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- It's budget reconciliation time at the Capitol in Cheyenne.

We'll speak with one of the two appropriations committee chairmen.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

Join us now for "Capitol Outlook."

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- Welcome to "Capitol Outlook.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

Pleased to be joined this morning by Senator Dave Kinskey of Senate District 22, is that right?

- Correct.

- What, tell us about your district.

Where do the people that you represent live for the most part?

- I represent all of Johnson County and then the eastern half of Sheridan County, the eastern half of the town of Sheridan, so my district is over 5,000 square miles, which makes it about the fifth largest district in the state.

- That's why I asked you about that.

- Yeah.

- Some of these districts are huge geographically.

- Absolutely huge, yeah.

And I run all the way from the Montana border, Clearmont, clear down to KC, and from the foot of the Bighorns out to the Powder River.

So, Buffalo is in my district, and it's a good district.

There's a lot of rural aspects to it, a little bit of city there as well, but it's kind of nice, the constituencies that I have.

- Do you find it rewarding, challenging, and a little bit of both, to be representing people that don't actually live exactly in the place that you do as opposed to someone whose district might be a few square miles in a city?

- No, I don't find it, there's not that much challenge.

I mean, you know, people in Wyoming, you could sit at any coffee shop about anywhere in the state and just close your eyes, and the conversation would be pretty much the same, and it's this constituency, whether you live in Sheridan or your ranch in Buffalo, the political views aren't too far apart most of the time.

- How long have you been in the legislature?

- This is hard to believe, but this is my eighth year.

- Eighth year, so- - Yeah.

- Fourth term.

- Yeah, well, it's third, third.

I served part of a term.

- [Steve] I see.

- John Schiffer, who was a tremendous guy and a friend, passed away of cancer, and he was the senator before me.

I was appointed to represent him, so I came in mid-term, July of 2014.

- And obviously, the work suited you, and you've run three times subsequently.

- [Dave] I've run twice subsequently.

- I see, okay, oh.

- Yeah, coming up would be the third time.

- We'll get...

Okay, this year, you are the chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, got that right?

- Yes.

- Okay, what's the difference between appropriations and revenue, which, in my experience, I've learned, some people tend to confuse one for the other.

- Appropriations is where we look at the spending.

Revenue is looking at what's coming in, you know, taxes, either reducing or increasing taxes or revenue or fees, that sort of thing, whereas we're just looking at the spending.

- Yeah, the money.

You're gonna assume the money's gonna be there or be found somewhere.

- Or not.

- Or not, and how to spend what we've got, so in your tenure then, you've seen the good and the bad in terms of available revenue when it comes to putting together budgets.

- This session is the first time that I've ever seen an excess of funding.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And it's almost harder to budget when there's all this money floating around than during hard times.

- That's a question I've asked others before, that it's, I've often remembered the story about, of all people, Elvis Presley and his mother, they lived in poverty, and then he got rich, and she could not, it was difficult for her to figure out how to be a wealthy person.

(Dave chuckles) She still wanted to buy the big economy bottles of stuff.

- Yeah.

- And I've heard other legislators say that, in a way, of course, it's difficult to be cutting and living in austerity mode, but then, in some ways, it's easier than when there's just so many options there.

- Yeah, no, the hardest part was when the budget was really down, and I was assigned agencies like the Department of Health, Department of Family Services, and I had to find ways to save money, that was my job, and it wasn't a pleasant task.

Looking at cutting programs for the disabled, that sort of thing, it's just not real pleasant duty, but it's a job that had to be done, and now, what with this surplus, what's kind of nice is that both the House and the Senate, because we're all pretty much conservative Republicans, pretty quickly came to a consensus of view that we wanted to save as much of this one-time money as we possibly could, and so the joint conference committee report that's been hammered out so far, hasn't be official, saves between 1.3 and $1.4 billion, with about half of that going into permanent savings, like the Permanent Mineral Trust that's inviolate legislative action, can't touch it.

The income can is about 30% of our budget now, though.

- It's become enormously important, yeah.

- Huge, and the rest of it going into reserves to build up reserve accounts, so that during the down times, we'll have a cushion, and it's been a lot of work on this interim.

I wish I could take some credit for that, but the credit really goes to Drew Perkins, now the governor's chief of staff, the House.

- And he was a legislator for some time prior to that.

- Yeah, he was my chairman, and then to Bob Nicholas, the chairman of the House committee, as well as Patrick Fleming, who is the chief investment officer for the state, where Patrick was looking at ways that we could be much more efficient with our money, and so, we actually have a series of bills that are going through the legislative session, that, when all is done, it's gonna allow us to earn money on tens of millions of dollars that historically have sat there at 0% interest or very low interest, and without anything other than just investing it differently.

I'll give you an example.

- Okay.

- When Wyoming became a state, we set up, under dictate from Congress, and thank God, the Common School Public Land Fund, and it says in that, that the interest will support the schools.

So it was contemplated in 18-something that these would all be invested in bonds.

Well, now, if you invest in bonds, you're getting that much, right?

And so we are, one of the bills petitions Congress, as some other states have done, could you please modify our active admission to say that we can use the earnings, and just that change in terminology allows us to earn much more on that, on that money.

- And that's a legislative matter, to make that small change.

- Legislative matter, and then additionally, we're building up the reserves to a level that we feel, that the investment people will feel much more comfortable putting some of those investments in long-term investments.

