- I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS Governor Mark Gordon, now starting his eighth year in office.

Touts the WIP initiative or WIP for many valuable Wyoming projects, including making this robotics lab possible at Laramie County Community College.

We'll speak with the governor as the new season of Capital Outlook begins on Wyoming PBS.

Join us Governor Mark Gordon.

Welcome to our inaugural edition for the new season of Capital Outlook.

Thanks for being here as you've been many times, we always appreciate that there's, I've checked the state statutes.

There's no law that says you have to sit here with Wyoming PBS, but you do every year.

So welcome and thanks.

- Well, thank you Steve.

I always think this is a great program, an opportunity to really go deeper than just sort of the headline level.

So thank you for what you do.

- Let's begin with where we are.

We're in Cheyenne, which is nothing new here.

We're at Laramie County Community College and we're in a, a industrial laboratory setting that your office suggested because this setup that we're in came about because of a program that you started and promoted.

You take it from there.

- Okay.

Well, it was the Wyoming Innovation Partnership and - WIP - Yep.

We, we call it the WHIP initiative.

And, and it's in many of our community colleges, if not all of them.

And this one is pretty exciting because we really wanted to focus on getting the industries that we're gonna hire our graduates involved in what they're being educated with and for.

And so this is a bunch of robotics equipment.

Yeah.

Really state of the art.

And, and one of the reasons why we wanted to make that happen is we wanted to make sure our graduates had the most relevant education that they could coming out.

And the exciting thing to me was it took us three years to get kind of up and running, make sure people understood it, but, but over the last year, we've now handed it off to the private sector.

So, so it truly is engaged with the private sector, the, the education's meaningful, and then you look at what's going on here and it really is building the workforce that is gonna be, make Wyoming better than anywhere else.

- Well, one of the things I've enjoyed about my job is going around the state and again and again and again and again, I go someplace and I said, I had no idea something like this existed in Wyoming.

Yeah.

And I bet a lot of people don't.

It's, it's cool, it's high tech, it's state of the art, it's relevant.

And as you and your office thought and the business community thought so well worth doing.

- Absolutely.

And I'll tell you the other thing that, that we looked at, and to my knowledge, nobody else has really done that.

We, we said, okay, we wanna measure what the return on investment is.

'cause there's a certain amount of, you know, capital that comes from taxpayers that go into this.

Of course, we've talked about what industry wants and, and so we said, let's, how do we measure that?

Well, it turns out that is about a 690% return on investment over six years.

Now, some people might question that, but what I've said is, okay, if you're, if you're willing to criticize, what's your fix?

It's open source.

We want this to be a good measure.

And, and, and so rather than just say, oh, that's hogwash.

How do you make it better?

How do you make it relevant for both?

Because we really wanna make sure the industry understands the value of this, but also the people that really help fund our community colleges.

And to my knowledge, nobody's had, has actually done that before.

- The community colleges in Wyoming are just vital to the kind of economic development, looking to the future that everyone says needs to happen.

And I guess a step beyond this is figuring out how to keep the people who go through this program in Wyoming.

That's partly where the industry partners come in, correct?

- Yeah, that's exactly right.

We wanted to make sure that our community college education offerings were responsive to the needs of industry.

And, and we weren't just saying, here we're teaching this, you know, figure out how to use 'em.

We're we're saying, look, we're gonna work with you to make sure that you have the very best workforce you can.

Wyoming kids generally have a much better work ethic than anyone else.

Sure.

You know, quitting time isn't five, it's when the job is done.

That sort of thing.

And I've said I've always wanted to make sure that we have an ambitious workforce.

One that that is about problem solving.

One that is about making things work a little better.

And that's really the culture that's being instilled here.

- It's a program as well that is intended to outlast your term in office.

We're looking years down the road.

- Absolutely.

Right.

My, my interest here was not, here's a legacy of the Gordon administration.

My interest here was, here's just a better way to educate.

Over the last few years, there's been a real opportunity in Wyoming to really revolutionize how we go about education.

Yeah.

I read some time ago that people's favorite furniture is the, I they call it the Ikea effect.

It's the stuff they bought at IKEA and built themselves.

They may have all this other stuff, but the stuff they actually built themselves is what they care about.

And, and this is a program that Wyoming communities, community colleges have built themselves.

- A year ago we spoke at the historic Governor's mansion, which was a lot of fun.

I asked you a question then, and I'm gonna ask it again of you now, then we'll get it out of the way, which hadn't really been talked about too much at that time.

I asked if you were contemplating seeking a third term, and you said that you were, you were thinking about that years past the electoral landscape in Wyoming has become more defined and sort of changed.

And, and I don't think I've heard you say yet that you aren't gonna do that.

Where's, where's your thinking now a year after that?

Is that something that's still on the table?

