- Keeping books for the state government and being the state's official payroll officer are part of the job responsibilities of Kristi Racines.

She's the Wyoming State Auditor.

When she ran for the job in 2018, she'd never held office before.

Now she's thinking of running for a third term in 2026.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

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- Wyoming State Auditor, Kristi Racines.

Welcome to Wyoming Chronicle.

Good to be here with you today.

We're in the old Capitol building in what I now refer to as your ceremonial office.

People coming to the Capitol walk into the rotunda and they see state treasurer and state auditor and state superintendent on these big ornate doors.

The only of the big five state executives, the only one that actually works in the Capitol most of the time is the governor, right?

You're here with us today, but typically you've moved to bigger digs, right?

- Yes, that's correct.

So back when they renovated the Capitol, and this was before my time as auditor, everybody had their staff here.

And I think it was very cramped and very problematic.

And there was issues with ADA access and there weren't accessible restrooms.

And so one of the things they did is they moved all of our staff over to the Herschler Building and what remained here was these ceremonial offices, which are lovely as you can see.

- But you told me you're working here today.

We happen to be here in the end of February and the legislative session is ongoing and that's why you're here.

- Yes, so typically what I do is I'll come over and work in this office all throughout the legislative session.

But the rest of the year, my staff is all in the Herschler Building.

So to really interact and know what's going on and get work done, we all work over there.

- You zip back and forth quite a bit during these legislative weeks?

- Yes, I walk back and forth a lot trying to look busy.

- Why are you here during the session?

What's your office's intersection with the legislature?

- With the legislative session, of course we would watch for any bills that might impact our office or involve adding or taking away duties.

To be honest, there's not a whole lot of those.

Typically the auditor's office sort of flies under the radar but one of the statutory duties of my office is to keep track of funds and account for funds and we also maintain the chart of accounts.

That's a boring accounting term for essentially, we have to set up all of these funds that the legislature envisions.

So one of the things that we do is we track the budget bill very closely because if you read any of the budget bill, there'll be lots of words that say, the state auditor shall transfer or the state auditor shall create a fund.

So we track those to make sure we're able to, to make sure it's written in a way that we can do what the legislature intends.

- You were, you're in the middle of your second term as auditor.

- Yes.

- Elected in 2018 if I recall.

And I remember at the time, as you were a candidate and I was a newspaper man and you came to our newspaper office as candidates do to, we interviewed you for a candidate profile and somebody asked a question and you answered it in a way that was unique then and now years later remains unique, at least in my memory.

And the question was an obvious one.

You've never held office before, why'd you decide to run?

And you said, well, I'm an accountant and I'd like to do this work.

And we're perfectly straightforward, logical answer but most candidates for office don't answer questions that question in that way.

They say, well, Wyoming has been so great to me it's time to get back and maybe you did feel that way or we've got to help advance the agenda of the party or advance the agenda of the governor or wipe out the agenda of the predecessor or make sure that we correct.

And you didn't do any, you didn't give what I would call a political answer, I guess, do you remember that at all or how you were feeling at that time?

- I do and that's that I- - 'Cause you are an accountant.

- Yes, I am, I'm a CPA by trade and when I think back to that, I had worked in a state agency and so really understood what the duties of the auditor are and there are absolutely political ramifications of this job and it can be very political, but at the time, I thought that the auditor's office had suffered from being viewed a little bit as a political stepping stone.

And I'm not talking about anybody in particular, my predecessor or anything, but I think it sometimes is viewed just as a stopping place to another role.

In my job, however, I realized how important this office is just to good governance, to the, I hate to use the word boring, but the boring but important stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the efficiencies and the operation of government and I thought that I can do that or I can do that well or I can do that better.

So that's sort of where I was coming from.

- Well, that's interesting because two tangents from what you said, it is true that some people in state government through history, numerous people, have held more than one of what we call the big five offices, governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, state superintendent.

Those are the only five elected offices in Wyoming, meaning everyone in Wyoming gets to vote for them.

So there are five of them and there are people who've held more than one.

Governor Gordon, for example.

You served appointed treasurer, elected treasurer, now elected twice as governor.

Joe Meyer, I think, held two of them and tried to run in the gubernatorial primary briefly.

Maybe some have held even three.

So that in itself is not all that unusual.

That's number, and you talked about that.

You weren't viewing it that way at the time.

But the other thing is, I don't know how many state auditors through history have been accountants, even though as you saw it, boy, what a great qualification for the job.

It doesn't, you don't have to be an accountant to hold this office, obviously.

There aren't any requirements at all, right?

You've gotta be a certain age and a resident, I think.

