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- Welcome to Capitol Outlook, here on Wyoming PBS; I'm Bob Beck.

Today in the program, as usual, we will be speaking with the Senate president, Dan Dockstader and the speaker of the house, Eric Barlow, as we wrap up the Wyoming legislative session.

And to provide some equal time, we'll be hearing from the Senate minority leader, Chris Rothfuss, and the House minority leader, Cathy Connolly.

They'll have some thoughts on how things went as well.

Then, a little bit later on the program, we will be talking with the new host of this program, Steve Pack, and he'll have an interview for you with the new state superintendent of public instruction.

It's all coming up next, right here on Capitol Outlook.

(triumphant music) - [Announcer] This program is supported in part by a grant from the BNSF Railway Foundation, dedicated to improving the general welfare and quality of life in communities throughout the BNSF Railway Service area.

Proud to support Wyoming PBS.

- And by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- Welcome to Capitol Outlook; I'm Bob Beck.

Joining us once again for the final time this legislative session is the Senate President Dan Dockstader and the Speaker of the House, Eric Barlow.

Gentlemen, welcome back to the program, and thank you, all session, for joining us.

Let's start with you, Speaker Barlow.

I would be curious as to what your highlights of the session have been so far.

- Highlights of the session.

Well, it's the last Thursday (Bob laughs) of the session.

No, actually, I think a lot of good things happened for Wyoming during this session.

I think as you looked at it, the work we did on Monday, we delivered a budget to the governor.

I think it was a very solid budget.

We delivered a ARPA bill that does some onetime funding into very critical things.

I'll let the president speak to some of those priorities that were out there, but healthcare certainly being one of them; rural healthcare.

CapCon; we have a capital construction bill that came out that day.

And that's what we were doing here this year.

This was a budget session, and I feel very good about that.

And we preserved our ability, as a legislative branch, to oversee what the governor may or may not like about our suggestions; our appropriations.

So I think that is probably one of the key things that we came here to do.

And I think we accomplished it in good order.

- Senator, your thoughts?

- I would just commend the appropriation committees.

They worked very well together.

They brought that budget together, set it up for the governor.

And I don't sense the contention with the budget that I'd seen in previous years.

And they brought it to both floors, presented, and there was a lot of agreement, as far as what I saw personally, that would help us with ARPA.

I saw the opportunity to help for, perhaps decades down the road, in generations, healthcare at the rural level.

That's important to me.

We've had some success stories out west.

I thought, "How do we take this out to other rural areas in Wyoming, and create similar success stories?"

And that ARPA bill allowed us to do that, and to set up some projects, potentially, in the coming years, that will not just help this generation, but the next.

- Yeah, I think for a lot of people that was very exciting, because there's a chance, if it works, and we can bring some providers in, but there's a chance there's some money there, to possibly do that, and obviously set up, maybe some more facilities in places all across- - Brick and mortar, that's what we're looking for with this, so that they have a place to bring in healthcare providers too.

They'll come if... We found out in our little valley that's out west, if you build it, they will come.

And, as a result, we built a new hospital with state-of-the-art surgical suites, and we brought in orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, and family practitioners that have a good base to work from.

- Pay raises for state employees; I know that was a big discussion over in the House and the Senate.

But in the House, that they even bumped that up just a little bit.

Can you explain to, maybe, folks why that seems to be important?

- Well, I think that it was important.

It was important in the House side; And as you mentioned, we improved it (chuckles) or raised it a little bit more.

You know, the state of Wyoming has some struggles.

We're competing.

We have a level of government service that folks expect, and want, and are utilizing; but we're having a hard time keeping folks in those places.

And these are tough jobs; this is the Department of Family Services, which deals with children.

These are snowplow drivers, who help get us safely to our work, and our schools, et cetera.

So, and it's all across state government.

We're competing with, whether it's local government or private industry, all of that.

And I think we, we did it.

We passed this, trying to get closer to market rates for our state employees, because they actually provide services to us, and we need to value them based on that.

So I think it was a good conversation.

Now, let's understand, it's just a first step in understanding how we actually maintain and continue to to support those state employees and the programs that they're providing on behalf of Wyoming citizens.

- Wanna tell us about that?

- The good speaker just mentioned, that's a start; it is a start.

We're finding places out there that our employees can no longer afford a place to live, the very basic necessities.

A teacher in Jackson, the cost has gone way beyond, and a teacher's hours, that are there now.

We've gotta find solutions for housing situations, in places like Cody, Jackson, Star Valley, soon to be other; in a location near you, where we need to up those salaries to the point that it's competitive, or they're just going to have to find another job, because they can't live under that stress of trying to do their job.

A highway patrolman doing their job, and not knowing that ends will meet at home, because of the cost of living wherever they call home in Wyoming.

- Yeah, you've talked about housing quite a bit during our conversations.

And I'm curious; in about a few weeks, you'll have interim topics presented to you, and you'll vote on that.

Would that be something you'd like some folks to look at?

- I had been pushing hard, asking our minerals business economic development to take a hard look at that.

Talk to appropriations; they have a full schedule, but I says this can't go away, because the problem's not going to go away.

Wyoming has been found.

- Okay, well, any disappointments, Speaker?

- Oh, no.

I mean, I'm sure there's individual legislators that didn't get their bill forth.