So if you're just investing in the short term, you're earning 1, 2%.

If you're investing for the long term, 5, 6, 7% if you're lucky, and so it makes a big difference to invest that money the right way, and it's kind of an exciting thing, it's an exciting time to see it all coming together.

- Investment income for Wyoming is so much more important than it used to be because there's just more of it now, and here you're talking about even doing more.

Tell me in terms of terminology again, for viewers who are tuning in but not quite clueing in perhaps, a reserve account means what?

- A reserve account would be like what you've got as your fallback if you lose your job.

You know, they say everybody should have six months in savings in the bank just to tide them over if hard times came.

So a reserve account is money that you put away, and you hope that you don't have to touch it, that it can sit there and earn money along with a permanent fund, and that, then you have a spending account that hopefully will sustain what you need, but if that spending account gets too low, you can pull something out of the reserves.

- Without penalty, so to speak, it's accessible.

- Exactly, and then when the economy comes back, you refill that reserve account.

So it tries to even out the ups and downs, which we know there's a lot of in Wyoming.

- There's a lot of talk, and always has been for many years now, about how much money should be set aside, where it should be set aside.

Do you, as one of the budget-makers now, have a formula, a belief, a philosophy, a particular plan of attack in deciding how much to put and to put where?

- Well, that's what's, and I, you know, it's funny to hear me talk about earnings as exciting news, but that's, you kind of geek out when you're on these committees.

- Sure.

- The state never really had an explicit statement.

If all this legislation passes, we will.

Initially, we're trying to shoot for, I call it 5X.

We want to have, in reserves, five times the earnings of the Common School Public Land Fund and of the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund, with the ultimate objective of getting it to seven times.

So that means, in theory, if all our revenue went away, which wouldn't happen, you'd have seven years' worth of earnings to try and sustain you while you're figuring out what to do.

So those accounts, building up those accounts are important.

This reason that they're so large, additionally, is it gives you the option to invest them more wisely.

So it's a fascinating topic in that we now finally have an objective.

Let's shoot for 5X and eventually 7X, get those reserves up there.

First time to my knowledge that it's ever been explicitly stated as to what the goal is, yeah.

- Approached in that way.

Do you know, do we know where it stands, where it stood at, say, at the beginning of the session?

Was it 2X or 3X or 4X or do we know exactly?

- I know it was well below 5X, (chuckles) and well below four.

- Yeah.

- And we don't have enough money to get everything up to 5X right now, but we'll get close, we'll get close, and then $660 million going into, actually 697, I believe, going into permanent funds, and again, those are inviolate.

No politician can reach in there and grab any of that money.

So that's important to know that, so about half of it's permanent, about half of it's reserves, but 1.3 billion's a lot of money to save.

- A lot of money to save, and we're in the position to do that.

I've always said that even in harder times, Wyoming often was the envy of other states because of these decisions that had been made during better times.

It wasn't as dire as it might have been.

- Well, Wyoming's the envy of other states for a lot of reasons, but one of which is, of course, the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund, and that was, well, you know the story, it's familiar to those who have been around a while.

Governor Stan Hathaway, they enacted the first severance tax, mineral tax, and they wanted to put another percent and a half, and the governor said, "Not unless it goes into a permanent fund that politicians can't touch," and by constitutional amendment, approved by the public in 1975, the Permanent Mineral Trust fund was created, and since then, it's been built and built and built to where, as I said, it supplies 30% of our general fund budget.

- And it's untouchable in the sense that it would take another constitutional amendment to undo it again.

- Absolutely.

- And that's... - I can't see the public approving that, yeah.

- So you must be a banker or an accountant or something, right, to know all this stuff?

(Dave laughs) - No?

- No, nothing so practical.

I have a degree in economics, which is not all that practical, but I say that I have an MBA from working for my dad.

- [Steve] I see.

- My father was a very successful businessman.

He had a dairy business in Sheridan.

Subsequently, he went into the convenience store business, had 125 convenience stores.

I worked for him for several years, and you learned a lot from the old man.

- In small business, you learn these basic mechanics that come in very useful when you're talking about- - Absolutely.

- Government policy and- - And then I went into my own business for 14 years and- - [Steve] Tell us what that was.

- That was home healthcare.

- [Steve] I see.

- We did everything from a hospital bed in the home to, we actually did compounding for oncology, antibiotics, a full range of home healthcare services, and I absolutely love that business.

- Helping people.

- Helping people in their homes, helping them come home from the hospital, and I had a great crew of employees and just fighting with the insurance companies was gonna kill me, and I finally realized, you know, they don't want the little guys around anymore, you know?

It's just gonna consolidate into being bigger and bigger, but it was a funny job interview when I'd hire people.

I had 70, 72 employees before I sold, and I'd say, "Here's what we do.

We help people come home, which means Christmas Eve, we're here, New Year's Eve, we're here, and if that doesn't flip your switch, this is probably not a good fit for you," and so we had people that really service-oriented.

- How did you find your, the business experience that you had, supplemented by your degree in economics, entered into this particular kind of business?

It's a different sort of bottom line equation, I would presume, compared to having a shoe store, for example.

- [Dave] Well- - Or is it?

- Well, no, it's still a business.

I mean, you still gotta pay attention to the numbers, and you have to be obsessed with the numbers when you're in medical care because the money that the insurance company owes you, getting that collected is difference between you being in business or not, between making a payroll or not, and so it was a business of both, at a high level, focusing on the service, but clear down to the micro level of making sure that you're collecting the bills, but every business is the same in this sense.

