- The Wyoming Legislature passed hundreds of bills this year in the 68th Wyoming Legislature's General Session.

Governor Mark Gordon, our guest this week on "Capitol Outlook" vetoed some of those bills and the legislature responded by overriding some of those vetoes.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

Join us for "Capitol Outlook".

(bright music) - [Announcer] Programming on Wyoming PBS is brought to you in part by Wyoming Humanities, enhancing the Wyoming narrative to engage communities with grants and programs across Wyoming for more than 50 years.

We proudly support Wyoming PBS.

- Governor Gordon, thanks for being with us on "Capitol Outlook".

You've sort of bookended our season.

You were with us here right before the session started.

We were over at the Old Governor's Mansion that day, and here we are on what's scheduled to be the final day of the session.

You never can quite tell what's your sense of how things have gone from a close seat from the outside looking in?

(Mark laughing) - Yeah, well, Steve, thanks.

You know, it's been a fairly tumultuous session in a lot of ways- - [Steve] Which we kind of thought it might be.

- Yeah, yeah.

You'll remember when I opened, I said, from the budgetary standpoint, you know, extraordinary emergency, you know, items that are unanticipated like inflation were the things that really needed to be solved.

I made a recommendation about a fire budget and also a restoration fund that got pretty well dismantled.

And then, you know, ultimately that budget discussion kind of fell apart towards the end.

So, I think that speaks a little bit to lack of experience maybe to some degree, perhaps a lack of sort of the sense of urgency about some of these things, we're about to come into spring, we don't know exactly with the way National politics are faring now either, you know, what that means for the fire season going ahead.

This legislature came in with a pretty solid block of Freedom Caucus, folks that seem to have a kind of a lock on how they would vote one way or another.

And to some degree I think that probably muddied the waters a bit.

Not clear that people were paying as much attention to their constituents.

They all felt like they had a mandate here.

They talked a lot about that.

And I think that's actually represented in the fact that normally about 40% of the bills that have been worked on in interim passed this year, it's about 20%.

- The big operating state budget designed to cover two years known as the biennium, that gets passed last year and has to be passed by law again next year.

The supplemental budget based on spending recommendations that you've made doesn't have to be passed.

And in fact, this year for the first time in my memory, maybe I'm not remembering a time in the past, but I've been watching the legislature for a long time longer than most people.

And this is always how it's been done.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- This year the legislature didn't do that.

And there's posturing going on for both sides as there always is.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You're not a mind reader.

You're not a legislator, but paying close attention to it.

And these were some priorities that meant a lot to you.

Why do you think that happened?

Do you have an opinion?

- Well, I think, Steve, the sort of, to a degree, I think the handwriting, we started seeing a sort of fractiousness of the legislature a year ago.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And we in the office decided that it would be important to have a budget that could survive two sessions.

So, we fully anticipated that the budget, supplemental budget negotiations could break down.

So, I think the state is gonna be for the most part in a pretty good place.

What we have to worry about is if we have a fire season, that we expended everything we had, nobody anticipated that we would have 870,000 acres burn, that we'd spend, you know, over $50 million trying to protect homes and houses.

- $50 million?

- Yeah.

- That's real money.

- That is, that is.

So, you know, if we have a bad fire season, something like that, a little bit unclear exactly how we're going to address that.

'Cause we really rely on our local communities.

Wyoming doesn't have a professional firefighting force.

We have sort of a coordinating aspect and we do have up in the Conservation Camp, you know, we have a small contingent of firefighters there.

But we really do rely on those local, and this year it's gonna be really interesting 'cause of course one of the big achievements this year was the 25% reduction in property tax.

That's going to hit those local communities.

Just as the four bills that I signed last year on property tax relief will as well.

I think this session you heard a lot from firefighters and others about, what are the consequences of those gonna be?

Of course, most of the benefit of that accrues to Teton County 'cause that's where the wealthiest people live.

There is gonna be a lot of pain on Platte County, on Hot Springs County, on, you know, Niobrara, Goshen and those counties.

So, I think, you know, it's a time to sort of come to Jesus and understand exactly what has happened in this frenzy.

- What explanations for not embracing at least most of the firefighting requests that you made, were you hearing, and what could be, what's the rationale I wonder for saying we don't need this?

- Well, I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding at the beginning.

You know, these fires were enormous.

It's interesting 'cause I had crews from Kaycee that went out to help fight the fire, the House Draw fire when it started, and it burned all the way up to Buffalo across a number of ranches.

And so our approach was to say, you know, this is sort of a landscape scale fire.

And if you look that the Constitution, the Flat Rock, the Remington, all of these were multi landowners.

A lot of 'em were also state properties, not so much federal, which is sort of interesting unlike what's happened in the past where we have had more federal engagement.