But as far as process, I'll just speak to the House side; the process, and what we accomplished.

I think most people would say, we understood where we were.

We worked through some of the challenges we had.

We got two days left; we still have (chuckles) opportunities.

But no, I don't have any personal disappointments, no.

I feel comfortable with what we did.

- How about yourself?

- Legislatures'll bring bills back; I'll do the same.

I'll bring some back.

There's always another day.

- I wanted to ask you about a few things that might be on the horizon, and one is certainly education.

And, sort of, addressing that, there was a lot of things, funding-wise, we addressed this year, but you know, you just always have that hanging out there.

You know, how are we gonna fund education?

As you look ahead, what do you think is the solution there?

- I heard from my school district this year they were pleased with what came about this year, and asked for my support; I gave them my support.

But we're not going to be done with that yet, because it just involves too many lives across Wyoming.

Too many jobs, too many students, that we have to make sure that there's a long-term plan.

- I would say the same thing.

It's an ongoing dialogue, education.

You know, foundation is our constitution.

We've had an ongoing dialogue; we'll continue to have that.

There's an election between now and the next legislature.

There'll be new ideas and new energy toward solving some of these challenges.

And the biggest challenge, I mean, we have two challenges.

We have a structural deficit in education, a funding issue; and then we have folks that wanna actually look at the educational program.

What're we delivering?

And are we getting value?

And where do we need to... We wanna value teachers, are we giving them the resources they need?

Are there things that we need to alter or massage to get the right balance?

So the conversation continues.

- Yeah, I get the sense there are people that really do wanna look at what is being taught; and that that came up in different ways this past session.

And, you know, what about that?

It seems like we have looked at the model, and things like that, - Right.

- many times.

- Some of these things we had to vet out and hear.

We heard back from teachers, and those who were the patrons in the school district, and said, "Maybe this isn't as important as we want it to be."

But I do feel and sense a drive, just, back to the basics and making sure we put out a good, successful student with some of the basics in education.

We're doing that.

We gotta make sure we can fund it into the years coming.

I think it's an exciting time, because we're moving into this digital era, where we open up opportunities for education for students, wherever they live, in Wyoming.

Get a little broadband out there, and we're going to help students have courses, electives, that they never had before.

- Sounds like there might be, even, a discussion, at least I know that's something they're gonna throw your way, looking at school choice and some new avenues in the state.

- Well, yeah, we had bills this year and last year on doing some of those things.

And I think we're gonna see some continued action based on the bills that came out last year, on the charter school issue.

So I think we're gonna continue that.

I mean, I'm all for school choice.

We homeschooled our children.

We made a choice.

And so, now, when you start about public funding of schools, of other schools, you know, that's where it's a different dialogue.

But yeah, we're gonna continue to have those discussions.

- Mr. President, one of the things that a number of the guests who have come in on this program, this whole session keep bringing up, and we know it's out there, is expanding the tax base.

You know, you're talking a lot about reducing some of the coal taxes, evening things up there.

But there's gotta be some uneasiness about where we're gonna get our revenue into the future.

So, what about that is, can we have a serious discussion about that?

- It's difficult to talk about expanding the tax base when we're... Where the prices of everything that you're experiencing, from the grocery stores to trying to buy a used car, has gone off the charts.

It could be wise to wait a little longer, and discuss that when the economy's better.

- What're your thoughts there?

- Well, we had several bills, and as you know, tax bills start in the House.

So, there was a couple options that were there, and none of them moved forward.

And we're in a unique time right now, as we talked about the budget earlier, is we have actually void revenues right now, because mineral prices, unfortunately, that hurt consumers; help the state of Wyoming.

So we have this influx of revenue because of that.

And then we have the influx of the ARPA dollars; which we conserved over half a billion dollars with, to bolster it.

So, I don't think it changes the need for the conversation, but it maybe changes the horizon on the conversation, of how we get a more equitable, maybe, is the is the right word, tax structure in Wyoming.

- But as the president says, that's a real hard conversation unless you're almost officially outta money, isn't it?

- Right, well, and I think we've set up the long-term look at things, as far as structurally, with some of the ARPA.

But, right now, Bob, if we jump into taxes, people are experiencing extreme difficulties with their own home budget.

Probably not a good time to bring it up.

Maybe out past the horizon, like the Speaker said.

- Can I ask you about a couple of bills before we let you go?

One, I was a little surprised to see got through, but Wyoming's tomorrow; and that's gonna deal with...

It's kind of a different approach to scholarships than we see; could you explain that a little bit?

- Sure, that was a little tight, on our side.

One of the concerns people had is, do we already have those services in place?

And literally, while we were working on this bill, someone showed me those services, those opportunities, those applications for assistance, financial assistance, that're already in place.

I put together the list, sent it home to my schools, and said, "Look, what you can do now, as we try to help our car dealers have enough auto techs."

And they're already in the process of applying for those programs to start it in the schools, and to help the people out west to find jobs and to supply the businesses with employees.

We did that without Wyoming's tomorrow.

- What'd you think about that legislation?

- Well, it passed through the House, obviously, and originated in the House.

And I agree with the president.

There are lots of opportunities, and there's probably a point in time where we maybe take a step back and actually assess all what we have.

We need to deal with, part of our healthcare.

There's other places.

