“Don’t mess with UW” clear message sent to Sen. Cooper

Sen. Ed Cooper, R-Ten Sleep, said the message he heard clearly from constituents was keep funding for the University of Wyoming. 

“People have spoken to me very directly…don’t mess with UW,” Cooper said. 

In the Senate’s budget, 100% of the UW funds put forth in Gov. Gordon’s budget were restored. “I don’t see any room for compromise. The Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) recommendation was to cut potentially $40 million from UW’s budget. Recently the House voted on a budget amendment for $20 million to the University’s two-year budget. However, that cut could go back to $40 million in December. The additional cut would depend on the December report from UW to JAC. It is to show $5 million in cost savings.” 

The Senate’s position from the start was to approve the governor’s budget recommendation for UW. The Senate had a few amendments,  most of which were withdrawn. The House position from the start on UW was the JAC recommendation. They had 122 amendments to their budget bill. Cooper said when there are 122 amendments, you must question if it is a good budget. 

“The cuts that were being recommended by the JAC were retaliatory versus well thought out. When people were asking about those cuts, they got rhetoric and campaign slogans.” 

When the Senate version passes, it will go to conference committee. The committee will review both budgets to come up with a final budget for the legislature. 

SCHOOL CALIBRATION 

Cooper noted that the Senate made some adjustments to SF 0081 K-12 public schools finance-2. “We protected the number of teachers in our small schools. The minimum number of teachers is now 17. We adjusted the teacher’s salary…to raise that up.” The average salary is around $76,000. Because the figure is an average there is still room for adjustments based on the school’s step and lanes salary structure. He explained that some of the larger school district’s superintendents are fighting against the salary cap for that position. However, in the Big Horn Basin, the salary should not be an issue for the superintendents. There may be a few that are close to the cap. 

He continued, “The way it is written protects our block grant to a certain extent. The only thing that is not in the block grant is the teacher and superintendent’s salaries. We don’t lose all our local control other than a little bit on what we pay teachers. Everything that is designated for teacher salaries must go for teacher salaries versus anything else.” The third reading should be this week. 

WYOMING BUSINESS COUNCIL 

On the Senate side, the Wyoming Business Council (WBC) is fully funded. The funding will allow for restructuring the department if that is what is decided. 

STATE EMPLOYEE RAISES 

The Senate did pass raises for state employees. Cooper said “Our state employees are far behind on wages, and our attrition rate is so high. We must get these state employees up to where they should be. This is important to me. We have some good people. You can’t retain people if you can’t pay them a decent wage. It costs the state a lot of money to train a new employee every six months.” 

DIRECT DISTRIBUTION 

Direct distribution calls for a portion of the state sales and use taxes to be distributed to the towns/counties. HB 0107 passed the House on Feb. 16. The bill proposes 7%. It was placed on the Senate General File on Feb. 23. Cooper has no doubt it will pass the Senate at the 7% but will push for an increase to 8%. “That will be a nice bump for our communities.