programs, and where does the majority of the money go?

It goes to our communities through health programs.

It goes to the prisons for substance abuse and mental health, et cetera, we cut those, we lose.

I mean, there's truly loss in the communities, truly challenges that are created by that.

So if we can smooth out that revenue flow by using actual cash, to me it's not only practically meaningful, but it's meaningful for our communities and we don't chase, we don't chase ourselves up and down this this ebb and flow of revenue.

- What he just described, Bob, makes for a more secure Wyoming in the future.

And it doesn't, we don't necessarily have to hope that it'll come in, this evens it out.

There's wisdom in his approach.

- And you know how much money you have and you know early on if you need to dip into reserves or something along those lines.

- Right, it's not unlike just having a checking account and a savings account, simple as that and make this a secure state.

- How about redistricting just sailing out of the House of Representatives with one of the smoothest bills?

It was like people didn't even, ah, yeah, well, okay.

We'll make that tweak this tweak, it's all over with.

How surprised were you that that went so well?

- Well, I think that certainly there was consternation through the interim, there was delay in getting the information from the census, and a lot of work and people know, people that actually did the maps, did the work, know it's a complex, I mean, you push and pull all over the state.

When it came down to it, we were presented, the House was presented with a map.

And if they couldn't come up with meaningful suggestions that didn't gore someone else, they didn't bring it because everything you do impact someone else.

So, aside from a modification on the eastern side of the state with some counties sharing or not sharing in the same manner and some minor adjustments, there wasn't that much.

We were out a deviation in the legal sense, potentially, with the 10% spread because of an amendment that came on the floor.

But, our body felt like it was justifiable for a community of interest to keep a county as whole as possible.

So, I mean, I'm quite pleased.

I look forward to what our Senate colleagues do and to address their interests and concerns.

And certainly, the nesting issue, i.e., two House seats for one Senate seat is something that they'll be paying close attention to and how the additional seats, additional two House seats, how that impacts the nesting.

So I look forward to how they address the overall plan, but that issue.

- We read it in this week, we're ready to go.

- They did take that amendment that you were referencing, Arvada, Clearmont, it's fun to go back in my past, I actually covered the school board on occasion in Arvada, Clearmont all those years ago, but they put that back with you good folks in Campbell County, so I'm certain that will be a little bit of a discussion in the Senate, as well as Cheyenne.

And one of the problems, I guess, that's in there, if I understand this correctly, is you have two sitting representative that might have to run against each other.

- Actually.

I mean, I understand there's a lot of discussion about how Cheyenne is when you have a populous, I mean not in a metropolitan-like view, but other places in this country, but a area where 10 Representatives and five Senators all live within 20 miles of each other, the majority, almost all of them, it does become challenging when you're trying to divide the pie, if you will, multiple ways.

So I actually don't know if our plan left the House with incumbents within the same district.

I can't speak to that, but it's certainly a consideration.

While not a principal within our redistricting principles, it's certainly consideration.

- Are you hearing any trouble?

- We'll have to sort out more of that on the east side of the state.

The west side of the state seems somewhat settled in the approach that we have now.

- Let me ask you, Senator, about critical race theory.

That is a topic that's come up in the Senate and certainly has generated some discussion across the state.

Why is it important to you to address this issue?

- It's more the transparency side.

That's where I lean into it.

I'd like to see that we make sure that parents have access to what's happening in their schools.

I think we do with this, our hope is that we don't create unnecessary burdens on our teachers, but at the same time, allow parents to just simply know what's going on in their schools.

Now people can say, well, they can show up at the school board meetings and some do.

But I think this is an easier approach where they just simply go to their computer, click, that's what my student is studying, that's what my son or daughter is working on.

- It's interesting, you have on one hand, some people very concerned that certain things might be taught a certain way in schools.

And then you got the other hand, you've got a lot of people that think there's some censorship of history teachers, social study teachers going on here.

How do- - I hope they find the balance and if they have concerns they show up at the school board meeting.

I've seen school board meetings where occasionally they show up where I've been in them, covering them from the media standpoint.

And it seems to be resolved without a lot of conflict.

There are those who would like to make it a conflict issue, now, it doesn't have to be.