And education; we talked about education earlier.

It's not just K-12, it's the entire spectrum of education.

Wyoming's tomorrow happens to be at that adult learner or, upskilling folks in our communities for today's jobs.

And they're requiring different skills, and more skills, as the president spoke about.

So I think we keep adding tools to the toolbox.

Let's make sure they're all good tools, and let's reevaluate every so often.

And, I think we'll, it will serve Wyoming better.

- And there's still a couple of votes left, in the closing hours, but I want your thoughts on blockchain.

As you've watched some of these bills come through, there's only a handful of experts, I think, in your (chuckling) legislative group that know about this; but what's your thoughts on it, are you excited about where this is all heading?

- Well, first of all, I use a flip phone.

So you know how (Bob and Dan laughs) technologically astute I am.

You know, I think blockchain has, and is proving to have, some unique opportunities in Wyoming, in the regulatory scheme, and the attractiveness of what we've offered as part of the structure.

Seems to have kind of got on the front end of this.

Now, I don't wanna, you know, overrun ourselves.

And get to a place where, "Hey, you're getting too far over your skis," as some people might say.

And you're right; we have very few people, at least, in the legislature, (Bob chuckles) that really, I think, understand the intricacies, the complexities, and the challenges of where we're going.

But I think there is opportunity.

I think it's already proven to be beneficial.

Now we just, like I say, don't want to get too far are ahead of ourselves, and create a situation where we have to say, "Wait a minute, what did we get into?"

- What about your thoughts on that?

- I think we should proceed cautiously.

I was on that committee for a while, and I moved myself off to put people on that are more involved in banking, and just the whole financial side of it.

And I think we proceed cautiously.

I commend Senator Lummis for setting it up, too, at that level.

Let's see where we can take this.

I will tell you that I hear a lot of comments across the nation, how Wyoming is moving this forward; and they find that interesting.

The Cowboy State is kind of leading the way in all of this.

- It does sound like, from what people tell me, that there are some economic opportunities for the state down the road, if we can sort of figure this all out.

- Certainly, and I hope there are economic opportunities with blockchain, with the changing mineral industry, and all that's going on out there.

If we stay right with it, maybe even a little ahead of it, we could create further opportunities to make Wyoming the leader.

- Well, Senate President Dan Dockstader, Speaker of the House, Eric Barlow, you're very busy folks; we've appreciated the time.

Good luck to the rest of the year.

Because, you know, even though the session ends, there's still some work to be done in the coming months, and we wish you the best.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you - You.

- And when we come back, we will hear from the minority leaders.

We will have the Senate minority leader and the House minority leader joining us; stay with us.

This is Capitol Outlook.

- Welcome back to Capitol Outlook.

Again, I'm Bob Beck, and we just heard from the Majority Leaders.

Let's hear from the Minority Leaders now, in the house, of course, Cathy Connolly and Senator Chris Rothfuss.

Nice to have you back on the program.

- It's nice to see you, Bob.

- And we're glad you're feeling better.

I know you were on the disabled list for a short amount of time.

We're glad to have you back.

- But thank you, Zoom.

- Well, let me start off with you, Representative Connolly.

As you look at this session this year, and we're here in the closing hours, what do you leave with?

Do you feel like things were accomplished?

- Well, Bob, we came in with three major tasks: we needed to do our biennial budget, we need to spend the ARPA money, and we needed to do redistricting.

You know, we're still in the process here with each of those.

And admittedly, I would have liked to have seen more in terms of budget and ARPA dollars, for example, that we did fine with it.

But for example, we backfilled some of the money that we cut out of mental health and substance abuse programs around the state, and we backfilled that money, but honestly, we had some opportunities, I think, in order to expand services where they're needed.

We haven't gone there yet.

And so those are the kinds of things that I was hoping for, but we did okay.

I'll give us a C. (all laughing) - When we initially spoke, you were a little concerned; there was too much savings going on.

- Yeah, yeah regrettably, there was some movement, especially on my side in the House, that we would have put more money into reserves accounts or earnings accounts.

We wouldn't let that money tip over into the permanent savings.

And regrettably, we have more money going into permanent savings rather than a more liquid ability for us to be spending over the next couple of years.

- [Bob] Senator?

- I certainly agree we did some things that I think are positive.

And hopefully, we'll have some things that we can look back on.

Some of those decisions, in fact, are being made today, with the Wyoming's Tomorrow, for example, Scholarship Fund, which would be a positive development.

But again, we underfunded that because we were unwilling to commit to the long term.

We had an opportunity through a budget amendment to try and fund an endowment for early childhood education that would have been a tremendous boon for the state of Wyoming and really helpful for people.

And we didn't fund that.

Once again, we talked about Medicaid expansion made no progress on health care, in terms of providing access to affordable health care for all Wyomingites no solutions there.

And then, when we look at education, while we didn't make cuts, which honestly, I'll count that as a victory that we didn't cut education, we needed to provide a real ECA, particularly in times of inflation, and at a time when we had sufficient cash flow to do so, and we chose to only provide an ECA for materials and energy, not for salaries and that's incredibly regrettable.

- And that's called an external cost adjustment for the viewers.

And that's something that you can use as a vehicle to provide pay raises for.

- Yeah, and on that, realistically, it's not a pay raise.