There's two or three numbers you really gotta watch.

You have a spreadsheet of, or an income statement, a balance sheet that's that long, but really, there'll be two or three numbers you gotta watch, keep your eye on.

That's the difference between success and failure.

- And in your case, in your business, miscalculation, the consequences were dire for- - Yeah.

- For your customers, in a way that they wouldn't be at a hotdog stand.

- (chuckles) Well, that's true.

(chuckles) - Yeah, made me think of that.

- And we, I was proud of the work that we did, I was.

- Government isn't a business.

There are businesslike characteristics to it that many people espouse all the time, we should be more businesslike.

I'm assuming it goes almost without saying that you found the background that you had there has been helpful as you get into these budget questions for state government.

- That's helpful as well.

I did serve as mayor of Sheridan for 10 years.

That was a tremendous learning experience, and I went into that, you know, friends started recruiting me and I thought, well, I've always felt the government could be run as a business, and now here's my chance to find out whether that can really be true.

Can you bring a service ethic to the table in government, and make that part of the frontline approach to what you do?

And part of it is, when you're in business, you're always afraid of losing a customer.

"Steve, this went wrong, what are we gonna do?

We can't lose this customer," whereas in government, you know, if they're mad, what are they gonna do?

Get a different water system, you know?

And so, when people are frustrated with the service in private business, they just don't patronize you anymore, but in government, what happens is you hear about it, then they get mad, and so you really work hard to bring a service ethic to it.

I'll give just one small example.

- Sure.

- When I became mayor, one of the folks said, "We'd like to talk to you about closing the landfill on Saturdays."

and I said, "Well, that's maybe a hard conversation 'cause I wanna talk to you about opening it up on Sundays," (chuckles) because people, it's a DIY town.

- [Steve] That's their chance to use it.

- That's their chance to use it, you know, so it seems a small thing, but, you know, a lot of small things add up to a real service mentality.

- Yeah.

You touched earlier on my reference to the budget.

- Yeah.

- And what's your point that you made and wanted to make for our viewers is that there's no such thing as the budget, at least not in terms of one big budget bill anymore.

- Yeah, there was a time, well, so let's start here.

The Wyoming Constitution says every bill has to be limited to one subject.

The only exception to that is the budget for the general operations of state government.

So there was a time, before I arrived, where everything got rolled into one great big bill, and finally, somebody pointed out, you can't do that.

- The budget can't be the one topic of the- - Yeah, you can't roll all those things in because it's for the general operations of government.

You can't put all your capital constructions in there.

That's not day-to-day operations.

You can't put aid to local governments in there.

That's not day-to-day operations of the state government.

You can't put all your water projects and water construction in there.

That's not part of the day-to-day operation of state government, so now, the budget is one bill for the general operation of state government, a water planning bill, a water construction bill, a local government bill, a capital construction bill, and all those things collectively make up the budget.

- So this, you hear about these bills in your committee, Representative Nicholas on the House side hears about them in his committee.

Sometimes you meet.

Often you meet as the joint appropriations committee to work things out in the interim.

- [Dave] Correct.

- And here as well.

Finally, you get to the bills that you're ready to take to the floor of the Senate, take to the floor of the House, they get passed or don't, and at that point, the other House has to look at 'em, and they never, almost never survive intact, do they?

- It's just an, it's irresistible human impulse, you just gotta reach in there and start changing some stuff.

- Yeah, and when that happens- - And then all that has to be, that has to be reconciled.

- And that's what's happening now.

We're in our last couple of weeks of the session, and that process, reconciliation through what's known as the conference committee, is now happening.

- [Dave] Yeah.

- Conference committee is who exactly?

- Well, under our rules for the primary operations of state government budget, it's gonna be five senators and it's five House members.

- [Steve] Who chooses those?

- The senators are chosen by the president of the Senate, and the House members are chosen by the speaker of the Senate, of the House, speaker of the House.

- Of the House.

Okay, sometimes they serve on the conference committees themself.

I believe Senator Driscoll, who's the president of the Senate, is on the budget conference committee.

- That's correct, yeah, and every budget's different.

It's interesting, you know?

We're all driven by, we're people, we're driven by animal spirits, and every budget, every session's a little bit different.

- Yeah, are you on the conference committee this year?

- No, I'm not on the- - Have you been before?

- Oh, I have been before, yeah.

- What goes on, and without betraying too much, but what goes on in the conference committee room?

It is, would you describe it as a battle?

Is it a discussion, negotiation, argument?

- You know, it can be all of those things.

- Yeah.

- In the ideal world, both sides are pretty close together.

I mean, I've seen some where there's really a gulf, and from some strongly held views where, you know, it could get a little bit tense.

This year, everybody I think kind of recognized, this money, this windfall we have is one-time, and so once you come to an agreement that we want to be able to fund these reserve accounts with a target of getting to an eventual level, and we want to put some away permanently, 1.3 to $1.4 billion, not a whole lot left to spend.

So, once we kind of came to a consensus on that, the rest was just details, you know?

Did you want to add this position, or we cut that position, you wanted it, back and forth a little bit, but that kind of stuff comes together real quick.

- Yeah, my understanding, again, as you suggested, according, or compared to some years, this year, coming into the conference room, the dollar figure wasn't all that far apart.

- That's right, this is a, this is a good budget cycle.