- So why do we need to put this in legislation?

- You don't have a way to go click now and see what's happening in your classroom.

That's the transparency part I'm speaking of.

- Thoughts on it on your side?

- Bob, we had a bill, I think it was far more prescriptive than with the president is speaking of.

And we did not make introduction.

I'm expecting bills from the Senate side, as they come our way, we we'll sort through them.

I think the president brings up a good point.

I think people wanna understand how government is working.

Well, school board happen to be, and schools, public schools happen to be one of the largest governmental entities in the state and combined equal to the state of Wyoming when you come to dollar amounts.

So, and more employees in the State of Wyoming in our school districts, public schools.

So I think, I don't have any difficulty with transparency.

Don't want to burden the local districts, but I have a lot of faith in our local districts.

In fact, when I meet with some of the smaller school districts in one of the communities that I represent and there's a group of them that come together and try to give us guidance as we prepare for legislative sessions and say, "Hey, hey, let us know what you think we need to be doing.

Parents are doing it every day our community does it every day.

We don't need everything coming top down.

We'll respond to some of these things."

So I think some school districts are probably gonna take this up on their own without the intervention of the legislature saying "Hey, we believe that every should know."

- Some school district already are out there working it and I commend for it.

- I have one last question for you.

And it's about tax breaks for energy.

There's a couple bills out there that, one would, if some of the severance taxes were raised by the federal government we might kick some of that back to industry, and there's another one, I think, dealing with coal reductions.

I'm just curious what you two think about those kinds of things, talking about what we've talked about before, that you never know how our finances are gonna be into the future.

- Right, I'm not opposed to a tax break for the energy industry who's essentially packed our water for years, done everything for our schools, done everything for our local governments, done so much for us, if we can find a break in there for them, that's fine.

- I'll speak to the cutting coal severance.

When I approach, let's just say hydrocarbons, I would like this to have an equitable tax place.

And right now coal is at a different rate than oil and gas.

So you get two choices, you raise oil and gas or you lower coal.

The proposal that is before us is to lower, you get half of that discrepancy out there.

As far as the response to maybe federal mineral royalty rate changes and whether the state reduces our severance tax or something in response to that, it would be a wash, ladies and gentlemen, because if the royalty goes up based on our current distribution from the federal government, our revenues are gonna go up.

So we don't have to have as much come back on the state ledger.

So it would be, in my view, if it's a wash on that, so it's equitable taxation rates on one side, and then basically holding the water still on the other.

- Much deeper than all that, Bob, is we continually be shut down on our leases and that's going to affect us financially.

That's a deeper issue than what we're talking about here, but go ahead, sorry.

- We'll solve that next week, how about that?

- Okay.

- Speaker of the House, Eric Barlow, Senator Dan Dockstader, thank you so much for joining us once again.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Have a great day.

- When we come back, we're gonna talk about juvenile justice and a couple of other issues with the chairs of the committee that deals with judiciary issues.

Stay with us on "Capital Outlook".

- Welcome back to "Capitol Outlook."

And as I said, we're going to have the chairs of the judiciary committee join us, Senator Tara Nethercott and Representative Jared Olsen, both from here in Cheyenne, which makes it convenient.

Thanks for joining us.

- It's good to be here.

- Let's start off and talk about juvenile justice.

This is an issue that has been out there for a number of years.

Senator, maybe you could kick things off and just talk a little bit about what the committee is trying to do this session and how this might help in the future.

- Well, I think during the interim, when we reviewed juvenile justice for the state of Wyoming in response to many allegations that Wyoming has a high juvenile incarceration rate, we really wanted to dig down and understand the source of that allegation and evaluate the numbers.

And what we learned is that there's not a lot of good data out there for juvenile justice.

There's a lot of passionate stakeholders who care about juveniles in our state, and certainly there is a system in place that we believe is working, but that measurable data really isn't available to the legislature in a way that allows for us to make meaningful decisions for resource allocation.

And so there's a bill currently in the legislature to help us capture some of that data.

And so I'm hopeful in the future we will be able to make more deliberate decisions when it comes to how to allocate those resource for the juveniles in the state.

- Representative, so what data is missing, and what are you specifically looking for?