It is just a cost of living adjustment to keep up parody with inflation.

So every time we make a recommendation through the joint Education Committee, it is simply to keep things neutral versus inflation.

When we don't give one, that means we're eroding the value of the dollar, and we're eroding than quality of education in the state.

- Yeah, can I just jump in with that, Bob?

Because honestly, that is something that, and we use euphemisms around here all the time, we kick that can down the road again.

We had bragging rights that our teachers were among the best paid in the nation.

It was absolutely necessary in order for us to keep the quality education that we want, that we need, that we're proud of.

But instead, we've eroded that over the years.

Well, we're now still in the top quarter, but we're nowhere near the top like we used to be.

And so, we need to revisit that issue.

We voted no on an ECA for teachers this year.

It means the buying power of their salaries has gone down over the past decade.

- Staying on the topic of education, you talked about Wyoming's Tomorrow, which I think that both of you agree is probably a good thing.

But the one thing, you're on the education committee, and the committee had high hopes of getting more money into the Hathaway Scholarship, which talked about eroding over the years, has dropped off.

How disappointed were you in the Senate to see not only them reject a number of amendments to increase that to finally kill that bill?

- Yeah, that was an incredible disappointment.

We have seen the honors level of the Hathaway go from funding 90% of tuition in fees when it began to at best 50% at this point in time.

Talk about not keeping up with inflation.

We've done nothing to improve that.

And we know it from the constitution that we have a constitutional obligation to make higher education and university as nearly free as possible.

But we're not meeting that obligation, and once again, we chose not to.

And this is a time when we have the funds available.

We know that even the Hathaway corpus itself can support substantially higher rates of funding without having any risk to the corpus; there's $700 million in that corpus.

And we haven't been providing any increases to keep up with the growth in the value of that corpus.

So it's a real disservice to the people, to the students of the state of Wyoming, to try and draw people, our best and brightest, to the university.

And we also had some other changes that just would have improved cash flow and allowed us to invest it better.

We rejected those changes as well.

It was incredibly short-sighted.

- Senate was a tough place as you well know, Representative Connolly, here, you're getting a message I'm sure that Gender Studies got cut there for a while, which you're a part of, what are your thoughts in how that got resolved?

Is that gonna be okay?

Or what do you think about that?

- Oh, Bob, boy, what a disappointment that was.

I found out about that amendment, which was to defund Gender Studies at UW.

And then it seemed like it had everything else attached to it and all other programs that in any way address gender while I was in a labor health meeting that morning.

And certainly as you know, that I have been a professor at UW for 30 years, and I spent most of my career in the Gender and within Studies Department as the department head, that amendment was incredibly disappointing, it was incredibly disappointing to see a lack of kind of recognition and understanding of what one of the oldest Gender and Women's Studies programs in the nation has done, and is doing right now.

So, again, I was incredibly disappointed.

And then for it to pass the Senate on one vote, with a tremendous amount of misinformation, both in terms of content and numbers of students, was, again, disappointing.

And you know, we can kind of joke around about what was going on in the Senate in terms of lack of information, lack of correct information, on so many issues this was just another one of them.

But then it goes to a conference committee, and at the conference committee instead comes up with, alright, we're not going to go after Gender and Women's Studies in particular but let's instead look at some other programs that the university is doing that, again, filled with lots of misinformation about alcohol, understanding about alcohol, and sexual assault, that kind of freshmen need to do in their freshman orientation classes.

It had nothing to do with the original amendment, but in my mind, gave real oxygen to the ability of individuals to come after the university, to come after some curriculum, and that the legislature will micromanage what happens at that level.

That's just wrong.

- Very different bodies from where I sat.

This year I got to cover you both.

But Chris, honestly, as we talked about, I think last week, the Senate was certainly a little more fun and certainly more newsworthy.

They had more interesting topics to discuss, and if I was to tick them all off, I'm not sure I can get them all right.

But what was going on over there?

I mean, you've been in the Senate a long time had you seen anything quite like that?

- No, it was definitely a different experience.

And I think what it comes down to is a lot of campaigning, a lot of politics, and not a lot of vision, not a lot of policy.

And that's disappointing to see.

When you don't have solutions to problems, you create your own problems, and then you, I guess, heroically ride in and try and solve those problems.

And that's what we saw a lot of.

It is disappointing to see it.

There was just tremendous attacks on education.

I don't know where those are coming from or why.

But whether it's higher education or K-12, vilifying teachers, vilifying the education system.

- [Bob] Curriculums.

- Yeah, curriculums, exactly.

I think, if anything, the Senate, this session should be a demonstration that we need more academic freedom, and we need more free thinkers and more critical thinking because we showed up, we spouted misinformation, and we made bad decisions based on that misinformation time and time again.

It was a real disappointment.

And the collegiality is disappointing.

I've been in the legislature.

I've been in the Senate for 12 years.

And this is the first time I've seen clear animosity among individuals and acrimony and factions being built with divisiveness between the legislators themselves.

It's disappointing to see that.

It looks like national politics.

It's something that we have traditionally and historically tried to avoid.

And we're missing it now.

We need better vision.

We need, I think, better leadership and the folks that stand up and set good examples.

And we're just not seeing that.

- It seemed like some people tried to try and settle things down.

But boy, it seemed to be one thing after another from people, I understand even recording each other.