- Yep, and for all of these top five positions, there's no, other than, like you said, sort of checking some demographic boxes, there is no job qualifications.

However, I feel like that's what I did bring to the table.

And I do think that folks look at these positions as, okay, for superintendent, for example, we're probably gonna want somebody that has some sort of experience in education.

- Although pretty recently, we didn't.

- Yeah, yeah, that's true.

- But you're right.

- Yeah, that's fair.

And my predecessor was a CPA.

She was the first CPA that has ever held this position.

I do think that people throughout history, some of them have had more or less financial experience, but I don't know that very many of them have been on-the-ground accountants.

And do you have to be?

Well, obviously not if we've had successful operations for 100 and some years.

But the one thing I would say is the day-to-day back office stuff, I'm not in there, I'm not in there doing that in the weeds.

However, when there's problems or issues with that, I think I have some capability to understand that and to get down in the weeds if I need to, whereas if I wasn't an accountant, I can manage the people, but at the end of the day, there's some things I'm not gonna have a good understanding of.

- Well, you referred to the staff being so large that it was a great relief to move to bigger quarters later.

What's the size of your department, if that's the word?

- Oh, sure, and I'm not sure.

I'm actually the smallest elected official office, but we have 23 people, including myself.

So we get a lot done for that.

It's a big bang for your buck, for sure, but yeah, it'd be too many people to fit in this office.

- Well, we had, during the legislative session, interviewed State Treasurer Curt Meyer, and I said, "Well, can you tell us quickly "what the duties of the State Treasurer are?"

And he had a funny line, which was, "Well, you go around the country to all 50 states, "you see one State Treasurer, "you've seen one State Treasurer "that's all different wherever you go."

And he went through what it was.

What's the State Auditor's general role in Wyoming government?

- The role of State Auditor in these top five elected officials exists in our Wyoming Constitution.

There's also this line in the Constitution that, and I'm paraphrasing, that says, "The legislature gets to decide what my job duties are."

And by and large, I'm more like a comptroller.

The State Auditor's office doesn't actively audit anything, but what we do is keep track of all the ins and outs of money coming in and going out of the states.

So we statutorily manage the state's electronic accounting system, which is very big and unwieldy because the state is a very large, complicated entity with lots of different types of money coming in and going out.

- Even Wyoming?

- Even Wyoming.

I mean, Wyoming sometimes more so than other states because we are very blessed to have a lot of resources.

The other thing my office does is payroll for the entire state.

And I joke sometimes, I go back to the boring but important roles.

These are things that no one notices until they don't get done.

So for all the state employees throughout the entire state, we manage payroll and then cut the checks, send the money out through EFTs, and then also do all of the withholdings for taxes and everything and get that out to the federal government or for health insurance.

Again, things that you probably don't think about until it doesn't get done.

- Or you get a paycheck.

- Yeah, exactly.

Or wait, what do you mean my taxes didn't get, my FICA didn't get submitted to the federal government.

- Do state of Wyoming employees get actual paychecks?

- They do, they do.

- Do they have your name on them?

- They do.

So by and large, most people opt for electronic deposit.

But, and this is statutorily driven.

There are still, I think about 200 people who prefer a paper check.

Are you on electronic deposit?

- Yes.

- Good, good job.

- Why is that better?

- You know, more- - Don't misplace my paycheck in the back seat of the drug department.

- There you go, yes.

- That's what I do.

So it's an elected office.

You run statewide.

You announced your candidacy.

You ran in a primary.

You ran as a Republican.

So does that make you a politician, do you think?

- I think it's hard for me to not say, to say I'm not a politician.

I think when I was running, I could say, I'm, you know, I'm not a career politician.

And that was true.

But now I've been in this role for six years.

So- - What else can you say?

- I would have a hard time telling you I'm not a politician, or at least that's not a portion of my role.

Because a lot of the, a lot of the things I just talked about, doing the accounting for the state, we also, and payroll, and we also produce all the financial reports for the state.

But that, that stuff isn't very political.

It's my roles on some of the boards and commissions that we sit on that really, that do make this a politician's job.

- I'm glad you brought that up, because I enjoy asking, talking with state officials about that.

You just described the duties as state auditor, and talked about how you overlap a little bit with the legislature.

But I'm not sure how many people realize or think very often about these executive boards that you and the governor, and the superintendent, and the treasurer, and the secretary of state serve on.

And that, had you thought much about that when you were running?

- I did.

And I found that that's what people cared about.

They wanted, I did find that people wanted someone with expertise.

I think my accounting background really helped me out and helped me win that election.