Or how much are you willing to share here in, or the, the week before the legislative session starts?

- Yeah, you know, I haven't said anything about it largely 'cause I'm really focused on this budget.

I really wanna make sure that Wyoming moves forward.

That's, that's been my intent.

But, but I haven't ruled it out - Really.

- And, and there'll be time, you know, I I, I keep going back to the Wyoming I grew up in and you know this 'cause your family's been in politics for a while.

People never talked a year ahead or two years ahead.

- Isn't that strange to see how that's changed?

- Yeah, yeah.

You know, there wasn't a time for election and, and, and in all in due time.

- So, - Okay, well we're heading toward the biennial budget session of the legislature.

You submit a budget to the legislature, here's what I recommend.

- Right.

What - The governor recommends you do, they then pick it up and run with it, rip it to shreds, discuss it, twist it, change it, amend it, pass some of it, all those things.

And that's the process that's been going on and is about to go on actually during the session itself.

The budget making climate in the legislature in recent years.

I think it's fair to say it's just different from what it was - Yeah.

- Say compared to when you first came into - Office.

Yeah.

Two, two things about that.

When I first was elected as governor, yeah, of course I was dealing with a budget that was passed by the legislature, sort of under Governor Mead's recommendation.

So that supplemental budget was an opportunity to kind of think about what are the sort of points that we can make that sort of take it.

It was actually good to have that budget in place.

'cause you're new to the office.

I've been in the treasurer's office.

Yeah.

I was pretty confident that I had a good understanding and had soon learned that there was a lot more to, to learn.

And then we really made a strong effort to go back to that tradition of we have a budget and then, and then, which would've been our next year, that would've been 2020.

And we built it over 2019 the way we still do today.

We go to the, to the various departments and they make their recommendations, goes to our budget office, we talk about it, they make a presentation, I make my recommendations from from that.

And then that goes to the joint appropriations committee.

That first year, I think the budget process worked pretty well and, and people were confident that we had come the right distance.

We had made the point that it was gonna be like we do in the did in the past.

We have a budget, and then that next year we don't, you know, we're not gonna do a supplemental budget unless it's absolutely essential.

The problem when 2020 was on March 13th, COVID hit and we had all the shutdown, which then occasioned some, some big changes.

Huge dollars came in.

We needed to figure out what to do with them.

And then kind of carried over into the next year.

So two years ago we sat down, built a budget, and really had carried it through to last year where we did a supplemental budget.

That was only for the really important things getting back to that old tradition.

So it wasn't like a whole new budget.

That budget ultimately failed as you remember.

And, and so this year, really trying to get back to that old tradition.

'cause there's two things that I think are happening.

One is we do a budget every year, like you're saying.

Yeah.

Which is I think not the Wyoming way, not conservative and not the right thing to do.

But we also are trying to turn every session into a general session.

As you know, budget sessions were you, you have to have a two thirds vote for a non-budget and budget item.

- They're only half the length for one thing.

Yeah.

They're just not tied that.

- That's exactly right.

And, and so people are trying to bring these things in and I, I really, what I have always loved about Wyoming is that we were really disciplined both in the executive and the legislature on what the tasks were.

And I think this sort of gradual growth is not, is not what people in Wyoming really expect or, or hope.

So we really built this budget to be a full biennium budget knowing that the next administration may have to address some things, but we wanted to get that floor back to where it was.

- How come that change happened, do you think?

What's going on here?

- Well, I, I it's, I think there's, maybe this is how we count coup.

You know, it's, it's less, and I, I will say this, the joint appropriations committees I've dealt with in the past, both as treasurer and, and then as governor, there was a real understanding, you know, we're the appropriators, you're the executive, but we're gonna listen to you.

You know, we got the Amendment A passed and got it on the ballot be because we were able to explain why it was so important that the state could more broadly.

And we worked with the chairs more, more recently.

It's kind of like a power struggle.

You know, we, we we're more conservative than you and, and, and, and so we're not necessarily gonna, you know, try to work with you.

And it, it is, it's, it's a little bit disappointing to me because the chair on the house side a year ago said, you know, we're gonna work on school finance, big issue for this budget session, and if we actually make some progress, can we sit down with you and kind of walk through it?

So I was looking forward to that.

It's been crickets.

I haven't heard anything about that.

Now we've kind of watched what's going on and we'll see how it goes.

But I think it's a disappointment.

I think it's actually a disservice to Wyoming because that communication is important even though we respect our respective territories.

- A couple of specifics in the budget that I know you've expressed concern about, one is a plan and it's, and is Advance made some progress through the appropriations committee, which would defund the Wyoming Business Council and in fact under one iteration, even do away with it as a legal entity.

I think you just have expressed disagreement with that idea.

Where does that stand and how do you hope it comes out?