I mean, it's for everybody to kind of quickly come to a consensus, and with the governor pushing us as well, saying, "Let's save this money.

Let's not spend it, let's save as much of this money as we possibly can," and that's where we.

- With the hard years that we've just come through fresh in our minds.

- Yeah.

- Of what that- - And again, you know, the legislature is a lot of conservative Republicans.

You know, you'll hear all these, everybody calling each other RINO and all this sort of thing, that's the sound of Republicans eating their young.

Even the raging moderates in the Wyoming legislature, by any other standard in any other state, are still pretty darn conservative, and so that makes it a little bit easier to come to a consensus that, you know, one-time money, we've all been through the bust, we're in a boom now, let's put it away and sock it away and save it for the future, and that consensus gelled pretty quick.

- I've seen and observed some conference processes where a particularly powerful person, or persons, might have a specific thing that they're gonna, that's the hill they're gonna die on.

Are you noticing any particular individual points of real conflict on a specific issue that someone says, "Well, it's fine, let's do this, but by golly, this thing must survive," or is this one of those years?

- The general operations budget, initially, the House staked out a position where they wanted all that money accessible and was putting nothing in permanent savings.

The Senate staked out a position that we wanted to put it in permanent savings, and that was, you know, I suppose, I don't wanna say posturing, but those were strongly held views, and then we realized there's enough money there, we can do both, let's do both, let's do what's right for the reserves to even out the booms and the busts, and let's put something away permanently, so that part came together pretty quickly.

Now, the other budget bills that have not yet come to the table, capital construction, there may be some pretty strongly held views there.

- There's things, we're here, we're talking about spending money to build something in a particular senator or representative's district, which would mean that someone else's might not get built.

- Well, or it's, to give you one example, there's a lot of folks say, "We should just build the bare minimum, and we should spend maintenance on what we've got and not build anything new," and then there's folks that say, "Well, you know, the university's gotta finish the dorm project, and there's fans that really wanna see the West Stands remodeled and the university stadium, and the university would like to build a new pool," and so that's, you know, that's 100 or $200 million disagreement, and there's pretty strongly held views on both sides of that one, so that typically becomes a bone of contention.

- Yeah, I was- - You know, is that a need, is that a need-to-have or a want-to-have?

- Yeah, and it depends on who's answering that question.

I was a community college trustee for some years, and the colleges always have something that they bring to the legislature that they want money to build.

- [Dave] Yeah.

- And I know that's true this year.

Well, I think all of them have something.

- [Dave] We've taken care of almost every community college with some sort of capital construction.

- Yeah, interesting.

Do you feel, in the years that you've been in the conference committee, or during this year as well, does it get competitive sometimes?

So I'm the Senate side, I wanna win, I wanna beat the House bill, or again, does that depend on the people and the year?

- It depends on the people.

You know, it varies.

I mean, I've seen where, you know, you've had chairmen are just, just like that, and then I've seen where, you know, I and Representative Nicholas have, you know, tried to make sure that the disagreements are just civil and that, you know, there's not any hard feelings in those disagreements, and it's by and large worked that way.

- Where does it stand?

We're here on a Thursday morning.

If you could describe where the reconciliation of the budget bills that have been conferenced so far stand, where are they?

- The Senate file one, the general operations of state government, there's an agreement on that.

That's where all those savings are coming from.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- We have yet to get to reconciliation on the capital construction, on the ARPA, American recovery plan, that's the trillion dollars that the government printed.

I think the water bills are pretty much done.

I'm not sure if there's any disagreement on those, and then local government funding, there's disagreement between the House and the Senate in terms of how many tens of millions of additional funding goes to local governments.

So there's still quite a bit of work to do to get it all done.

- The ARPA bill that you mentioned is a, speaking of one-time money, I mean, it extends out for some years, but we're under the gun in a way, we have to decide and report how that money's gonna be used going forward, am I right about that?

- Right, under the terms of the ARPA, I hope I get these dates right, we have to, committed to what we're gonna do by December 31st of, I believe it's 2025, and whatever we're gonna do, we need to have it done by December 31st, 2026.

I believe those are the right years.

- What issues related to ARPA funding have come before you and your committee?

- Oh, how much of it's gonna be social spending, how much of it is gonna be infrastructure spending, that's always a big one.

How much of it is gonna be healthcare versus water and sewer, those kind of questions, but, again, I think the House appropriations committee and the Senate appropriations committee now, and in the prior sessions, where we're working on that ARPA money, pretty quickly came to the conclusion, it's one-time money, let's put it into one-time projects, let's fix as many water and sewer lines as we can.

Let's build as many, help as many healthcare facilities with their capital construction as we can.

That's the lion's share of it, and then I think that was a wise decision.

- Some of that money, it's been determined, can be saved, correct?

But at the end, the general intention was that it should be spent.

I mean we have a pretty simplistic way of putting it, but would, how do you see that?

- Yeah, so I think the, this ARPA bill is tremendously complex.

Every time Washington starts printing money in trillion-dollar increments, there's always a lot of strings attached to it.

So one part of it said if you had a big downturn, that might have been the first bill, the CARES bill.

You're entitled to, where you were particularly hard-hit, like in the health services, to make up losses there, and so we did, you know, put some of that money there and money we otherwise would've spent, we were able to deploy elsewhere, hopefully to savings.

That's about the shortest explanation I can come up with.