- Absolutely and I won't name any names, but we definitely still have a core of incredible legislators in the Senate that are professional, intelligent, competent, hardworking, and they're trying to do what's best for the state of Wyoming.

But we spend too much of our time distracted by these absurdities.

- House seemed to be a better place.

- It did, and I am kind of proud and grateful for that that my body actually followed the rules and moved along at a reasonable pace in order to do so.

And that's not to say that I wasn't disappointed about some of the things that went on, but the collegiality was still there.

And I'm glad to say that.

- One of the things that I noticed about the House of Representatives and a lot of your Democratic colleagues working with Republicans getting amendments, getting things taken care of, I saw some names together on some amendments that I was a little surprised to see.

So that seems to be a strategy that you've had, maybe working with some of the more conservative members of House.

- Yeah, and sure Bob, that actually is nothing new.

I mean, we are a small caucus; for us to get anything done means always working across the aisle.

And you saw that just again, this year, and with a wide variety of people.

And in all honesty, there are issues that we agree on; for example, civil liberties kinds of issues, or some things that Democrats hold very dear to our hearts.

And there's certain kinds of allegiances or alliances that we can make with others.

We have people who are kind of really knowledgeable about money and about the flows of money in the state, and those make other kinds of alliances.

- Senator, you listed some things you weren't happy with.

But I'm curious what you thought you did a good job with this year.

- Well, I can go back to my Select Committee on blockchain and financial technologies.

I think we did some nice work this year.

We've got some legislation up for third reading today that I'm enthused about.

So I think there were some real positives there.

I do feel that the Wyoming Tomorrow scholarship is a good start.

Even if we didn't fully fund it, we were in good shape on that.

And I'm hopeful that we'll be able to move that forward, as well.

And then honestly, when you look at some of the funding that we put into the ARP Act, or from the ARP Act into, whether it's health care and mental health, and supporting some of our previous programs, we did some important things there, infrastructure as well, that's going to be needed by my community and every other community in the state.

So the availability of those federal funds, and some of the programming of those federal funds, really is coming at an opportune time for the state of Wyoming.

And it's funny with those federal funds, we shake our fists, and we complain, and we have narratives on the floor, just denouncing the administration and their spending.

Oh, but boy, that saved the day.

If we hadn't had that billion dollars, we wouldn't know what to do right now.

- How about you?

- You know, I agree.

I mean, there are some things, and actually, I wanna go back to your last question about working across the aisle, and it just occurred to me that both of us had individual-level bills that passed.

And so that means that we had to get the majority of each of our respective bodies and the other side, in order to agree to those and those are important bills.

I mean, they're small bills, but they are important bills.

One was about the availability of EpiPens.

You know we need that in the state.

Mine was about the availability of information for our workers who are employed by self-insured companies when there's an accident.

Those are important things, and it's about working across the aisle.

That's the only way those get passed.

- You know, Senator Rothfuss was saying there's a lot of money out there for mental health and health services.

I know there was some more amendments that didn't make it through in the House in particular, but you had to be pleased with the different things that did actually get in there on both sides.

- Yeah, so in particular, in terms of kind of those mental health, substance abuse kinds of dollars, that in conjunction with actually slowing down a bill that we passed last year, that establishes priority populations for getting those services, and the ability to say, whoa, right, we need to slow that down, because it makes winners and losers about who's going to get those services, we now have some more money available let's look at instead broadening rather than narrowing the availability of those services.

That's important to me.

And that's what we're doing.

- And Bob on that, there's about $15 million that ended up in the budget for providing better access to healthcare for rural health.

And that was new.

And I think that might do some very interesting things because you can put in place both programming and facilities, so we have certainly funds for the larger hospitals.

But I think that might make a difference.

- Yeah.

- About five minutes left, I'd like to use this time to maybe talk about what you'd like to see here in the coming year.

You will very soon will be giving priorities to the Management Council, which you're both part of, but what would you like to see the focus be on?

What are the key issues you think are facing the state that we should really look at?

- Well, there's no question that the top priority is a realistic restructuring of our revenue picture for the state of Wyoming.

We were bailed out by federal funds this year.

And that's the reality.

As we look forward, we still will see a little bit of a boom, which honestly will appreciate from coal, oil, and gas and the prices they're at right now.

So while everybody's complaining at the pump right now, for good reason, as they're seeing four and $5 gasoline that's paying for education in the state of Wyoming, and it's probably going to save our day for the next legislative session.

But in the long run, we still don't have a realistic 21st-century revenue structure that has to change, it has to remain our focus, and it's probably the most important thing that we'll do when we eventually do it.

So that conversation has to remain.

Getting more to specifics of what we're looking at on committees, the Education Committee, we'll spend some time still looking at K three education overall.

And I'd like to take a little bit of a different look at it.

We've put together good standards and structure.

But what I'm hearing in feedback, and I certainly respect this view is that we might have overloaded those little kids and those K three kids, and they might need to spend some more time playing and going outside and jumping around and having fun in life.

And I kind of look forward to having that discussion and figuring out how we can maybe deprogram a little bit of that time and give them back the joy of education.

Over on the Minerals Committee side, we'll spend time hopefully looking at what I'm referring to as Giga projects.

Why do other states get the billion-dollar projects, and we never do?