- Well, I think it's very shortsighted and, and I don't think it reflects a knowledge of the value.

It's been easy to sort of take shots.

But if you really take a look at what the business council's been able to do, you know, I I I know Weatherby, I think Brenda has written most of the legislators and said, here's what our payroll is, here's what we've brought to Wyoming.

We would not be here if, if, if, if it weren't for the business council.

I just saw her and Adam at the Shot Show in Las Vegas, the big trade show for firearms manufacturing.

- We have a, now remind us who you're speaking about here.

- Brenda, Brenda Weatherby, - And she is, - She's one of the owners of Weatherby Arms, which has moved to Sheridan, - Right.

- In a little business park that has a whole bunch of business council businesses there, like Vacu Tech and Ken and Enterprises and so on.

And, you know, we've got Gun Works over in Cody.

We've, there's just examples all around.

There's a guy in, in Casper who, in his off hours from Casper PD was building systems that work, that are now gaining traction for law enforcement to be able to carry all the paraphernalia they have.

And all of these things have kind of gotten a start under the aegis of of the business council.

And so I, I think it's just really shortsighted and, and I I say this with some historical perspective too, which I'll get to in just a second.

But when you go to the Shot Show, which is the number one sort of trade show, acres and acres of guns manufacturing, we've been able to bring industries in, we've been able to help industries like Thunder Beast here.

We'd be able to expand with our presence there.

And this year, because of that conversation, there's, there's a decided sort of like, is Wyoming still really interested in having us there?

And then in the case of of, of the Weatherbys, they were saying, look, we're getting offers from Georgia, from Tennessee, from other states.

We'll, to move out of, out of Wyoming.

So I think it's this very casual talk.

Our recommendation was there's, there's a reason to always look and see if we can do things better.

That's this WIP program, for example.

So let's take our time, do an interim, spend the time to really evaluate what's working and what's not working, what we can do better.

But, but the talk coming out of the joint appropriations committee was, let's just lop it off.

- It seems to me that having something like the business council sends a, and you've, you've hit on this already.

It sends the signal throughout the region, throughout the nation that Wyoming quote is open for business, which once upon a time was about the most conservative Republican principle that there was.

So it's an oddity now to see it under attack from this particular quarter.

- One thing that I think is almost hypocritical is there's this comment about we're picking winners and losers.

And so, you know, that shouldn't be the purview of the business council.

Well, they're not picking winners and losers, but, you know, that's the argument that's made the, the same group is saying, okay, we're gonna put a whole appropriation in the budget for a particular industry.

So, you know, it, it, it, it's now pork instead of business council.

Which is, which is really unfortunate.

But I, I talked about the historical perspective.

You, you remember back in the 1980s how devastating it was.

And, and you know, we, we still had a steel mill in Atlantic City.

We had a going concern in Jeffrey City, Fremont County was just exploding.

And, and suddenly it all disappeared.

And the oil and gas industry, you know, dried up.

And I remember voting for Amendment Four, which was the legislature can take a certain amount of money to help promote economic development.

It wasn't particularly well done.

I think Gill Windows down here is maybe one of the few surviving companies from that time.

But, but it became clear that we needed a disciplined approach to how you grow, you grow business.

And, and that's where the business council came from.

And, and it helped grow, you know, Leeds, which is here in Cheyenne.

Randy Bruns did a phenomenal job.

Becky's still doing a job.

We just brought in, you know, one of the old fishing companies, the Eagle Claw.

That, that, because you know, we could, we could broadcast, here's what we've got in Wyoming.

So Eagle Claw is right here in Wyoming.

That's where I used to go down to our old telephone store and buy flies to go fishing on our local river.

- The effort is justified.

Yes.

But let's try it.

- Yeah.

- And, - And not everything is gonna work.

No, I mean that's the other thing.

If, if, if anybody's built a business and believe me, I've built a few it not everything works.

No guarantees.

No guarantees.

- And there are no guarantees in things.

The legislature does either.

- No, that's sort of true too.

- Last year, I know supplemental, the supplemental budget that we talked about, you wanted some extra money for firefighting.

Wildland firefighting.

- Yeah.

- Nothing goes quite the way you intended.

There was a fire season last year based on the weather that we're having in Wyoming this winter, which in my lifetime is unprecedented.

It's been warm and windy and dry when it should be cold and snowy first.

Is there an executive order that you can sign that blanket Wyoming, with about eight inches of snow between now and - I, I've tried to do that into it.

I've been praying hard too.

- Okay.

Short of that, where do you see Wyoming's firefighting budget, financial availability heading into this year, which has all the makings of a doozy of a fire season?

- During my time as governor, I'm not gonna advertise this, but during my time as governor, we've had the Mullin fire.

Yep.

Which at that time was the largest fire that was, that was overshadowed by the house.

