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View From the Floor with Rep John Bear

March 15, 2025

This is a rush transcript

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to another incredible installment of weekend update. From very high above all the puerile and insipid forms of Wyoming mainstream media, This is Cowboy State Politics. I, of course, am your illustrious host, David Iverson, firmly ensconced behind the silver Cowboy State Politics microphone and broadcasting to you from the base of the bighorns at the Cowboy State Politics studio in Sheridan, Wyoming. Good morning, my friends, and welcome to the program. Happy Saturday.    

In the third, and I would say final installment of the 2025 session recap on Cowboy State Politics, but it's probably not gonna be the end of it, and it's probably not going to be the last time we recap what happened during the session. So it's the third and final installment for this week. And the main reason it's not the final installment of the session recap is that politicians continue to say stupid stuff. As if nobody was watching and no one was paying attention to what they were doing during the session. They continue to spew the same drivel that they think you'll accept and believe, and they seem to forget that we can all go back and see what exactly they said on the floor of the House or the Senate.    

It's actually kind of incredible when you think about it. They're still operating on the premise that we have no idea what happens in Cheyenne. That sort of thinking, my friends, is absolutely idiotic. Allow me to illustrate this for you. On Wednesday, I told you about an article in WyoPile entitled, House Urged Senate to Take Up Supplemental Budget Negotiations Senate Placed Blame for Failure on the House.   

  If you scroll about halfway down in the article, you'll find this little gem, and I quote, according to senator Slithers, I mean, Tara Nethercott, the state's budget was balanced during planning for the 2025, 2026 biennium. The House's positions, she said, would have resulted in a total budget expenditure of 1,300,000,000.0, end quote. On face, that is not true. The reason we know that and the reason you can find out for yourself is you can go back to the Appropriations Committee meeting in the House, and you can watch the committee slice and dice up the governor's budget to where it wasn't even close to the $700,000,000 that he asked for at the beginning of the session.    

In fact, they carved a little over $200,000,000 out of it right from the very beginning. All told, out of all the chopping and cutting and slicing, the supplemental budget would have resulted in an expenditure of somewhere around $70,000,000. This $1,300,000,000 stuff is a fiction, but it's a fairy tale that Biteman and slithers and probably others continue to repeat. 

Wait. Wait. Wait. It's been way too long since we played this one. 

(Former Rep Bill Henderson) 
Woah. I think you gotta stop and take a look at what you're doing here. I speak against this because it kinda reminds me of that fairy tale, Cinderella.    

(David)
Well, anyway, all these redcoats and make no mistake, senator Slithers is definitely one of them. And those people that are helping her and others in the senate, well, you know what it means. When you help the bad guys, it kinda means that you're one of them too. Well, anyway, there's a lot of bull crap that's being flung around, and just don't forget that you can always go back to YouTube and you can watch exactly what happened in a committee meeting or on the floor. It's all there for all to see.   You just have to have enough energy to go look it up. And whatever you do, don't believe the bullcrap story that they're telling you. So anyhow, on today's program, I have a great interview with Campbell County Representative John Bear. We spoke about a wide variety of subjects concerning legislation that had passed, but in general, I got his perspective on how things turned out. Here's our interview.    

Alright. To get another perspective on the 2025 session, I've got John Bear, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. John, welcome to the program. (John Bear)
 Thank you for having me, David. Really appreciate you having me on and look forward to talking to your, your listeners.    
(David)
Well, first things first. You happy to be home? 

(John Bear)  
I am. I'm almost recovered. Almost.    

(David)
Well, it takes a while, and I can tell you for a fact that I I don't know what it was, but this session seemed to be more grueling than some of the others. So I, man, I couldn't beat feet fast enough back to Northern Wyoming. 

(John Bear) Yep. Me neither.     

(David)
What I thought we'd do today, John, is just kinda have a discussion about how you think the whole session went.   And so I guess just let's just kinda start at the top. What are your what are your thoughts on how things played out? Maybe some things you thought went well, some things you thought needed some work, and we'll just go from there. So just let me have it. 

(John Bear) 
Well, I would, I would say if you if you know my personality, you know, I'm always looking for improvement. And so I always am my worst critic. I'm always criticizing what, what I've done. And so that's I guess I I'll just kind of start there. There's some areas that I think that the Freedom Caucus could have done better and, we're zeroing in on those things and we wanna do better so we're gonna we're gonna work on that before we get to the next session and I believe we'll we'll improve. 

