Six full years of Wyoming state spending records are now available with the click of a button thanks to Wyoming's new State Auditor Racines. She produced all records for less than $180 and refunded the previous payments for requests made totalling $7,820. Next up? Saving Wyoming taxpayers millions of dollars in avoided wasteful spending. It is time...

Boyd Wiggam and Glenn Woods discuss Special Districts, local property taxes and special district reform bills pending before the Wyoming Legislature. 

The state of Wyoming earmarks tobacco settlement funds to certain programs — and guess what. The programs cost more than the revenue they receive. As you might expect, the knee jerk reaction to this is to raise tobacco taxes to cover the shortfall. But let's take a closer look. The Tobacco Settlement Trust Fund was set up after a 1998 settlement be...

Governor Mead announced he will cut approximately $200 million from the current fiscal year's spending. This apparent burst of fiscal conservatism came as a result of a clause in the 2014 budget bill directing the governor to review agency budgets and reduce them if it looks like the fall in tax revenue will result in a deficit. Revenue has been on...

When the Wyoming Business Council proposes a handout for a private business, the focus is on the positive—jobs, economic diversification, the flag and apple pie. When it brings these proposals before the State Loan and Investment Board (SLIB), the costs of these handouts—wasted resources, cronyism and the damage to unsubsidized competition—go unmen...

Governments everywhere favor some companies over others by showering them with other people's money. In Wyoming, the constitution forbids legislators from giving tax dollars away directly, but this hasn't stopped indirect giveaways. One giveaway is called Public Purpose Investment, or PPI. Although sold on the basis of its supposed benefits, these ...

by Charles Katebi Ever since Congress passed Obamacare in 2010, each April 15, the dreaded tax return filing day, brings ever more complexity to our federal tax code. This year's complexity is the employer mandate, the most harmful of the law's tax provisions because it spells trouble for businesses and workers alike. If the Supreme Court sides wit...

by Charles Katebi In March, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a case that could decide the fate of Obamacare in Wyoming and around the country. The case centers on whether the federal government has the authority to issue tax credits to subsidize insurance on exchanges that it has established. If the chief justices rule aga...

Imagine you have ten accounts you allocate your paycheck to every month. At bill time, you take money from two of these accounts, call them your traditional accounts, to pay your bills. One day, your paycheck suddenly plunges and you don't have enough flowing into these traditional accounts. No problem, you can just divert the flow from some other ...

"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...