- Understand, it's something, it's gonna be, it'll be something I'll ask you again next year, the same question, I'll be, still be on this.

Now you're a legislator with interest besides your committee chairmanship.

Did you sponsor bills this year personally, and if, how did they fare?

- Well, I did sponsor a few personally.

Because of the tremendous number of appropriations bills we had, particularly, trying to put this reserve policy into place, I tried not to be prime on any bills.

So I signed on to quite a few bills that I felt strong about.

One that I think is interesting is fixing our local preemption law.

I was primary on that one, and it's a problem with our preemption law.

The way the law is supposed to work is only the state says where you may or may not have a firearm, and that's logical.

I mean, you don't want to be in Riverton, and then drive to Casper and find out, all of a sudden, Riverton lets you have a concealed carry but Casper doesn't.

So the state is supposed to be the only one.

Well, there's this just odd thing that happened, where it turns out that the state has preempted only for firearms manufactured in Wyoming.

(chuckles) So, (chuckles) so it's a real simple bill to fix that, but it was an important bill.

Another bill, I'm not even on, and that was, I was approached by a deacon that said, "You know, during COVID, I couldn't get into the hospital because we weren't essential healthcare workers."

- Interesting.

- And I have personal experience with that.

My father was in the hospital.

We couldn't get a priest in to see him, you know?

You want him to have last rites.

Well, thank God he was able to come home long enough that, you know, he was able to die surrounded by family, and he was able to receive last rites, and so, what he asked is, "Could we have a statute that declares clergy as essential healthcare workers?"

And that bill is, we're moving right along.

I worked with the hospital association to make sure that it was, they were comfortable with it, and then, I passed it off to somebody else, that's Representative Abby Angelos'.

She's a freshman and she's in the lead on that.

Her father's a pastor, and she's doing a heck of a job on it.

I'm not even on the bill, but that's kind of the way it works sometimes.

- Lots of first-year lawmakers, especially in the House.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it's important, I'm would think, from your point of view as a more experienced legislator, as a committee chairman, to have the newcomers get some experience as soon as it's practical for them to do.

- We try to build a culture on the Senate side, where we welcome everybody regardless of their ideology or their registration, try to get 'em trained up, try to get them as much experience as possible.

One of the responsibilities of leadership is succession.

So you've gotta make sure that the new people are up to speed just as quickly as possible, and it makes for a better session too.

The other bill that, just one other bill I wanna mention is property tax, which is a very important topic, and I was afraid that property tax might fail because there were so many bills running around, and I worked very hard on one bill that I just, I ran into some constitutional concerns, that I just couldn't get there, so I had to drop that one, and I was in front of the Buffalo town council, giving a legislative update, and a fellow there, Mike Madden, who used to be in the legislature and is trained as an economist, said, "You know, just look at the percentage of assessment.

That's 9.5 on a house.

You know what percentage of your assessed value, just drop that down so that you can make up, you know, this huge run-up in property tax value, it's very simple."

So I carried that to Bob Biteman, who's chair of the revenue committee, and he's moving that right along.

It got through the Senate.

Now there's one wrinkle on that, which is, there are some areas that did not have a run-up in their property taxes.

So for them, if you say we're gonna go from 9 1/2 percent to 8 1/2 percent, as a percentage of assessed valuation, that's a real cut, that's a real cut for some areas.

So we had to put money into the budget that would backfill some of those areas, so it essentially says, if you went up like this, you're not gonna get any backfill, but if you're gonna actually go down, we're gonna bring you back to even.

- Now would that be a one-time correction, so to speak, or is that intended to be ongoing?

- We had to, we had, to get the bill through the Senate, as I recall, we had to sunset it.

So it was a three-year relief bill, and the backfill, similarly, would be a three-year relief bill.

- Well, as the last three years have shown, you never know what's gonna happen, and it could be addressed again if... - Well, and the thing about a sunset date is, you know, once you give somebody a, this is what my hope is, but the sentiment will be, let's keep that tax cut in place.

That's what my hope is.

- Yes, and if there's a different sentiment, you'll deal with that.

- Exactly, see what comes at that time.

- Session or what happens in each session.

And a bill that got some attention ahead of the session, now it's got some more just this week, has to do with the general term of crossover voting, and what's happened is it appeared to have failed, it's been revived and then put into a different committee from the original one that heard it, which is not a common thing to do, but is within the rules of the body, and you have some interest in that bill as well.

Tell us about that.

- Well, that bill has failed, I can't, I don't know how many times, and I've worked with one of my fellow senators, Bo Biteman from Sheridan, on that bill as well, and so, by way of background, in Wyoming, on a primary election, regardless of whether you're registered as a Republican or a Democrat, you can walk in and say, "I wanna vote in the Republican primary.

I've been a Democrat all my life, but I wanna vote in the Republican primary," or, "I wanna vote in the Democratic primary, even though I've been a Republican all my life."

It's very unusual that you can do that.

So this bill said, once the candidates have filed, whatever you're registered as, that's the primary ballot you're gonna get.

So the idea is to try and avoid game-playing where, you know, typically, in Wyoming, the feeling by some is that Democrats cross over to vote in Republican primaries and can distort the result.

So this bill initially was referred to one committee where it was, where it died, and there was a number of people, Republicans, myself included, that said, "You know, we'd like to get that bill a shot.

We really wanna revive it," so it- - By giving it a shot, you need, at least get it on the floor.