But people who know about those boards, and you're right, a lot of folks, if they haven't interacted with one of those boards, they may be ignorant to their operations.

But a lot of people care about what happens with our state lands, or if anyone has worked for a city, town, or county, they may have interacted with the State Loan and Investment Board, or received a grant, or a loan, or come and testified to try to get funding for an infrastructure project.

And I found that those people cared about those boards very much.

So it's something I absolutely thought about.

I don't think I, I would say none of us running for those positions brand new fully grasp the extent that those boards impact and I know one example that I know that none of us would have anticipated, legislature ended up rooting almost all of the COVID money through the State Loan and Investment Board.

That's not something any of us were anticipating in 2018, or at least I can't claim I did.

- Well, I think you're right, that not only is maybe the public not all that familiar with the boards, and maybe even less so about who's on the board.

So you're not doing state auditor business when you're looking at the state, the building commission is one of those, right?

What does it do, for example?

- Sure, so the building commission is, again, the same top five elected officials sit together.

And in that role, our job is to manage state properties, essentially.

So manage the use and care of the buildings here in Cheyenne, but also throughout the state.

For example, in Fremont County, the Life Resource Center, and we just bought the building on Sunset there in Riverton.

And so we make decisions about management of those, and then we oversee at a very high level if there's construction or maintenance projects going on, just to make sure they're going along as they should.

- Some of the boards meet more often than others, I guess.

One of them is the State Canvassing Board, that tends to be more of an election year function, right?

- Yes, yes.

That one only meets every other year, and is just four.

It's just the governor, the secretary, the treasurer, and myself.

That one, for some reason- - For reasons unknown.

- Statutory time does not include the superintendent.

- What do you think about the state auditor's job as, I mean, it's in the Constitution.

Maybe you don't think about it.

It's a done deal more than 100 years ago.

In some states, that's not an elected position.

And some states elect the attorney general, or they elect the lieutenant governor, or something else.

Noting your job function as it is, separate from the boards and commissions, should it be an elected office?

I mean, is it, how, what do you think about that?

- You know, I haven't considered that a lot.

And again, it's been an elected position in Wyoming since the pre, pre-statehood.

The back office functions that I described, they're not always completely black and white, but there's not Republican accounting standards and Democrat accounting standards.

You know, we don't apply a percentage differently to your paycheck based on a political, you know, win.

- Are you voting or something?

- Yes.

And if that was the only part of the job, I could see how, you know, similar to any of the elected offices.

For example, if the treasurer's role was to only manage investments, or if the secretary's role was to only register businesses, that those may not be appropriate to be elected, but I think our roles on the boards and commissions, that's where that really comes in.

- And I'm not trying to smoke you out on any specifics, but it's fair to say disagreements can come up.

- Oh, they're publicly streamed.

I'm sure that anybody who is watching them knows there's plenty of disagreements.

- So that's where the individuals and the individual convictions and beliefs and approaches to things can really show up.

Do you like that part of the job?

- I very much do.

I'm always learning.

I'm an expert in nothing.

I didn't say that on the campaign trail, but none of us show up to that board being an expert on everything that's gonna come before us because the swath is so wide of the subject matters that can come before those boards.

What I will say, where I think we all play a unique role is even though I'm not a wind energy expert or fill in the blank, we deal with a lot of things in which none of us have dedicated our lives to learning about, that's just a fact.

But I think what we do all bring is our experience and perspective from where we come from and the governor has jokingly called me the fun police on some of these boards because I am an accountant.

I say no, I look at the facts and figures and make a decision based on that.

And so that's sort of what I see I bring to the board.

I'm not super creative, I'm not artistic.

I don't bring the super creative magical solutions but what I feel like I do bring to the board is I'm gonna really delve in and look at the finances of things and weigh this and see if it seems realistic.

Or for example, when we were giving out all this federal money, which was just piles and piles of money and trying to get that out in a way that didn't shoot ourselves in the foot.

One of the things that I focused on is wow, this is federal money with a whole bunch of federal strings and you don't get to, none of us get to not comply with those.

And so that's I feel like, and I think each of us bring some unique perspective to that.

- How do we get through that federal money handling pretty well I think, right?

- By and large, I think we did very good.

The legislature, there were certainly people who said we shouldn't take this money at all.

Legislature said, okay, we're taking the money, here's how it's gonna go, we're gonna put it through State Loan and Investment Board, which we call SLIB, S-L-I-B.

SLIB, you're gonna give out grants in these categories up to this amount to this type of recipient.

I think by and large, we did pretty good.

We did a very good job of getting the money out.

I think with the CARES Act, for example, we received $1.25 billion and we ended up turning back to the federal government something like 330,000.