So, that's not gonna have any federal kind of reimbursement that's all on the state and private landowners.

But I think the way we talked about it was at a landscape scale, when you have that kind of burn, the most likely recovery is gonna come from invasives like cheatgrass.

Which, you know, as well as I do- - I've seen it elsewhere.

- When it's dry, it's like gasoline.

And so our hope was to be able to get ahead of that.

I don't think we articulated that ambition as maybe as well as we could have.

Because what the conversation devolved into was, why are we giving individual landowners a leg up?

Why are we handing out money to individual landowners?

We should have 'em make a loan.

- There was talk when it became clear and then was reiterated that the budget bill was not gonna pass.

That individual pieces of your supplemental budget might be wedged into other bills, sort of in a piecemeal way.

We can amend this bill to include part of this and this one to include part of that.

Is any of that happening or how optimistic are you that some of your priorities will survive?

- Yeah, some of that is happening, it's just sloppy budgeting.

And that's what I talk about, about sort of the not really ready for prime time legislating that we've seen this year.

And it is, and I think it's unfortunate because when we look at all the property tax exemptions has happened, for example, I don't think we have a sense of what the cumulative impact is going to be.

- You mentioned that not quite so many, not so many bills passed this year as typically due, but still a lot have, you've done a lot of bill signing.

- Oh, yeah.

- When you get a bill, you have several options and one of 'em is to have a signing ceremony with something that you feel strongly about, Field been a real accomplishment, make a little statement at the time.

There are times you just sign a bunch of bills that don't have quite as much pop to them, I guess we might say.

Sometimes you can let a bill just sit on your desk for a while.

It's not exactly bringing endorsement, but you'd let it become law.

And sometimes you veto bills, which you did have done a few times already this year might still do again.

What's your general rationale in thinking, well, I don't know if I'm going to sign this bill.

In fact I might veto it.

How do you, what overall approach do you bring to that?

- Yeah, well, and I think on the bills that I let sit or become law without my signature, I always try to explain why I'm doing that.

And in that sense, what I've always tried to say is, look, I think this bill's okay, but it has some weaknesses and I hope you work on that.

And the legislature come back generally in the past and try to address those things.

When a bill is vetoed, we try to explain what that is, and there's a rationale that we go through.

Is it constitutional?

Is it gonna cost the state more money?

Does it interfere with local control?

Does it interfere with personal or property rights?

That those things are really, you know, pretty sacred to me.

Does it infringe on the state's financial or fiscal viability going forward?

There's been a few bills charter expansion this year, for example, that I don't think we have any concept about what that burden is gonna be.

And in particular, one of the challenges is we had this devastating loss in the courts saying that we haven't been funding our schools.

So, now we're adding a bunch of schools to that, which is gonna increase that price, but we don't know what that's gonna be and yet we've committed to doing that.

And that's one of the things I think this legislature's really struggled with.

This legislature and the legislature over the last couple of years has not been able to allow local control.

They haven't, you know, on gaming for example, that there was a cry about, how do we get a little bit more order about how these, we don't necessarily dislike them, but they're populating everywhere and taking out businesses and how do we get a little bit more local control?

And that's a little bit what I think they've done with the Charter Schools as well.

- I remember when Governor Mead was first running, he came to our newspaper office at the time when I interviewed him.

And one of the things I said to him was, something that just, based on, just on my experience, the way you and Cheyenne talk about Washington, that's the way a lot of people in Washington County feel about Cheyenne too.

That the same sort of heavy handedness- - [Mark] Yeah.

- That label and that suspicion can be applied to state government.

- You know, I've had the theory for some time that the higher you get in elected office, the more you sort of presume that you know what everybody wants or needs, which is I think the big disease in Washington.

- I'm not elected, I must be an expert.

- Right, and it is, you know, no one's immune from it.

I think that's what we see in D.C., I think that's what we here at the legislature.

I think the most stunning example of that was the realignment of gun-free zones.

That instead of, you know, places like Park County and Uinta, where they had put in policies for the schools, for example, the legislature sought to just do that on their own over the tops of school boards and others, and retained that ability to themselves.

I of course kind of pushed back on that and said, you know, we've worked over a year, we have policies here that could have been signed early in the session that allowed for people to carry during the session.

We worked very hard on it.

A lot of commentary, a lot of people, but that was overlooked by the legislature in their great wisdom.

- A bill that you did veto had to do with abortion restrictions that would've made it more difficult serving to discourage women from getting an abortion related to a separate medical procedure that would've been required beforehand.

And you vetoed it and gave us specific reason for why I don't think anyone's painting you as pro-abortion- - No.

- By any means.

- No.

- But in this particular case, you saw a problem that you thought could create further problems down the line.

- Yeah, and I'll get to that in a second.