- Get it back out onto the floor for debate, for vote, and so it's a move that requires, you're actually recalling the bill from that committee.

It was assigned there initially, now you're gonna recall it back out to the floor, and that takes one senator to nominate, to make the motion, that was Larry Hicks, it takes two more to second it, and that was myself and Bo Biteman of Sheridan, and then off we go, we voted, and the vote was, let's recall it from that committee.

Then you, I mean this is a lot of inside baseball, but it's, you know, then you had to make a motion to reassign it to another committee, which, in this case, was Bo Biteman's revenue committee, where, you know, we knew that they'd be able to report it out to the floor.

So I'm looking forward to that coming out and having a debate.

Now, so just, I have some mixed feelings about the crossover bill.

I mean, for some people's real article of faith, I'm gonna support it, I think it's worth a shot, but I've had people tell me, "You may get some unintended consequences," 'cause you may have a lot of Democrats say, "Well, if I can't go in an election day and get a Republican ballot, I'll just register as a Republican."

So that you may, that's not the intent of it, but somebody said, "You may get a whole heck of a lot more Democrats registering as Republicans permanently than you're really planning on."

So I hope that doesn't happen, but I think the crossover bill's worth it, worth a shot.

- Well, I guess, in one way, the Republicans claiming to be the big tent party, this would be one way, at least, to add some numbers.

(Dave laughs) Clearly, in Wyoming, a lot of people have done that.

- Yeah, and- - I think they're more, the number of Democrats that could be counted on voter roles shrank dramatically, and that the feeling is that even in Wyoming, there are probably more Democrats than that small number- - I had a real good friend, I have a real good friend, he's a wonderful guy, he's older than me, and you'd have coffee, and you'd hear him talk, and I'd say, "Are you a Democrat?"

He goes, "I'm a registered Republican, been registered Republican for 25 years."

I thought, "What, that doesn't sound right."

I actually went and looked, and he is a registered Republican.

I went back to him, I said, "I listen to you, you're not Republican.

I mean you're an Obama Democrat," and he goes, "I just got tired of going in the voting booth and there's nobody to vote for."

- Well, I've heard the same thing.

If you wanna participate in elections in Wyoming, oftentimes, the Republican primary is really the only place to do it.

For a candidate, now they're non-partisan.

- [Dave] Yeah, he told me, "Sometimes, you get a Democratic ballot, and there's one or two offices, that's it."

- Yeah, yeah.

So, it's interesting, and of course, what a, I presume what a candidate could do would be to just announce ahead of the filing period, say, "I'm gonna run for this," and if they're wanting this kind of crossover votes, they register now, or so, I mean, there are gonna be ways to accommodate it.

- Yeah.

- Why is it important to you or to people who want to prevent this?

The example that's used often is the recent US House race between Liz Cheney and Harriet Hageman, that Cheney got a lot of crossover Democrats voting for her.

It was still a 70/30 margin.

- Yeah.

- So is it looking ahead to races that might be closer, is that one of the issues?

- You know, the crossover thing got legs well before the Liz Cheney election, and as you say, it didn't make any difference in that election, but there were prior elections where folks felt, primarily, very conservative people, that perhaps it had been a margin of difference.

I haven't seen numbers that justify that, but I still, I think it's worthwhile to say you really shouldn't be able to show up on election day and decide you're gonna switch parties that day, and I know there's people that feel very strongly the other way, and I, believe me, I've heard from 'em, but I feel like, you know, once the filing period starts, whatever you're registered as, that's the way you ought to vote.

- Other bills that have been of high interest to you or that you think could become hot topics, interesting topics during the interim.

Because we're hearing this year, for whatever reason, I don't want to delve into that too much, that there're always hundreds and hundreds of bills that come up, and it seems, at least reports early were, that fewer of them are managing to work their way through, particularly in the House, perhaps owing to the fact there are just lots of new members there, and it slows the process down a little bit.

Interim topics that you imagine coming up.

A bill that fails isn't necessarily a bad bill, it's just not ready or there wasn't time.

- Well, there's a topic, and I'll lay it out there, and it's not gonna endear me to a lot of people.

- Okay.

- But that's our state pensions.

I mean, the Pew Research organization says we have between a 2 and a 2 1/2 billion dollar unfunded pension liability.

That's huge, and the last session, we tried to run a bill that would fix that, have state employees pay a little more, the state pay a little more, and it just, email lit up, and it just went down, just went down in flames, but something's gotta be done.

- [Steve] And that's gonna take some time.

- Yeah, it's gonna take some time, so we tried it again this year.

Since there's so much money, we said, "Okay, everybody just got an 8% raise and a 7% raise, let's take half a percent of that, and the state put another half percent, 1%, to try and begin make these plans a little bit more solvent.

That went down in the House, and, you know, there was a lot of discussion about whether we would've tried that again, myself and Bob Nicholas, the House committee chair, and I said, "Bob, I'm tired of catching spears."

You know, I took a, I heard from a lot of state employees that they didn't like the idea of having to kick in a little bit more, and I know this one fellow, he's young and he kind of chewed me out, and I said, "Well, you know what, by the time you try to collect your pension, I'll be dead, so good luck with that."

I mean, I was trying to do the right thing, but he didn't know.

You know, the word is not out that those pensions are underfunded.

- What is the liability issue that you're talking about?

I mean, what could the state, for example, be liable for?

We've promised this amount, and we haven't delivered, is that what you're talking about?