- Sure, and I think we all share a common goal, which is to divert juveniles whenever we possibly can and to get them any type of treatment that they may need in order that they don't, it's more of a concern of a repeat when they become an adult.

And that's really the data we're looking at.

When we say we have an incarceration rate of juveniles, what does that really look like?

What does that really mean?

How are diversion programs being applied county by county?

What type of treatment is being provided?

And that's really diving down into figuring out what we, we finally figured out that we know what we don't know, which is a lot, actually, with juveniles.

- It sounds like in some respects this, and maybe you'll disagree with this, but it's similar to Title 25 where we don't have a lot of, well, and I guess that's what you're trying to find out, but we may not have the local resources available equally across the state.

- I think that's a fair assessment.

Not surprising for Wyoming, and certainly not a unique challenge for our state, either.

I think all 50 states across the country struggle with providing resources close to juveniles' families and close into their communities.

And so not unique to Wyoming again, but how can we maybe deliver those services more effectively with local nonprofits and local community agencies before we go to the level of incarceration?

I think what we did learn and what we know is that some of the juveniles who find themselves in the system have significant needs and need inpatient therapeutic services.

There's a limited amount of those locations in the state, and so that requires many of those juveniles to leave their homes and communities in order to get that level of care.

- Curious, I have had probably three generations of reporters who have done stories on kids who have fallen through the system or have gotten tagged as a troublemaker for some particular reason, in your research and your studying, what have you learned about that, and is this something that you're gonna have to deal with down the road?

Or is this something that can be part of this as well?

- Sure, well, I think that's exactly what sparks the conversation.

We have a lot of anecdotal examples that come to us from different stakeholders involved, whether that be lawyers or social workers that can all point to different examples.

And our question that we're really trying to understand better is, are those exceptions or are they broader examples of areas that we certainly can address?

And the resource allocation issue is obvious to us.

I don't think there's any question about that.

And I think there is still a little question of application as well, county by county, not just which tools exist in the tool belt of locals but we'll call 'em the gatekeepers or the prosecutors and the social workers that are on the ground there, but how they choose to use those tools that they do have, I think, is also still something that we're looking at.

- Your thoughts as well?

- I think that's a fair assessment.

Some of the data we did have and that is available indicates that certain communities certainly incarcerate or place into treatment facilities at a greater rate than others.

And so breaking down why that's happening and also sharing that data across the state to say is there a reason for this disparity, is it rational, does it make sense?

And is the policy of the state to have equal application of these tools to juveniles across our state or does it make more sense to have it be more localized?

We don't really know the answer to that right now, but certainly something that warrants, I think, continued conversation for decades to come.

- Do you anticipate down the road that you would have, and I'll use county attorneys, 'cause they're the ones that seem to be prominent in this discussion, where you could have a uniform policy and this is how you handle juveniles, or do you think that that wouldn't fly?

- I think generally it flies, but the nuances certainly are significant, and that prosecutorial discretion is important to the state of Wyoming and to who those locals choose to elect to prosecute crimes and handle juvenile cases in their communities.

Prosecutorial discretion is fundamental to our system of laws in the United States, so striking that balance between uniform application and discretion is always the challenge.

- I think that's an important part of the conversation that we have to definitely move further.

Definitely agree.

I think Chairman Nethercott's spot on with local control and we really didn't get the opportunity to fully engage our county prosecutors because we didn't have the data to discuss it.

But I did get the feeling over the interim in the instances where we did have our county prosecutors testifying that they very much valued what they've been doing.

They had many instances, "This is what we do in my county and it works really well.

and it has worked really well for the last decade."

And I don't doubt some of that is true in certain counties.

So I do think that maintaining that local control, I don't know that it could result in a universal policy, but another piece may actually just be education and training, honestly.

It may be understanding what the tools are and how using some of the tools that maybe you haven't tried to use or even thought about really using more than 25% of the time can have a greater impact.

- You had a budget amendment that I think the House and the Senate both adopted.

And I was wondering if you wouldn't mind explaining what you're trying to do, starting with the House.

- Sure, that's the resource allocation issue.

We did pass an amendment in both chambers, different dollar amounts.