Yeah, you know, let's sort of look at that, because I do think the state's changed over the last few years.

Wyoming had a pretty effective abortion law.

It was about viability, been tried to attest it a couple of times.

That was repealed by the Trigger Bill, which was brought in place by the Roe v. Wade decision.

I of course had signed that bill.

So, that repealed the previous bill.

That was immediately challenged in court.

- Where it continues to languish.

- Where it continues to languish.

There was another bill that came later, every chemical abortion bill, but you know, that bill is a very complete bill.

And this session, of course, the last session, there was a bill that was brought by Representative Lolly that I supported that said, if you're gonna be in abortion clinic, you have to, you know, adhere to certain medical procedures.

So, I signed that bill this year when it was clean because I didn't want it to get wrapped into that continuing long-term case that really has taken a lot of the regulation off abortion- - Interesting.

- In Wyoming.

We have a, I mean, it's very upsetting to me that we see an increase in abortion and we should be controlling it, you know, so this year there was a bill that was designed to try to put another staunch on it.

It's already been challenged.

We'll see what happens with an injunction relief on it.

But the specific procedure on that was what was, what I consider to be a very invasive procedure.

And it's a way of detecting early heartbeat.

But particularly the issue for me is that the bill didn't have exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

So, in the case of, and it's, you know, it's incredibly unfortunate that we would even have rape for young children or incest, but it happens.

And so you've got somebody who's already traumatized and then you're gonna put them through a procedure that's essentially the same thing that's just happened to 'em, it's just with folks in white coats.

If you're of a certain age, that's traumatizing.

And so I said from my standpoint that that's a bridge too far.

The legislature ultimately decided that it wasn't.

And you know, I also made the plea as I did at the beginning of the session, that I think one of the most important things we can do to encourage mothers to have babies is to make it easier for them to have babies, and to be able to support them afterwards.

You know, one of the calls I made in you know, my state of the state was we're losing OB care.

We need to, you know, be able to be more competitive so we can retain some of that OB care in Wyoming where we have so many Medicaid births anyway and the legislator failed to do that.

So, they're really much more interested in sort of imposing penalties than they are encouraging life.

And as a Christian, I am much more about encouraging life.

We spoke off camera for a few minutes and talked a little bit about your eyes on Washington, as I think a lot of people's eyes are right now.

It's, as Senator Driscoll put it here a couple of weeks ago, this is a transformation that at the very least must be called disruptive, is how he put it.

(Mark chuckles) That's the- - Yeah.

- The word he applied, and it's hard to know.

It makes it more difficult, I presume to know how to step forward as the executive, as the legislature, as a state in general.

Any general thoughts on that?

How are you lining that out in your mind?

- Well, I think we have a number of good friends in this new administration.

We obviously have a, you know, a strong presence with both our senators and our congresswoman.

So, I feel that we have a good representation there.

Former Governor, now Secretary Burgum is a close personal friend.

Kathleen Sgamma, Director of BLM, also a good friend.

Lee Zeldin, a very good friend of, Cynthia Lummis is good friend of mine.

You look at Chris Wright, he does business in Wyoming.

Great, great experience.

So, I, you know, I, my sense is we are in a good position to be able to represent the state's interests.

But I'd back up a little bit.

I remember being asked a couple of years ago to go down with Governor Polis, and- - This is in Colorado?

- Yeah, in Colorado to have a forum with a bunch of legislators from D.C., and the question was, you know, what can we do for you?

And my answer, which was I wasn't being flipped, it just was on the top of my head.

I said, leave us alone.

And I think Wyoming has always been able to mind its own affairs.

In fact, that's one of the things that's most exciting, I think about this administration, is finally we'll have an administration that respects what the states think.

- When I spoke to you last, we were at the Old Governor's Mansion, it was around Christmas time, a lot of fun being there.

And you gave a sort of a cryptic answer almost offhand to a question that I had asked.

And it made me think about something that since then has come up in other news coverage and is being talked about a little bit more.

A year from now is an election year, 2026, and a year from now, we'll be, you know, candidacy will be talked about.

We had an interview just last week with Kristi Racines, and she said on camera, I'm running for a third term.

- Yeah.

- [Steve] And maybe you knew that already.

It was was news to me.

- She's told me she loves the job.

- Yeah.

- So, not a surprise.

- And love to continue it.

The thing that occurred to me in December when you gave this, said a couple of words that made me think, hmm, I wonder if the Governor's contemplating this idea and it's, you've since acknowledged that you haven't ruled anything out in terms of your political future.

Sort of on this, I'm not asking you to make some kind of an announcement now, there'll be plenty of time for that.

And if you did it or didn't do it, there'd be a lot of coverage of it.

Sort of along the same lines of my question about how you apply your thought process to a veto, for example, what goes through your mind now as you consider what your political future might be a year or so from now?

