by Charles Katebi If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. After the Wyoming legislature overwhelmingly rejected Medicaid expansion, its advocates returned to the drawing board to design another half-baked measure to help hospitals cope with the rising cost of uncompensated care. Senate File 145, otherwise known as the Uncompensated Care Bill...

"We need to look like we are doing something for that community." Wyoming Sen. Wasserberger, Joint Appropriations Committee, January 26, 2015 Facing declining mineral tax revenues, the desire to continue spending and the inability, so far, to raid the rainy day fund, Gov. Mead's push to diversify the economy to create jobs and generate more tax rev...

Facing a state budget deficit, declining revenues and the desire to continue spending, Gov. Mead asked, "What constitutes a rainy day?" This thinly veiled call to raid the state's rainy day account to fund his spending priorities was ignored by the legislature. Instead, the legislature began the search for more revenues by developing a task force c...

The legislature must rein in out-of-control spending demands Wyoming school districts are funded using the School Finance Block Grant Funding model. About half of the funding for these block grants comes from the state's School Foundation Program account, and the other half from local revenue sources. For the 2015-16 biennium, the state's contribut...

Jason Gay and Glenn Woods from Boldrepublic.com discuss the federal debt and whether the U.S. can continue to spend nearly $4 trillion annually without the debt finally crushing the economy. 

Talk of pension reform in the government sector starts the usual hand wringing among those who think they know best for everyone else. At the moment, Wyoming's government signs most of its workers up to a defined benefit pension plan, whether these workers would prefer another option or not. Most people in the private sector, if they have a pension...

Letter to the editor published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, September 28, 2014 As is often the case, those without a response to an argument resort to ad hominem attacks, as in Rodger McDaniel's commentary, the rick think differently, in Saturday's Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Former state of Wyoming pensioners, such as Mr. McDaniel, must understand tha...

Would your representative vote to require single mothers to pay an extra one percent on their phone bills to cover the cost of extending lines to a $4 million mansion someone decided to build on their newly acquired rural property? In the coming session, the Wyoming legislature will find itself faced with the sunset, or scheduled end, of the outdat...

Few people understand how the state pension system works but objections to reform are legion. Even though the type of pension benefit state employees receive has virtually disappeared in the private sector, many politicians, bureaucrats and state pension managers seem to think the government sector is different, making reform unnecessary. However, ...

Will it leave citizens freezing in the dark? Back in 2012, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead announced that Microsoft would build a $112 million data center in Cheyenne. Since then, Microsoft announced two data center expansions, for a total investment of about $450 million. Sounds great, but is it? Data centers move here because, in addition to taxpayer-...