But overall, you know, we accomplished a lot of great things, things that the people of Wyoming haven't seen getting done in their legislature for some time. And, of course, our executive, Mark Gordon, just came out with a statement that he thinks that we're just attacking national issues and really weren't getting Wyoming problems solved, and I'll I'll kindly push back on that. You know, the things that we brought to the legislature were things that we heard on the doorsteps, things that we heard at town halls, and things that we saw in polling data that said this is what the people of Wyoming really want. And that's where we focused. 

Now, were there other things that were in the works that helped Wyomingites that, were of lower priority? Yes. And we accomplished a lot of those things as well. So, you know, I would just say first of all, the the highest priority things were election integrity, and we got a lot of things done there, but, many of those things stopped at the senate, and now lots of them are on the governor's desk. Hopeful still that he will sign those or let them become law without his signature. And the most important of that, is the fact that, we have a bill that ensures that only Wyoming residents and citizens vote in Wyoming, and I think that's just a pretty much a no brainer. It's already law that they shouldn't, but we don't require any kind of proof. 

So this this bill, house bill one fifty six, which I carried, it does that. It requires that proof of residency and proof of citizenship, and it requires that they, they live in the state for thirty days before they can vote as well. So all good stuff there. I think tax relief was important, and we we accomplished that. 

When we went into the session, we were looking at a 25%, tax reduction on people's homes, and that is a significant reduction but the the people's initiative came in at 50% and we thought you know maybe we should try for 50% and so we went ahead and started pushing 50% and we got a bill out in the first eight days that reduced, people's property taxes by 50%. Now we just got that out of the house. Of course, that's set in the senate president's drawer for the remainder and never did see any more light, but the senate sent us a bill, at 50% after that and we amended that in a good way, made it for perpetuity. 

So people would get 50% off for a couple of years and then it would they basically have a tax increase to to only get 25% off, but that 25% would run on for the rest of time. And, got that over to the senate for concurrence and, somehow it ended up at 25% from the the get go, but still I think a a very significant tax relief for the people. We did some tax reform as well. We did a did pass an acquisition value, not just a study, but an actual actual acquisition value build that would have switched it over. So your property was, valued based on what you paid for it versus what your neighbors pay. And, we got that passed in the house, but, it was, killed in the senate.     

(David)
DOA is what that one was. 

(John Bear) Say that again? 

(David) I said that one was dead on arrival. I watched the debate in the senate on that one, and, it's unfortunate. I mean, I I was really disappointed in the death of that bill. But, you know, I mean, big big changes like that sometime sometimes take a long time. Yeah.         

 (John Bear)
 You're right. It it was big and bold, and, you know, I think the senate leadership said that, you know, they're about big and bold things. That's what they said when they killed the budget. So I wish they'd taken this one a little more seriously, but I'm not sure that they'd have the votes over there for something that, you know, really helped the people out that much. Yeah.    


(David)
One of the not to interrupt you, but, you know, one of the things that Ken, Representative Pendergraft or agent twenty nine as I think I'm gonna call him from here on out, one of the things that he and I talk about is that, things are entirely different from, you know, whether you're viewing them from the top of the fishbowl or the gallery than they are down on the floor. And one I really got the sense that what was happening in the legislature very much mirrored sometimes what happens in Congress, and by that I mean that the House passes a whole bunch of things and they're all great, we're all really excited about them, and then they get over to the other chamber and they just don't go anywhere. And that that was kind of my feeling for a large portion of the session. Did you have the same same view of it?    

(John Bear)  
Yes. But I had my head down so hard working on the things there on the house floor that, I really wasn't paying attention to how things were going over in the senate until I would see the outcome, if you will. So I didn't get to see the debate, the discussions, the the concerns that that body had with those pieces of legislation unless they amended it and sent it back to us. So whenever they killed something, you know, I I I'll have to go back and watch some of that to really get a grasp of where their issues were. 