- Well, Steve, sort of put that in reference to when I ran for Governor, I really did not want the office.

I felt that I was doing important work as treasurer.

I had had conversations with Senator Lummis about her potential to do that.

Senator Lummis and our friends and I had told her she would have my absolute support if she ran for Governor, and I would've loved to have that scenario.

When she stepped down, my concern was the state is gonna face a number of fiscal crises going forward.

And there are a lot of issues that we need to have leadership to try to address.

And I'm from Wyoming, so I don't feel comfortable talking about myself as I think people in Wyoming often do, but I felt I had experience, I had knowledge in the industries that were important, worked in oil and gas, they grew up on a ranch, et cetera, et cetera.

And so stepped forward eagerly and figured, you know, either you win or you lose and I won, and then, you know, kind of kept going forward.

I have always looked at this job as, what can I do for the state right now?

How can I make things better?

How can I try to put things on the right track?

And I've never really thought about, okay, what's good for me for election potential?

That just is foreign to me.

That's not the way I think people in Wyoming have traditionally looked at politics.

I think that's changing a little bit.

You know, I have three or four people that have already announced.

There's some people that are chattering and so on, let them do that.

I'm gonna focus exactly on what the job is, and when it comes time, if I feel I can make a difference in a positive way for the state, I'll consider it.

- So, here we are about to end a legislative session.

It's watching the legislature working with 'em.

That's only part of what the most overscheduled man in Wyoming has to do.

(Mark chuckles) But this is the time of year when you really are focusing on that a lot.

What would your recommendations be, do you think, in general or maybe even specifically of, for the legislature to do between now and the next time they convene in 2026?

- Well, they, you know, we talked a little bit, they've overridden many of my vetoes, but they've taken them up as interim topics.

So, Charter Schools, how do we get our arms around what that finance is gonna be?

The school question for the External Cost Adjustment, the so-called ECA, that's another issue that they're gonna have to come to grips with.

Fire funding, the budget, it's pretty clear to me that this new legislature wants a much diminished budget.

So, we'll be looking at how we can trim quite a bit out of this budget.

You know, we've done that before, Steve, and I just, for the people of Wyoming, that's gonna mean fewer services.

That's gonna mean less opportunity, less touch.

But that's a decision that I think voters made over the last couple years.

We're certainly responsive to that.

Otherwise, I think, you know, we've got a moment where we had kind of a curtain drawn over our ability to grow the resources that we've traditionally relied on by Washington.

That curtain is, it's not going away as quickly as I'd like it to, but it is going away.

There's a lot of, you may, we talked a little bit about the disruption nationally.

It's a little unclear for capital, how it's going to be deployed.

So, you know, the uptick for oil and gas exploration, coal mining, et cetera, et cetera, may take a little longer than people anticipate.

I feel very good about that.

But at the end of the day, one of the greatest disappointments in this legislation session for me is the fact that people are still trying to fight the Biden administration, which is gone, and they're not embracing what the opportunities are for Wyoming going forward in nuclear, in coal, in oil and gas.

They'll all talk about it, but they won't support those efforts.

And that's something that I hope that the legislature can get its head on straight and realize that this is the time when Wyoming really can make a difference.

And from the other aspect, we talked a little bit earlier about the friends we have in D.C., this is also the time to put policies in place that we can then defend when ultimately things come back.

So, the ability for the states to lead on wildlife, on, you know, natural resources, those are the things that I really hope that we can work together and better than we have during the session.

- Governor Mark Gordon, thanks again for making time for us on what is always a busy time of year for you, and I know a busy day for you.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for being with us on "Capitol Outlook".

(bright music) This was our final installment of "Capitol Outlook" for the year, corresponding as usual with the conclusion of the Wyoming Legislative Session.

My thanks to Governor Mark Gordon and our other guests, House Speaker Chip Neiman, Senate President Bo Biteman, Senator Tara Nethercott, Representative Ivan Posey, State Representatives Tomi Strock and Ocean Andrew, Appropriations Chairman John Bear, State Senator Curt Meier, State Senator Ogden Driskill, and State Representative Trey Sherwood.

Matt Wright has been my videographer for all nine installments of "Capitol Outlook" this season.

And the show got able assistance this year in Cheyenne from time to time as well.

From Murray Ritland, Steven McKnight, BJ Klophaus, Josh Williams and Francis Obikoya.

Our Production Manager is Kyle Nicholoff, and the CEO and General Manager of Wyoming PBS is Joanna Kail.

I'm Steve Peck, Senior Producer for Public Affairs.

New installments of "Wyoming Chronicle" begin in this time slot next week.

Thanks for watching "Capitol Outlook".

This is Wyoming PBS.

(bright music)