What is it about our structure that seems to discourage that?

And what can we do to provide those incentives and attract, recruit, retain those larger projects to Wyoming?

So those are a couple of things that I'm excited about in the near term, but the overarching vision is we will not succeed at anything until we change our revenue structure dramatically.

- Representative?

- Yep, thanks, Bob, and I absolutely agree with Chris.

You know, I've been on revenue, I've been on appropriations, we just have a pause right now, we have a pause because of federal dollars.

And we need to go back to those conversations about our taxation structure.

It's as simple as that.

But that being said, there are other issues that we need to take a good look at.

That again, we have started and haven't finished those conversations, Medicaid expansion, right?

We need to also look at what we learned from the pandemic and what we can do better in the state.

Medicaid expansion is part of that solution.

We've also learned about our needs in terms of the delivery of rural health care and about our kind of health care staff and from CNAs up to kind of specialty areas in medicine, and we're not doing well enough by them.

And we're not doing well enough by our elderly as well.

And I'm hoping that we learn from the pandemic about what our needs are, and then we address them.

And then go into education.

I will never stop beating the drum of early childhood education, and that's high quality, and it's a lot about playing it really is, but we're the only state in the nation that really hasn't done anything as a state in terms of kind of facilitating or high-quality early childhood education.

- Did I see correctly that that is something that the committee is hoping to study?

- Yes, but it's the vague kind of all throw it in with K through three, we'll throw it in, right, but I'd really like us to kind of focus on it.

And in all honesty, our (indistinct) just says decisions say that we are not obligated to fund pre-K. Well, so what?

We're not obligated to do a lot.

But we do it because it's the right thing to do.

And it's time for us to do the right thing.

- We've got a minute, and I can't go over my minute.

Chris, I'm afraid to ask you this question.

But I'm curious economic development, what needs to happen here in next few months.

- We need a vision, and we need to think bigger.

We probably need to make changes on how we're looking at it.

I've had good conversations with the Business Council about really setting some objective performance indicators and some better aspirations.

And so I hope we'll realize that over the next year, knowing what we're trying to achieve and then documenting whether or not we're actually moving in that direction.

- Would you like the last 30 seconds?

- And I will kind of tout to the new Democrats, Chad Banks, and Trey Sherwood in terms of economic development, they are their respective kind of downtown economic development people one in Rock Springs, one in Laramie, they're about small business, what can we do to facilitate the growth of our small businesses?

- Representative Cathy Connolly, Senator Chris Rothfuss, your Minority Leaders, thanks to both of you and enjoy the time off.

- We'll do, thanks, Bob.

- Thank you, Bob.

- And when we come back, we will talk with Steve Pack, the new host of Capitol Outlook.

This is Capitol Outlook right here on Wyoming PBS.

- Welcome back to Capital Outlook.

Again, I'm Bob Beck with us is Steve Peck.

He is going to be the new public affairs producer for this program.

He'll be hosting Capitol Outlook, and many other things.

Steve, welcome to WyomingPBS.

- Thank you very much good morning.

- Now, tell folks across the State just a little bit about yourself.

You're actually had been very famous in Fremont County for a number of years, but maybe your background.

- I was a newspaper man for a long time as were my father and my uncle before me.

We owned the local newspaper business in Riverton for 73 years.

And during that time our family ownership operation grew to include 16 papers in Wyoming and Montana that then mushroomed and then shrank back again at the time we sold the business in January after 73 years, 38 years with me more or less at the Helman.

At that time we had the Ranger in Riverton, the Lander Journal, the Wind River News which is circulated primarily on the Wind River Indian Reservation, couple of what we call shopper publications and the Weekly in Dubois, the Dubois Frontier.

So not as big as it once was but was very satisfying, involving, engaging career that I had for a long time and now this opportunity's come my way somewhat unexpectedly for me.

- Well like myself, we're about the same age.

So we're both super young.

So retirement wasn't quite in the card just yet.

What brought you here?

- Well when it became clear that the sale was going to take place which in as I've learned through the years you'd never be sure until the day that it happens.

I wasn't certain what I was gonna do.

My longtime friend and yours and my predecessor in this position Craig Blumenshine, suggested to me that I applied for the job which was a new idea for me.

I can say with all honesty it had not even crossed my mind.

But he said it should cross your mind and it turns out well some people know I think that the station WyomingPBS is owned by Central Wyoming College in Riverton.

And at the time I happened to be the elected chairman of the board of trustees, and so I had a decision to make there.

I spoke with the station manager, who said he thought there might be a path forward for me of course with zero guarantee.

But I decided to resign my seat as not just as the chairman but stepped down from the board in order to apply for it.

I didn't think it would be fair for the interview committee to have to consider an UB job application from the chairman of the board.

So I decided that would be the thing to do.

I went through the interview process just like everybody else did.

There were numerous candidates and they made the decision to offer me the job and which I was happy to take after learning more about it.

As there are some similarities to it, of course with the work that I did before.

And but it's there's lot that I'm learning beginning yesterday which was my first real assignment for the station.

- Well, let's also tell folks that politics is no stranger to you.

I covered your father Bob for a number of years and your uncle Roy peck also served in much- - That's right they both were in the legislature a combined career of nearly 30 years.

They didn't serve together.