So we'll figure out, I suppose, what dollar amount is really necessary.

But that's block grounding money down to the communities in order to provide those services that we're talking about.

I don't think juveniles are any different than our adults when we look at incarceration and we look at the why someone's incarcerated.

It always points to a mental health issue 80% of the time or a substance issue.

And so having resources on the ground that can address those underlying issues in juveniles no different than adults is the goal to curb recidivism.

- Any thoughts on that?

- Yeah, I share the concern.

And as a sponsor of the Senate amendment to provide additional resources, 1.2 million on the Senate side for our community juvenile service boards I think, is important.

We know that those boards are made up of a variety of stakeholders, from social workers, law enforcement, attorneys, parents that help provide, I think, diversions for juveniles who are at risk and ensure that they don't end up incarcerated and are able to get the resources that they need so that they can be successful long term.

- While I have you both here, I want to ask you about Title 25 just real quickly, 'cause that blew up again this year, as it tends to do from time to time.

What do you figure is probably going to be the solution here?

I had a chance to talk with some folks that were working with you across the state on this issue about a month ago.

And it's more conversation, but money seems to keep coming up as well.

- Yeah, two fundamental pieces associated with Title 25 that I think are stopping the conversation.

One is the cost associated with an emergency detention process and the hospitalization of somebody who's a danger to themselves or others is significant.

And that cost is generally born by the counties in which that person is taken into custody.

And our counties are struggling with funding their just normal operations as opposed to kind of the unexpected cost of an emergency detention.

And so we hear them just really struggling with the costs of emergency detentions and then the availability of resources within those communities, because then the cost of transportation of those patients becomes significant if they need to go to the state hospital, if they need to go to behavioral health in Casper or any other hospital that can provide the level of service needed.

So transportation, the cost of care is really a significant piece.

And so there has been some suggestions or conversations for solutions that the state take that up as a whole as opposed to the counties.

I think that's interesting to explore.

I think it's worthy of exploration.

I do think the counties need some relief from those unexpected and sometimes significant costs, and maybe we'd be able to provide better and consistent patient outcomes as well which is certainly the focus and intention of this work.

- Really following Chairman Nethercott's lead, she's been working on it for a couple of years, and in the committee we really tried to isolate procedure from this cost question, and it really, honestly, at the end of the day, it really couldn't be isolated.

There was an extreme appetite from the communities of interest, but also just from the committee members in general that this really is to the heart of the issue, county versus state payment.

And I just don't think they can, procedure can be addressed separate and apart from it.

So it's definitely an issue that will continue to go forward trying to find solutions, probably involving all levels of, or different levels beyond judiciary.

Labor and health has gotta play a major role in that.

And then probably even appropriations in trying to figure that out.

- All right, let's change hats completely and we're gonna go to a completely different topic.

We have folks, and I can tell from social media and emails again on stories we sometimes do, they have no idea what you're doing with blockchain, why you're doing it, are we gonna make any money off of that?

All kinds of great questions.

And so you two are on a committee that is looking into all of this.

You've sponsored some legislation this session that might do a number of things.

Senator Nethercott, I think maybe just to start with you, we could talk about where we've come and where we're trying to head this session.

- Well, where we have come is profound, right?

Wyoming pioneered the legislation when it comes to blockchain technology and the financial technology space really in the global sphere.

Wyoming has received global attention regarding its innovative legislation.

And there's been a lot of important people who've helped shepherd that through.

Kind of fundamentally where it started was even providing definitions within our law associated with what virtual currency is or cryptocurrency, which is more commonly known as like Bitcoin or those types of forms of currency.

We initially provided those definitions within our law, which was a pretty significant thing to do.

Because with those definitions then we could understand how they applied within our greater statutory structure and how they apply to the form of commerce.

And so building off of those definitions, we then weaved those definitions through our Commercial Code.

And so understanding how cryptocurrency or virtual currency can be utilized as collateral, be utilized as an asset, be utilized as a resource to allow it to function in business.

So really fundamental pieces.

I think we have about 15 states across the country who are in the process of adopting our laws because we've done such a great job.

