• Would you pay more for other items for property tax relief?

As the 67th Wyoming Legislature enters its third week, the House and Senate begin the “crossover” portion of the session which is where bills move from one body to the other for discussion, dissection and consideration.

Senator Fred Baldwin of Senate District 14 spoke with Duke Dance as part of the Weekday Wake-up on some of the bills that are getting most of the attention as well as the budget. This budget session will have many late nights upcoming as the initial submissions from the two entities are differing by nearly a billion dollars.

“The two bills are miles apart so the two houses are trying to come to a compromise,” Baldwin said of the budget. “That’s a big part of this week. We’ll see where it goes from there.”

Baldwin, the Chairman of the Labor, Health and Social Services Committee also addressed health-related proposals.

“The big ones that have passed have to do with volunteer fire and EMTs,” he said. “Those have moved on to the House. The House have had some insurance related bills which involve expediting the insurance process. We are trying to take care of the void in the volunteer emergency responder issue. That’s nationwide, not just here in Wyoming.”

The hot-button issue for the session is property tax and with the crossover more serious discussions are distilling those concepts down to potential action.

“Property tax issues that are being looked at in a couple more ways,” Baldwin added. “We can’t afford not to deal with property taxes so we will be addressing that. It seems both bodies are pushing toward a cap on property tax increases in any given year. The other methods are cutting tax across the board. The unfortunate things from that is that money goes back into schools and districts and counties. So that’s the fine edge that we have to walk.”

House Representative Lane Allred of District 21 proposed HB0103,  an “offshoot” he says of the constitutional amendment proposed by Senator Dan Dockstader in the last session.

“This is a trigger bill,” he said. “If an amendment is passed, this would go into effect Jan. 1, 2025. I want this to be the maximum it can be. If passed it would mean everyone would receive a 1.2% reduction on their property tax which is a start. It has passed out of committee.”

Other bills under consideration according to Allred include the aforementioned “cap” on property tax increase in a given year.

“No more than five-percent per year. That’s a good [bill] that will continue on,” he continued. “Another bill, which would need a change in our thinking, would be a two cent increase on sales tax. So we would pay a little more for other things, but a house up to a million-dollar evaluation would have zero property tax. That covers 97% of the homes in Wyoming. That’s an interesting idea.”

The 67th Wyoming Legislative session is the budget session which will end on Friday, March 8, 2024. A budget must be passed by that time before lawmakers can end the session and return home.