Roy was just a couple of years older than my dad, but he was a political figure in Wyoming since the sixties.

He ran for Congress and for governor in 66 and 74 losing in two of the closest primary elections and to this day, still the famous 74 primary where the I think the first place candidate had 26% and the fourth place had 24%.

And he happened to be third in that campaign.

He served then in Stan Hathaway Governor Hathaway's administration in the late sixties and then in the legislature both the House and the Senate.

My dad started his legislative career much later.

He'd been on the college board as I was prior to that and served for almost 20 years.

From the early '90s into the mid 2000s.

- So let's talk about how you see your job, your new role.

I'm sure you have some ideas on how you'd like this to all work.

- Well when they ask me about it and of course that's the first thing you ask yourself.

The possibility of changing your life comes along and the interviewers asked me why, or I knew that they would.

And I thought, well, looking at standing here observing what you're doing today and what Craig did and what the station does.

My affiliation through the college with the station.

I realized that what WyomingPBS does is important and I wanna do important work.

And that's what I told them.

And that's how I still feel about it.

I'm starting with that as my platform of what we're going to do.

I'll be hosting this program to the best of liability.

There's another half hour weekly, twice monthly series roughly that we do called Wyoming Chronicle.

And I shot my first assignment for that yesterday with State Superintendent Schroeder.

And this later today we're going to over to this state Wyoming department of Health Lab to talk with Dr. Harris about the state of COVID and other things now that the emergency order in the State is about to be lifted.

And then often running from there I've always had been good in my previous position with coming up with ideas of interesting things to cover and talk about, I'm finding to my great relief and satisfaction that many other people have ideas about what we ought to be doing too.

And that's great.

I'm happy to have all of that, I wanna make sure we have more than we can do.

And because then they'll never be will never come up short of good ideas.

- Well, the biggest challenge I can tell you as a radio person having to be on TV they've got these metal some cameras that are constantly watching you so.

- Yeah that's I promised the station that after the first couple times I saw myself that I'd quit, quit asking the question.

When did I start looking like that?

But that's fine.

I'm comfortable enough doing that and I've participated in debates on panels with you before, and so that's not all together new to me and of course the focus is not on the host.

It's on the subject, it's on the guest, it's on the topic and that's certainly what I'm intending to do you with it.

- Well, Steve's kick off his career here with an interview with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction Brian Schroeder.

Let's watch that interview.

- Hello, I'm Steve Peck of WyomingPBS.

We're joined today by the new State Superintendent of Public Instruction for Wyoming, Brian Schroeder Superintendent Schroeder welcome to WyomingPBS.

Thank you for being here and congratulations on the new position.

- Thank you, Steve.

It's nice to be here with you.

Thank you.

- It's been somewhat tumultuous time for you.

And I guess since new year's day, how's it been going so far?

- So far it's been a hoot - A hoot.

- Yes lots of fun, lots of work.

It's been very challenging, very interest, very exciting, very encouraging, very overwhelming.

- In a good way I hope.

- In a good way yes.

- What are your some of your initial impressions of capital, the job the department, the staff, that sort of thing.

- Yeah, well the capital I'm in of I remember when I first walked in the front doors I was astounded that it was unlocked.

- Yes.

- It was open to the public.

God blessed Wyoming.

And you know, since I've been here now four or five weeks at times I'll catch myself walking through the Capital and just shaking my head.

- I work here now.

- Yes I'm astounded.

How did this I all happen?

So it's very humbling.

It's a tremendous honor.

As far as the staff, the Department of Education staff they're just tremendous I couldn't speak any highly any more high of them.

They're very supportive and very helpful, very encouraging and very capable.

The Department of Education is in good hands.

We have a lot of longevity there, a lot of stability the folks know what they're doing and they care and stuff.

So the staff is just, you know, holding me up basically.

And that's been just a joy and an honor to work with them.

And I might also add, it's been a tremendous honor and a real thrill to work with the Governor.

I find him a man that I really respect.

He's just, he's down to earth he's been very helpful to me offering mentoring, I meet with him regularly and that's been a very fun part of the job.

It's just a real honor to work with Governor Gordon.

- Let's talk about this process that got you from there to here.

When the vacancy was made known, and it was clear that Superintendent Baylor was leading the position, what factors led you to think I want to try this?

- The main factor was a lot of good folk up in Cody were calling me and then prompting me and encouraging me and asking me if I would throw my hat in the ring.

Which I never gave consideration to it and would not have outside of that.

- It makes you think though - Yes, it did - People, you know, and encourage you - Yeah, at first I didn't think I was interested, but it continued and so I threw my hat in the ring via, you know, a resume and a biography and a cover letter that you had to send off and I thought that would be the end of it.

And then an email came back.

"You need to be down in Douglas to give a speech and answer some questions of the from the State Central Committee."

And somewhere along the way I thought I heard there was like 14 or 17 people on the State Central Committee.

I got there and there were 74.

- Wow.

- Plus all the county activists in the room plus the public plus the press.

It was a very intimidating experience.

And then, yeah so that's kind of the process.

And one thing led to another, before I knew it I was in the top three and came here to the Governor's office for an interview.

And a couple day days later I got the phone call offering me the job call.

Yeah.

- Well, it's a very compressed timetable.

