As members of the Wyoming Legislature navigate this year’s budget session, Representative Andrew Byron (R) of House District 22 spoke with SVI about where things stand at the beginning of a new week. House District 22 represents the northern end of Star Valley.

On the subject of school recalibration, Byron, who represents patrons of both LCSD#2 and Teton County #1, had strong feelings about the process.

“The House bill was not introduced but the Senate one was with a few changes,” he said. “It is a bad bill for our districts on our western side. I’m confident that after a third reading in the Senate it will go through and assigned out to committee. In talking to to Lincoln 2 and Teton 1 they were supportive of me voting no. There’s 62 of us and we all come with ideas and intents to represent our district. I think the Senate bill is vastly improved and with a few more tweaks I think we can vote for it.”

RELATED: RADIO INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW BYRON –

Superintendent of LCSD #2, Matt Erickson, spoke with SVI this week as well on the subject.

“It came to the House side and Andrew Byron and McKay Erickson were on the no-vote on the House side,” he noted. “On the Senate side it’s been worked and amended and got across the finish line. Just before they went back on the floor I received a phone call with Senate File 81 coming up and Senator Dockstader had me on the phone with the [office] in charge of school finance. So we went back and forth with what we needed in Lincoln 2. We appreciate the hard work of our representatives. They are in constant communication with us.”

RELATED: RADIO INTERVIEW WITH SUPERINTENDENT MATT ERICKSON –

Byron commented on several different issues facing the Wyoming Legislature this week.

Checkgate Controversy 

“It really slowed down work on the House side,” he said. “There will be a public hearing to do our internal investigation this week. It’s just a big black eye on the Wyoming House and it’s unfortunate that it happened. We find ourselves at a public hearing this week and a lot of people will be paying attention to that.”

Wyoming Business Council

“The Senate [file] has more money in it but there is a budget amendment for that organization and I think its really good to see transparency and see how it may help our local communities,” Byron said. “We heard from places all over the state that felt like it helped them.”

Public Broadcasting

“It’s more than just radio, there’s an antenna system and emergency system linked into that. It didn’t go great on the House side so there’s a lot more to do there. We had over 240 amendments and less than 10% of those ended up getting into the budget.”

Raises for State Employees

“The bill that was presented to us included some pay raises but not many,” Byron answered. “Some troopers got a raise and that’s great but the support staff like dispatchers need a raise too. We need raises for snow plow drivers and mechanics so that bill was pretty weak. These are not raises that are getting up to the current number but just to the 2024 numbers.”

University of Wyoming Funding Cuts

“Creatively they added a little bit of money in,” he said of some amendments. “But the fact that they wanted to cut the budget just to get their attention is a really unfortunate way to legislate. So that was a big discussion and I think there will be a very contentious negotiation about that.”