Draw the elk, flat rock, all the fires, hay, the haystack, all these fires that happened, 2024 are worst fire season.

Last year we had the Red Canyon fire.

And I think the lessons that came out of that were that our volunteer fire fighters are, are being stretched to, to the max in, in a lot of ways.

And one of the biggest lessons that came out of that was that we need to be able to communicate what's going on, on the fire in a, in a, in a way that's trustworthy, that's transparent and that people understand and have confidence in.

And we've really talked about two modules.

And the modules have all the capacities of being able to manage a fire.

They'll, they'll still use volunteers, they'll still use local fire departments, but they can bring a level of coordination that that's key.

We wanted to see one on the west and one on the east.

I think the joint appropriations committee is saying only on the east.

I think that will be problematic.

- Property tax continues to be an enormous issue.

Big property tax measures, reductions were passed a couple of years ago.

There've been consequences and results can be seen starting to be seen.

Now.

- How do you think that's gone so far?

We've passed a whole bunch of reforms over the last couple of years and, and there was a need, I mean, when, when you saw the appreciation, Wyoming was open when the rest of the country was closed, people moved to Wyoming.

'cause they really appreciated what Wyoming had.

That raised property values, that raised assessments and for people on fixed incomes, it really made life difficult.

So, so I think Wyoming was correct in trying to respond to that.

But, but with all of the layers of these reforms, everybody had their own property tax issue and so on.

Last year we actually had to pass a statute just to say, first you do this, then you do that, then you do this other thing, and here you're eligible for.

The other thing.

I recommended this year that the legislature step back and look at a comprehensive way to sort of address this issue.

We managed to pass a fourth tier of property for, for private property.

And, and, and that went unaddressed last year.

And I think that is the right tool to be able to say, here's how we do the best job of being able to make sure Wyoming citizens don't have to pay excessive property tax and aren't exposed to, you know, real appreciation.

I think there's value in sitting down and really looking at where we can go with that particular tool.

- I was speaking off camera with your strong right arm, Amy Edmonds, and she said, in preparing the budget this year, a quote from Abraham Lincoln came up, Lincoln pointed out, government is to do the things that we can't do - Right.

- As individuals for ourselves.

- Yeah.

- And that in putting your budget together, you're trying, trying to keep that in mind.

So I'm just thinking in terms of the property tax.

We've got libraries closing now and streets and alleys and infrastructure being impacted, schools being impacted.

This whole concept of the voters, whether they think about it consciously or not, sort of like the things that responsible government can provide and, but it does have to be paid for.

- I'm glad you reminded me of that quote 'cause it it, it is absolutely true.

And if you look around Wyoming, we have a very low population state, but it's almost interesting to me to talk about what the cost of road construction is.

Sure.

And as you know, the joint appropriations committee looking seriously at WYDOTs the of Transportation's budget, and Darren Westby, the director has talked about, it's just a little bit of peanut butter all around the state.

And eventually peanut butter kind of breaks down.

We've seen that in Platte County We've seen that in a whole bunch of places.

When you think about, this is a few years ago, it's about $2 million a mile.

If everything is sort of easy to do in towns, it's $4 million a mile.

And, and if you start seeing the infrastructure break down, Thermopolis, for example, not long ago, it all clay pipe for the sewer system.

And, and it failed.

So what Wyoming has been able to do with our mineral revenue and with our investment in revenue, is to be able to help those communities with those extraordinary projects.

But they all have to have a bit of skin in the game to make that happen.

And that's where property tax becomes so valuable.

These are the, and what, what's particularly important to me about that, Steve, is that people vote on their property taxes.

You know, if it's a mill for this or a mill for that, they, they control whether they want to pay for it or whether they don't.

It's not the legislature saying, we think you can have a cemetery.

Now it's, it's, it is the people themselves being able to make their own decisions.

And that's one of the things that I, that I think is missed in this conversation of let's just reduce everything is, is you wake up one day and you won't have those rights.

Yeah.

You won't have those opportunities and you won't have the infrastructure - Yeah.

And the opportunity to at least make some of these decisions locally.

- Absolutely.

- So that the people can, it's not a big tax coming down from above, we've decided we'll show how to spend Right.

Property tax ourselves responsibly.

The Wyoming way is, is is - Often said e Exactly.

And if it's not a well crafted, I mean, I can think of an example in Johnson County where they tried to put everything in it and the voters said, no, we're not, we're not doing that.

But when they came back and said, our senior citizens need a little bit more, everybody said, that's what we're gonna do.

- Governor Mark Gordon, it's a great pleasure as always, and Im happy to say a privilege to speak with you and sit with you for a longer period of time.

Good luck with your decision making ahead and the wrestling match that is inevitable no matter who's in, in charge and with the legislature and beyond.

And thanks for being with us.

Thank you Steve.