We were speaking earlier that when someone decides to run for the job and that, let me ask you first I think you addressed this for a moment.

Was the idea of running for State Superintendent ever on your life radar before?

- No never, never in my five year plan ten year plan or 25 year plan.

No.

- So someone who does decide to run for the job thinks about it I presume for a few weeks, then there's the filing period, which is in May, and then there's a couple of three months before the primary election.

And if the candidate survives that there's another couple of months before the general election and in November if the candidate survives that then there's another couple of months before taking office which usually includes some orientation and training time.

- So I've heard - You didn't get any of that, did you?

- No, no.

- What's been key to you in doing the best you can I guess to hit the ground, at least walking, if not running?

- Honestly, what I've always told my kids "Just take the next step."

That's the only way I can break it down rather than trying to bite off the whole big picture which is enormous.

I just operate from the mentality as much as possible.

Okay What's the next step?

So when I get up in the morning what's the next step?

Shower and get clothed.

After our meeting we just, "Hey, what's the next step?

Come over here and do the interview."

And I just keep trying to take the next step and we'll see how it goes and how far it goes.

- You mentioned you, the thing you say to your kids.

What can you tell us about your background, your family?

- Okay yeah, so I was born in St. Louis, Missouri.

I grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.

I grew up in a single parent home, my brother, sister and I were raised by our mom in a little agrarian town, Fort Atkinson.

And we had a outside of not having a father, we had a incredible childhood.

I often liken it to Huck Finn Tom Sawyer.

We were, we like other kids of course, we went to school, but we were fishing in the Rock River or swimming across the Rock River which you weren't supposed to do because it was all life threatening experience but that's what made it all the more fighting.

Skating Haumerson's Pond, going to church on Sunday mornings watching the Green Bay Packers on Sunday afternoon.

And you know, it was a farm community.

So I worked my way through high school and college milking cows, riding tractors, bailing hay.

And it was a great place to grow up.

I love my childhood.

I love my hometown.

From there, I went to college in my three career tracks have run basically three different paths.

One was education.

I was a teacher for 10 years and then the last five years, 15 years in education total, last five years principal teacher of a small school in my hometown of Fort Atkinson.

From there, I crossed over into pastoral ministry for seven years.

And from there, I crossed over into the professional counseling field where I worked in two different residential treatment facilities six years in Michigan, eight and a half in Wisconsin with abuse, neglect ages and their families.

- What brought you to Wyoming?

- What brought me to Wyoming was the last residential treatment facility I was at, went through a financial crisis.

They cut programs, and people and my program the Family Weekend Program that I run was one of the things that got cut by the new CEO that came in.

I was gonna be there the rest of my life and would've been happy, be happy to have done so but change of chapter and an opportunity opened up with a school in Cody Wyoming.

And so I checked it out.

And next thing I know I'm working in Wyoming.

For a year yeah, I was up there for a year and a half before this opened up.

- There's no ironclad job description for State Superintendent.

- So I found.

- People there've been about two dozen State Superintendents to proceed you in the job.

And in looking through their resumes I've seen their they're quite varied.

What do you bring to it?

- Well, you know, along with that, that was one of my first questions to the Governor in the interview is what is the job description?

What do I bring to it?

Perhaps the intangibles, but I like to keep it simple.

And honestly, I feel like if I am qualified and time will tell, what I bring to it is I was a student.

So I understand students.

I am a parent, so I understand parents and I was a classroom teachers.

So I understand teachers.

And that is the educational enterprise in my mind, students, parents, and teachers.

And I can relate to and understand all three with a passion.

So that's what I bring to it if anything.

- There's not a lot of near, it seems to me perhaps not as nearly as much shared experience in among people as there used to be.

In my father's generation, perhaps yours too.

One thing that was so common for all of them was that they were had the World War II military experience.

At least my father's generation did.

- Yeah.

- There's not as much of that now but I think the K12 educational experience is something that just about every one of us has had.

- Yes.

- Or will have, or is having what do you remember about yours that sticks with you and that maybe moved you to enter the field?

- Yeah, what I remember about mine was school was a happy safe place for us kids going to.

Obviously we didn't grow up in any area where there were the school shootings.

So we didn't have kind of stuff never even crossed our mind as far as which it does our kids today they go to school wondering, could, you know could that happen to me or to us?

So it was a very safe, happy experience.

And the other thing I remember was just a strong sense of community throughout the whole school.

You know, your best friends were there, you grew up these kids, and the third thing was the teachers, especially for me one fourth grade teacher made a real life impact to where I have contact with her to this day.

And I have to say mostly initiated by her but she would come over to our birthday parties and just took a real personal interest in me.

And at the time when you're a fourth grader it doesn't necessarily, I think it resonates with you more than you know but as you grow up, you realize, wow she really, really cared.

- We're on Statewide Television.

What's her name?

- Her name is Mrs. Drager.

- Mrs. Drager.

- Yeah.

- We've been speaking with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Brian Schroeder.

Thanks Superintendent for being with us- - Thank you, - On WyomingPBS.

- Thank you Steve.

- Well, thanks to our guests.

And again, thanks to all of you for enjoying Capitol Outlook during the Wyoming legislative session.

Thanks to WyomingPBS for allowing me the opportunity to host the program.

And we hope you have a tremendous summer as we come back with Steve Peck next year.

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