So less than, I mean, pennies on the dollar.

And interestingly enough, we actually had given out all the money a couple of times, but then a recipient might come back and say, we couldn't end up spending what you, we, it didn't take as much money or we couldn't end up spending the money on this in the given time period.

And so here's, you know, $30,000 back.

And so that's where most of that- - Good for them, I guess.

- That came from.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I always felt that when I would hear the argument from more of a politically slanted argument, well, we don't want this money because it comes from wherever it's coming from.

- Right, it's fake, it's funny money.

And that was just not untrue.

- I would always say, well, in my days as an editorial writer I would say, well, let's take it and show them the right way to do it, the Wyoming way to spend it.

And I think anyone would agree probably that Wyoming found a pretty good way to sort of sidestep the discomfort of taking the money of a red state from a blue president, so to speak, essentially, but still put it to use in ways that are gonna do the state a lot of good.

- And I think the focus that we all thought about, and again, I think we did an okay job of this, is let's not spend this on now things.

Let's spend this on things that are gonna last a while or things that we may not be able to do ourselves.

And so we've really, really focused on infrastructure, particularly for smaller communities that just don't have the tax base or resources to put together some of these big projects.

The one thing I would say, you asked how we did.

We think we did great.

The audit period is still open on this, so.

- The A word again.

Who's auditing Wyoming in this?

- I'm gonna get this wrong because it's different with CARES and ARPA.

CARES, I believe, was OIG, Office of Inspector General, and then ARPA was maybe OMB, but I could be wrong on that.

- Management and Budget?

- Yes, yes.

But we're still, I think with CARES, it was they can come and look at your stuff five years after you submitted the final report, so we're not anywhere near to being completely in the clear, but by and large, we think we did a pretty good job.

- I don't mean to dwell on these political questions.

And we're here in the early part of 2025.

A year from now is an election year, and there's speculation about various people in state government and what they might or might not do, what people in our federal offices might or might not do coming back to Wyoming.

What might or might not you do once your term as auditor is up?

Are you, is that, do you think about that?

Is it too early to think about it, or have you already?

- No, I think like you said, it's clear there's a lot of posturing already.

I absolutely plan to run as auditor again.

- Do you?

- Yes, yes.

- Which is permitted in Wyoming for at least four of the state offices that we know of.

The fifth one, which is the biggie, there's some speculation about that one too.

- I do not wanna go to Washington.

I don't wanna be governor.

- You've seen enough of both to know that.

- I like my lane.

That's what I would say.

I think I've found, I've found my lane.

I like it.

I think I'm doing okay.

Yeah, and I really enjoy it.

- I saw you after the State of the State address just briefly, we were here streaming that, and you were down in the far end of the Capitol Extension, far away from the rotunda and the lobby out there where there's just a mass of people talking.

I said, why aren't you hobnobbing with all the bigwigs and you said, well, I'm going for a run.

I know it's something that's important to you, but it just, it seemed to me it typified you in a way.

You've said you're a politician, you understand the political role that you have, and I'm sure you go to the Lincoln Day dinner from time to time, that sort of thing, but you're not immersed in that aspect of public life, I guess, is that a good way to put it?

- I think that's fair, and like I said, this job absolutely is political, and I owe it to constituents to show up so they can confront me or tell me how wonderful I am, of course, or I have questions, concerns, and I make myself available for that, but just, I mean, on a personal note, all the stereotypes about accountants are true.

We are introverted, we like dark corners and spreadsheets, so I do the political things, and I enjoy that.

I love talking to people, I love meeting people throughout the state, but I have to go recharge my batteries by myself sometimes, and so getting out at my lunch hour and getting some fresh air, that's- - That's a priority.

- That's, yeah.

- But you mentioned before we came on camera, you're a mother of two.

- Yes.

- Two teenagers, and you said you like having teenagers.

- I do, so technically one is still about three months shy from being a teenager, but I am- - So she's 12.

- Yeah, I have a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old daughter, and I'm loving it.

It's almost like they're real little humans, except I can't say little because I'm the shortest person in my family now.

They have such a better understanding of their government than I ever did at that age, and so if I've done anything right, they know what their legislature's doing, they care whether they'll ever wanna be involved, but they understand that, you know.

- They darn well know who the state auditor is.

- They better.

(laughs) - Well, I've really enjoyed talking with you about these things, and thanks for letting us come into the old ceremonial office.

It's, as you say, a beautiful building.

We spent a lot of money to spruce it up, and I'm glad it's being put to some use.

Kristi Racines, state auditor for the great state of Wyoming.

Thanks for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- Thanks for having me.

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