We continue to focus on those and ensure any changes that need to be made are made, that we're paying close attention to what the feds are doing, the Securities Exchange Commission, making sure we don't run afoul of those concerns, so that Wyoming remains a lawful place to do business that's innovative but safe.

- The blockchain committee as it's morphed over the years has always, I think, shared a common focus.

It's been built with Wyoming senators and reps and governor appointees who want good things for Wyoming, who want diversification in our economy.

And it's always been the goal not to just provide laws that outsiders can avail themselves of, but that they will actually come here, be a part of the Wyoming economy.

And that's the long-term goal and dream.

Whether things are happening, absolutely.

We have companies that have relocated and have sprung up in Wyoming, and it's certainly not replacing coal tomorrow or yesterday, but is certainly becoming a major piece of the pie, and we'll continue to work at that.

Senator Nethercott is spot on.

States right and left have copied a lot of the legislation that we've done.

Actually, it's put us in a very interesting place.

Because of that, a lot of the nation has caught up to Wyoming, and there are very friendly states to blockchain and to cryptocurrency entrepreneurs.

And so the main focus of the committee this interim was to maintain our competitive edge.

One of the ways in which we're trying to maintain that competitive edge is to try and harness some of the exodus from China with the crypto miners.

China banned mining, which is where the bulk of mining was taking place.

As they exited, they're still trying to find a home.

Many have found their home in Texas, which is a unregulated utility state.

We are a regulated utility state, and we have a very interesting piece of legislation in this session to create deregulated industrial power zones in an effort to try and incentivize some of those companies to relocate to Wyoming.

- You used a couple of terms there, but I think one that we hear a lot that people don't know what the heck you're talking about, mining.

So what are you talking about?

- Yeah, a little different than the traditional form of mining.

The miner in this world is a computer.

It is a device that goes out and finds coins, tokens, currency in the digital world by performing an algorithm and solving basically a math equation.

When it solves the equation and it wins, a coin is produced.

So that is a miner, and what it looks like from the, I guess the economic standpoint, it's built in all kinds of different ways, but it's usually a large acreage with many, many of these little mining computers all laid out mining 24/7.

- When I see comments on anything I'll do on the, I'll use the term money, if you don't mind, but just I think people understand that, but they focus on Bitcoin, and the comments I'll see on social media or on our stories is oh, and they get on that without maybe understanding there's a number of currencies out there.

- Right, there's an unlimited number of currencies right now.

And so when I refer to virtual currency or cryptocurrency, I'm referring to all of those.

And so, like I said, there's an unlimited amount.

Some countries across the world, as Co-Chairman Olsen indicated, have banned the production and use of different forms of currency.

So that would be China.

I think India took a similar move.

And South Korea I think is considering it as well.

But the United States has not taken that posture and neither has any other country that we frequently do business with.

So we'll see where this pioneering space goes.

I would just urge kind of a sense of calm about it because it's new and it's innovative so we don't have all of the details worked out and we don't know where this is gonna go.

But Wyoming can be proud, I believe, that provided and welcomed the space for financial technology, or FinTech, to use this new form of currency but with safe parameters for the consumer and for businesses that may interact with them.

So very important for Wyoming.

- How is Wyoming gonna make money off of these businesses?

- Sure, actually, there's definitely opportunity in different ways.

I think where the conversation is moving in a lot of states actually deals with the processing of revenue.

So the ability to process your revenue quicker to the state of Wyoming.

The example is sales tax.

If you're a local merchant and you deal, say you're a food truck, for example, and you have food trucks in all different communities, you're filling out forms and paying your sales tax in many, many different ways.

I think there's a more of a futuristic goal that if those transactions were to take place in a currency, in a cryptocurrency, excuse me, that through the point of sale device, the point of sale device could speak directly to, say for example, the state of Wyoming, whether that be through an API, or even better, a smart contract, then it could instantaneously deposit the money that is owed to the food truck and instantaneously deposit the money that is owed to the state of Wyoming.

So I think there's probably lost revenue, as we could all agree, and I'm not an expert on the revenue committee, but I think we could all agree that there's lost revenue that's not always collected, whether that's an internet sales tax or a local sales tax.

So I think there's opportunity there.

And then of course, there's the obvious, as we attract the companies and they invest and they buy property and they build brick and mortar, they pay property taxes.