- Yeah, that's right, we've promised X and, you know, what's been put away, socked away and what's coming in is less than X, and so it's, you know, how do we get there to where it's solvent?

And you see other states that, when that bill comes due, I mean, look at Illinois and California, some of those other states, they're floating debt.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- California floating debt to try and buy themselves out of that, it's just a terrible situation.

- [Steve] Which we can't really do in Wyoming.

- We can't do.

- Don't want to, and in some ways, under state law, we're not permitted to.

- And so, I think that's an important conversation to have.

We've tried previously on appropriations committee to get that word out, but somehow, the word doesn't really get out until you actually have a bill where people see, they're asking me to contribute a little bit more to my pension, and then they email their legislators, they call their legislators, and all of a sudden, the support just disappears like the morning mist.

- Sometimes, it takes a crisis to finally get action on something one way or the other, doesn't it?

- [Dave] Sadly, sadly.

- Not the great way to do it.

- No.

- Now you wanna plan for it, but it happens.

- Yeah, unfortunately, that's true.

Like I told that young fellow, I said, "You know, by the time you want your pension, I may not be around."

- Yeah.

- I just was trying to do the right thing.

So we tried to do the right thing again this session, and at some point, you can see where legislators just said, (scoffs) "Just give up your hand, you know, throw up your hands, you know, and if we can't fix it, good luck."

- Every session, even by definition, this is the general session, I've asked other guests on the show about this as well.

The even-numbered years are supposed to be the budget session.

Every session's a budget session now, isn't it too, I've said.

- It sure seems that way, doesn't it?

This is a, during the 40-day session, and a lot of people don't understand, we're a part-time legislature, we're a citizen legislature.

Like you say, we can meet 60 days in every two-year period.

- Do you have an office, for example, personally?

- I have a personal office.

- In your, in the Capitol?

- Oh, oh, yeah, I do have a little- - As a chairman, you do.

- Yeah, as a chairman, I have a little room.

No- - Your office is your?

- Your office is this desk, and that's pretty much it, and you don't have staff, you know, where you go some of these other states, and a state representative will have two or three people working for 'em full-time, and they'll be a full-time state legislator.

None of that is true here.

And so, where are we going with that, Steve?

- Part-time legislature.

- Oh, that every session's a budget session.

- Budget session, yeah.

- So, in theory, in the off years, we're supposed to just do a supplemental budget, and in theory, the supplemental's just supposed to be for really dire needs and emergencies.

Hadn't been that way for quite some time.

- That's the year we're in this year, yeah.

- Yeah, we're in a supplemental session, but, you know, you wouldn't know it.

- Yeah, so.

- Well, and then sometimes, that's very necessary.

You know, when the economy collapsed and the revenue collapsed, we came in on a supplemental with chainsaws and axes.

- Yeah.

- We had to cut that budget, we had no choice, and that was a pretty brutal session.

- And then things can change rapidly, not just with the upturn in our standard revenue streams for the state, but with this, the federal money that's unexpectedly came our way as well.

You couldn't, you had to do another big budgeting process.

- Isn't it amazing how many times the obituary's been written for the energy industry, and still, we;re in there punching, and it's just really ironic, you have an administration wants to shut down fossil fuels.

That and the war in Ukraine's created this shortage, which has driven the prices up, which has resulted in this windfall, plus the money the federal government keeps printing, which is spooky in itself because I'm of a generation, and you are as well, that remembers inflation.

I can remember when the prime rate, the rate at which the best borrowers can borrow, was 21%.

That's a credit card rate now, and that all comes from too much federal spending, so it's, and now inflation's back, it's... - My first home mortgage rate, 1987, 10 1/4 percent for my house, and we were glad to get it.

- Was that the WCDA?

- No.

- No.

- It wasn't.

- Yeah, by the time we came along, it was a little bit before that, it was a WCDA first-time home buyer.

- [Steve] Right.

- That got our interest rate down to the bargain rate of 14 7/8.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- I've never forgotten that as long as I live.

That's a bargain rate for your- - People have no idea.

- Yeah, and so you have two generations that have grown up not knowing what inflation is.

- Interesting, interesting.

Senator Dave Kinskey, I thank you for being with us on "Capitol Outlook."

You've provided lots of behind-the-scenes, inside, practical observations tending toward your experience as both a business person, a mayor, a lawmaker as well.

- Well, I appreciate the opportunity.

I hope at least 80% of what I told you is accurate.

(laughs) - Good, well that's, we'll fact-check it all, and I'll give you that calculation.

Thanks again for being with us.

Good luck with the rest of the session.

- Thank you very much, and it's a pleasure being here.

- Thanks.

(lively music) One of the largest public works projects of its type ever conceived in Wyoming is now complete.

The reimagined Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston and the expanded Wyoming Life Resource Center in Lander were the combined recipients of nearly $200 million in funding, as the state made a big investment in improving physical, mental, and behavioral health in Wyoming, and the Wyoming legislature played a huge role.

At the dedication ceremony for the Wyoming Life Resource Center expansion and renovation in Lander late last year, State Representative Lloyd Larsen spoke frankly about the accomplishments.

- Folks, this is a big dang deal to be here and to have this facility finally completed.

- Referring to an interview he recorded with Representative Bob Nicholas for a coming edition of "Wyoming Chronicle," Representative Larsen spoke to a tiny moment at the Capitol years ago that led to big developments later.

