Income Revenue:
- Diversify / strengthen our Revenue sources: Economics, as always, underpins a successful future. We have no State personal/corporate income tax. However, our revenue streams are heavily reliant on carbon based resource extraction. The global west is on a hell bent journey to achieve zero net-carbon emissions by 2050: Net-Zero. A noble goal, but there are soul-crushing complications that must be met.
Click to enlarge image - Net-Zero impacts both supply… and demand. What type of car you drive, stove, A/C, heater you’re allowed have. What travel, even food you’re allowed. On and on. However, the pain isn’t shared. We could shut down all of Wyoming’s carbon fueled power plants tomorrow. The world will simply replace ours with brand new coal fired plants in one month’s time. Fact: our State’s sacrifices will make little difference on global carbon emissions.
- We have so many pressing challenges. As a State and legislative body, we must pull together, unify, cooperate and pound out the best solutions – tackling the issues, not each other.
Budget Expenditure Trends:
- Wyoming hasn’t seen an upward thrust in budgets since the big 25% 2007-8 spike until the three most recent budget cycles (six years). In this recent upswing 2021 through ’26, we’re on track to have increased our budget by $2.7 billion, or 23% more than the previous 2019-20 cycle. This includes an estimated $657M Supplemental budget for 2026 as an average of the last two Supplemental budgets. Halting this upward trend is a key issue we must tackle during the upcoming budget cycle negotiations, especially given the challenges we face on the income revenue side.