Unlike manufacturing, for example, that gets an exemption, or whatever else we've exempted out.

Currently, there are no exemptions for these companies, so they would be paying regular sales and property taxes.

- Technology really is amazing, because there's so many different things that I was thinking about as we were all enjoying the debate on elections.

Boy, blockchain technology, it strikes me, could solve that problem.

- It certainly could.

It'll be exciting to see how business and entrepreneurs choose to come help us rise to the occasion and ensure safe and sure elections that I think blockchain could certainly facilitate.

Wyoming, I don't think, is exploring that particularly right now.

We'll leave that to those entrepreneurs to evaluate how that could work, but certainly an interesting thing to pivot to and maybe a topic for the interim of the blockchain committee.

I think when we look at what we've done on the blockchain piece for Wyoming is to know, politicians frequently say and our state leaders frequently say we need to diversify the economy.

This is an example, a measurable outcome example of how we're trying to do that.

How quickly we see we see the returns and how and when we'll see it on the ground, certainly we don't know, but we've made those efforts and we've done it in a pretty profound way.

- Senator Tara Nethercott and Representative Jared Olsen, a pleasure.

Very interesting discussion.

And thank you for joining us on "Capitol Outlook."

- Thank you.

- Stay with us, when we come back we're gonna talk about economic development, following up on this conversation, and about some minerals issues, stay with us.

- Welcome back to "Capitol Outlook".

And we have representative Mike Greear and Shelly Duncan with us.

They're on the Minerals And Economic Development Committee, and we want to talk about both of those topics and as well as economic development.

Chairman Greear, nice to have you on the program.

Let's start off and just talk a little bit about a couple of bills that are floating around out there that are giving potentially tax breaks to coal and maybe returning some money to or taking some of our money we could get from a severance tax measure and giving it to industry.

What are your thoughts on that and why are those bills important?

- Well, you know, everybody likes the minerals industry in Wyoming because it pays for all our services and our education.

You know, with respect to the severance tax on coal, that bill didn't make it out of committee, it didn't come through our committee, by the way.

You know, I've had discussions with industry and I'll just tell you, you know, I'm always kind of thinking behind the scenes and the next step, but if you've been watching, we have a very important bill out on minerals which revolves around bonding with directed trust, great bill.

It is one that's welcomed by industry, it's welcomed by the regulators, and then the environmental groups really like it.

And one of the things I was thinking is if that tax bill had passed or come along a little bit further, was give that tax credit, not just reduce the severance tax, but give a tax credit, probably one for one, monies that went into that directed trust.

Because all that directed trust protects those funds to make sure the reclamation gets done.

It takes away a risk that could happen in the insurance market, and really it's just better for the future of Wyoming, so, yeah, I mean, I can talk forever.

I got mixed feelings about the tax credit for, you know, the federal mineral royalties go up.

You know, you got private mineral owners that are out there that receive, you know, 20, 22, 18, whatever those rates are.

And, you know, the federal rates have been very attractive for people to deploy capital into Wyoming, but I still think the overall regulation is a bigger issue than really the royalty right?

- Any thoughts from you?

- He's the expert.

(laughing) - I also want to talk just a little bit about economic development today, and that's one of the reasons I really brought the two of you on and Representative Duncan, starting with you, how are we doing do you think in efforts to diversify our economy and where are we headed, what's the committee looking at, where do we need to be in order to kind of even out this tax base?

- Economic development, we have a struggle between the boots on the ground, the locals, a lot of our locals seem to be doing it right.

They seem to be understanding the needs, bringing people in, creating some jobs and going after things.

And then we tend to have some disconnect at the legislative level, where some don't buy into it, they think it's government bureaucracy or government paying private into industry.

And so we need to help that public private partnership more in order to have a little more diversification than we have.

I don't think we have enough yet.

We keep talking about it, but we're not really seeing, we see some trying to work in the minerals industry, but in some of our other areas, I think we're still kind of slow to the table.

Our Wyoming business council, they're getting better, but they're going through some growing pains.

When the director first came in, it was right smack in the middle of COVID.

So there's a little bit of growing pains that, you know, need to be worked out but I think we can get there.