- Had an interview earlier Bob and I did with PBS, and I was telling Steve that, in this project, there's been critical points kind of in this campaign that's established history, and it really did start with Senator Dockstader, and I wished our high school kids were still here 'cause you never know just what one the act will do.

So in a appropriations committee meeting, where our Department of Health director was suggesting that we need to do a study and look at our state health facilities because they were in disrepair, Chairman Bebout of the, Senator Bebout chaired that committee, and they all listened and they acknowledged what the director said, and then just kind of says, "Okay, time for a break."

And Senator Dockstader said, "No, no, no, no," he says, "we've got this director, our director of health, that says we really need to do something," and just that one act, had he not done that, would've resulted in none of this taking place.

As we moved along a couple years later, as we got a study done, and we had had repeated conversations on closing this facility, and that study that was done, we was in a committee meeting one night, and the chairman of the labor and health committee had a bill to close the facility, but because we had that study, we was able to prove to her that that was not, she couldn't, that that was not only a bad idea, that also, we wouldn't support it because it would impact Wyoming negatively.

- Larsen stressed that any public works project requiring more than a decade to complete, and scores of millions of dollars to fund, required two essential elements, commitment and continuity, even as the names and faces change.

- It's interesting that we had two governors, one that served as treasurer when the other governor served, that understood the need to get this done, and the ability for those two governors to work with legislature, which is not an easy task, even though we're warm and fuzzy and very cooperative in all things, but on this issue, on this issue, they have been able to navigate and direct this and keep us focused on getting these things done, another strategic point.

- One of those two governors, Mark Gordon, recently was inaugurated for his second term.

In Lander, he traced the timeline for the revitalization of the Life Resource Center to a time years before he took office, noting the diligence of several Wyoming lawmakers who still are at the Capitol today.

- I think it was probably back in 2014, and I see Senator Case back there, I think Senator Case, you sort of led some of the first and initial conversations about the Life Resource Center, what it needed to do, and then I know Representative Larsen, Representative Nicholas, many others, President Dockstader, Senator Baldwin, I know you've been very much a part of this as well.

You started the conversations back then that led to rethinking how we were gonna provide care at this facility, and for the community of Lander, the resources that were here, from the pool to other aspects of it, were always something that was carried forward in that thinking.

- Governor Gordon emphasized that the big investment in the two state facilities was a foundational step in the state's recommitment to providing care for some of Wyoming's most vulnerable citizens.

- Really, Wyoming took a lead when we said that we're gonna rethink how we provide mental health care.

We're gonna take our Wyoming State Hospital, and we're gonna repurpose it, where we're gonna rethink how it works, and then we're gonna take and make sure that our state hospital and our Life Resource Center come together.

So this Life Resource Center will have an intermediate care facility.

It is also a brand new nursing home, skilled nursing facility to better serve its priority populations.

This facility will have a hundred beds and a greenhouse concept, so it feels less like an institution and more like a home.

We're talking about, really, one system of continuous care all the way through.

Both facilities will serve as a safety net with clients in the private sector is either unable, or unwilling, sadly, to accept.

Whether these citizens need care due to intellectual disabilities, brain injuries, or mental illness, they deserve the best care and facilities we can provide, and today, we are looking and we have the opportunity to tour the very best facilities that we can provide.

- Everyone involved in the redevelopment of the Life Resource Center knew it would be a lengthy job, but unexpected developments made it even longer.

- This was a long project, as people have addressed.

There were many surprises.

I remember Representative Larsen coming in with a coffee can full of some substance that he said, "This is dangerous, and it's all over the place out here.

It's gonna hold us back on the construction of this."

The people of Lander, community of Lander, Representative Larsen kind of sitting on top of that, got ahead of it, and we found ways to solve it using our resources here in the state.

- Several times during the ceremony, speakers noted the extraordinary collaboration and cooperation of the state's construction agencies.

Two names that stood out, Jerry Vincent, director of the Wyoming State Construction Department.

and Billy Holmes, the project manager.

- It was a slow process, as you know, but Jerry, thank you for stepping in and helping to guide this, and lastly, really, the hero of the project and arriving here today, and maybe Billy is the reason that we all know that this day was gonna be as beautiful as it is, was because Billy Holmes was here to shepherd that project through many, many constructions.

I have here my coin.

This is the coin that was designed by Staff Sergeant Whitley of our National Guard.

On this coin, on the outside, are 10 buffalo depicting the 10 principles of the Code of the West.

One of those is to ride for the brand.

My brands are on the outside of that coin.

You have always ridden for the brand, and I thank you for that, and I want to present this coin to you, Billy.

(audience applauding and cheering) (audience applauding continues) - In a separate interview with Representative Larsen and Representative Bob Nicholas, both noted that the Wyoming Life Resource Center shows Wyoming at its best.

- This project is a demonstration of the good that the legislature can do, and our executive branch, to make the world a better place and fulfill the basic functions of government that we're supposed to do as legislators, and it gives us the opportunity to be part of the community to, you know, and to do good things, and so everyone is a better individual, we're a better community, and we're a better state.

- A reminder, that last remark from Representative Nicholas is part of a larger interview we'll be presenting in the future as a full installment of "Wyoming Chronicle."

As for "Capitol Outlook," that's it for this week's edition.

Join us again next week.

(lively music) - [Announcer 1] 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.

- [Announcer 2] And by the members of Wyoming PBS.

Thank you for your support.