- What do you think about that?

- One, I agree with Representative Duncan that we've got some really good local community development organizations, first rate people.

I think our state's failing miserably with economic development, if you wanna know the truth.

I've been Chair of Minerals for six years- - I was trying to be nicer.

(laughing) - You know, you look, you go back eight years and look at the revenue from coal and where we're probably going to be with revenue and coal in another 20 years, easily say it's 5 billion dollars a year of our gross domestic product's gonna be gone.

One of the few sectors we actually do tax, and what are we gonna do?

How are we gonna fill that void?

You know.

Tourism helps, tourism isn't gonna fill that void.

Attracting retirees to Wyoming to come enjoy our low tax structure, isn't gonna work.

And I'm quite frankly very disappointed where we are.

We've got some real opportunities, especially when we start to look in the energy sector.

You know, we've got nuclear energy, 35 years, no activity in nuclear power generation field and Wyoming could be the epicenter of that.

Not just for the generation, but for the manufacturing, for all of the other jobs that come along with that.

Get us away from being a colony.

Hydrogen you know.

We've got, you know, I'd hate to see water used to produce hydrogen, but you still you got green, blue and pink hydrogen are all options here in the state of Wyoming.

We have rare earth mineral deposits which are critical to national security here in Wyoming.

And then one of my favorites, of course, is carbon captured sequestration.

We sit on a cusp of some great things.

Now with these ARPA funds, we've got a hundred million dollars, you know, in the energy footnote or section 300 for the governor.

I hope and I pray that we're able to use that to leverage a move forward with some big ideas.

But if we don't get some real thought behind this, we don't get some real horses pushing and driving and people that know how to drive this forward as a state, it'll be another wasted opportunity.

- Is the thought there, and I'll have you respond too, but is the thought there that we need to be spinning off of some of the businesses that we currently have or- - Oh absolutely, absolutely.

We have a lot of really creative, inspiring people and just listen to 'em, give them the opportunity.

If you talk to any of my community as one of the first ones that had an economic development quarter cent sales tax.

That quarter cent goes back into the community immediately through progress funds and such.

And so any business that wants to improve or any business that's coming into the town, I was just working with a client recently who's wanting to come in and create a recreation center.

We've tried for years to pass a recreation center and failed miserably, and these people are coming in.

And so that quarter penny is helping these people develop this.

So it's a total private, you know, funded thing that has a little bit of help of a boost.

Why aren't we doing more of this?

You know, all these other communities that are doing this as well.

Why aren't we doing this successfully at the state level?

That's my frustration.

We have it at the local levels, we should be more robust at the state level.

- Any comment?

- Oh yeah, no, I mean, that's my concern, again, I think local levels, they do well they understand the need of their communities, workforce huge issue for everywhere in the state.

You know, this comes to one of the issues that we just don't talk about.

We all well know that's the biggest issue, but our tax structure sucks.

It's not attractive for business.

It doesn't work for business.

So until we tackle those big issues we'll do the same thing.

- And so what would you do with the tax base?

How would you change it?

- You know, and I'm not afraid to say this, but you look at other states, Utah is a great example to look at.

They have a very successful department of energy.

So we talk about energy, right?

And I'm a big fan of energy, but it's the manufacturing jobs that come with that, the spinoff jobs that come with that that are important, they have a corporate income tax.

So I run a, let's say a medium size manufacturing firm and I pay corporate income taxes in eight other states where we deliver our products.

Doesn't bother me one bit.

But yet what we want to do in Wyoming is continue to tax right at the site, right at the factory, that's where we want to go ahead and put the tax.

It's gotta get spread out, broadened out with some opportunities, because this is the world we live in.

With some opportunities to be able to provide those incentives.

And incentives can't be, "here's a check."

The incentives have to be, "We're gonna give you a tax break during this period of time "so that your rate or return, "when you analyze a project, makes sense."

- What are your thoughts on that?

- I struggle with corporate income tax, but the other part of it is the fact that, you know, the no tax idea drives me crazy because the thing is we literally get filet mignon services and we paid for chipped beef.

And when people say, well, don't raise my taxes, and I sit there and I look and I go, okay who's going to plow your street?

You know, at some point, when you go to turn, you know your power on in the winter, shut it down, you can't pay overtime because, you know, we can't pay for those services anymore.

And so it's a real discount on the taxes here in our state.

And what we're attracting are retirees who aren't going to create anything and pay into anything.

And so, you know, it just doesn't make sense.

We have to reconnect and change this dialogue.

- One of the things I also want to ask you about is entrepreneurism.

And during the Governor's Business Alliance had an opportunity to meet with some up and coming people who aren't having trouble hiring young people, because they're putting together jobs that are cool, dealing with climate change, dealing with a whole wide range of issues, and, you know, water issues, whatever it is, using cool technology.

How could we grow more of those, or do you think we are heading in the right direction there?

- Yeah, no, there should be more growth in that with the innovation and the entrepreneurs, there's no doubt about it.

I guess I'm still a little more old school because I wanna look at how do we get back to having a strong manufacturing sector, that solid base?

You know, how do we make sure we've got people for healthcare?

I mean, I'm kinda looking at our immediate and intermediate needs here within the state.

But innovation's always welcome and I think we should encourage it, that's what the universities are for.

- I have a different direction.

I'm frustrated as a realtor by trade.

I can't tell you how many weeks months I've been trying to renovate a space and I cannot get an electrician, I can't get a plumber.

We have got to go back and really, you know, beef up our trades industry.

And I think for the longest time we've shamed kids into not going into the trades.

You have to get a degree, you have to go the university track.

We've taken vocational ed out of school, we've taken home economics out of school, and then, you know, throw 'em out into the world and expect them to have a great paycheck, and they can't.

And look at where we're at.

I mean, so many people are retiring and not replacing you know, younger generations into those trades.

And so we've got to go back because anyone that wants to go into any of those trades, traditional trades, they could be making as much money as they want, be as busy as they want, we just don't have it, and it's a trend across the nation.

It's not just Wyoming, but it's really frustrating that we've got to change that mindset and that dialogue that it's not you know, a shame to go and work with your hands you know, and have a great job.

- But I just, you know, we were talking about the tax and I wanna make a point, and I've done this in front of bigger groups.

So I'm not gonna vote for a tax.

And, you know, the reason I'm not gonna vote even for corporate income tax is because my constituents don't want it, but we've gotta have the conversation.

And until that point in time that the citizens, our constituents want that, it's pretty hard to expect, you know two or three legislators to come down here and, you know sacrifice themselves for that vision.

- Well, but don't, they understand that there's services that are coming with this?

- No.

- They don't.

- No.

- If you've got the time for a, you know, a 15 at one on one, or one on three conversation, yeah, my constituents are smart.

They understand it, you just gotta walk through it.

- Yeah and it takes one at a time, one-on-one, but as a whole, there's pieces missing, they just can't connect, you know, all of it together.

- I have a question for you, we have a couple minutes left and lucky for you, I want to ask you a little bit about the housing situation in the state and how we resolve it, especially on the affordable side which I know you're not a huge fan of?

- No, I'm a huge fan of the affordable side.

What I'm not a fan of is a transfer tax, because it's dangerous.

What it does is it totally artificially inflates the sales price.

It prices people out of being able to afford it, and what a lot of people don't understand too, is transfer taxes, a lot of times, if you're using a government backed loan, government guaranteed loan, which most of Wyoming is probably about 80 to 90%, you can't have a transfer tax attached to it.

So the buyer can't pay it, so the seller has to pay it.

So essentially it's a double commission.

Not only that, you're paying taxes every year on your property and then at the end all of a sudden when you're ready to sell it, you're gonna have to pay another tax.

So it's really problematic.

To solve the housing issue is a fundamental thing of you have to have local government work with stakeholders, and you have to work cooperatively together, and you have to look at changing your zoning, your ordinances, your infrastructure, and things like that.

Because if you can't make simple changes that way, throwing money at the problem is not gonna solve it.

- We ran out of time.

Representative Shelly Duncan and of course Mike Greear, always a pleasure chatting with both of you.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- That's our program.

Thank you so much for joining us here on "Capitol Outlook."

We'll be back with you again next week.

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