(David) Do it in segments. It it gets a little depressing if you watch too much of it at one time. Alright. Well, next question is, there have been a couple of pieces in the media, and for right now, I can't remember exactly which, which leftist rag it came out of. But one of them said that by killing the budget, we, saved Wyoming taxpayers 1,300,000,000 (Pause in the Interview)    

(David)  I wanna pause in the interview for just a second because after chairman Bear and I did this interview, there was a town hall held in Sheridan at the Ramada on Thursday night. When given the microphone, senator Beitman made the same ridiculous claim that we talked about during the interview.   The audio is not all that great because, frankly, the sound system at the Ramada stinks. But here's senator Biteman claiming, incomprehensibly, that he saved $1,300,000,000. 

(Biteman Soundbite) We did no budget this year. We saved $1,300,000,000 in additional pork barrel spending by not doing a supplemental budget. 

(David) 
Preposterous to say the least. Now I suppose you could claim that by not passing the budget, you prevented a gigantic amount of pork barrel spending being added to the supplemental budget. That's not based in reality, and, really, it's not based on anything at all. Accepting that premise, you could say, we saved $1,300,000,000,000. It's absurd, and, frankly, it's not true. But let's get back to the our discussion with representative Bear. 

John, for the life of me, I can't make that math work. And, you know, you're the house appropriations guy. So maybe I mean, do you have a better bead on exactly how much money, we didn't spend by killing the budget? 

(John Bear) 
Yeah. I'll just tell you right now, it's not 1,300,000,000. The JAC budget was just under 70,000,000. That's with an m. 70,000,000. And, both the house and the senate amended that, but we hadn't gotten to the point where we could work out an agreement on which amendments would stick. So, really, the budget was sitting at 68,000,000 when it was killed. So there's a $70,000,000, savings to the people of Wyoming by killing the budget. 

The 1.3 just doesn't work. No. The governor himself gave us a $700,000,000 budget. So maybe if you doubled it, you could get 1.3, one point four billion.   But, this is a one year budget, so doubling it doesn't really work. No. 

(David) 
The first time I read that piece, I immediately thought, well, this is playing on people's, you know, lack of knowledge about what happened during in the budget process. It isn't even close to what actually transpired on the floor. And so, I mean, to a large degree, yeah, I I'd love to see the math on that, I guess, is what I'm saying. 

(John Bear) 
Well, we'll have to ask that that person, where they came up with that. 

(David) 
Alright. We've kinda covered the budget process, kind of given a talked about it at a 30,000 foot view. From your perspective, John, I lost track of how many bills that you were carrying, and that you sponsored. What would you say is the most important bill that you sponsor during the session? 

(John Bear) 
Well, it's the one that's sitting on the governor's desk right now, and that's house bill one fifty six, which requires, that only only, Wyoming residents and Wyoming citizens vote in Wyoming elections. So that one, I think, is is really important. It was our number one election integrity bill. It was the secretary of state's number one election integrity bill. And so of my bills, that was that was a primary one. Now I did have that in two separate bills when it went over to the senate, and then they combined them into one. 

So hopefully, that works on the governor's desk. Other than that, most of the bills that I were I was running were, having to do with the state's finances, kind of boring stuff, but trying to simplify it so that just the average Joe could could look and see, well, here's what we're spending and here's what we're taking in and and here's what we're putting into savings. And right now, it's been complicated by our predecessors over the years, and I I really feel like it's been complicated, by design. There I often say there's only really about five people in that capital building that really understand where all the money is flowing to and from and where it's all stashed at.    

So with 600 different coffee cans that we've got money in, and and by coffee cans, I mean trust funds and small accounts, that that are earmarked for one particular purpose that don't show up on the budget every other year. 

(David) 
So How much of Wyoming's government is off budget? By off budget, I mean, is in has its own trust fund and kinda operates independently. How much of our government doesn't show up in the budget? 

(John Bear)
 I'd probably say between 25-30%. You know, the Department of Transportation is mostly funded with federal dollars, and none of that is on really on the budget. There's very little that is anyway. And then, fish and game has been removed, and now tourism has been removed from the budget. So we've got all these components that we keep pulling off the budget, and our predecessors, the insiders, really would, they would tell you that that was a big cut, that the budget is smaller now than it used to be, due to their due diligence. And, really, it looks to me like it's smaller because we have a lot of stuff that we're not looking at when we're doing the budget. And, personally, I think that is shirking the duty of the legislature who's supposed to control the purse strings. So, you know, I'm opposed to doing that and have voted against that from the beginning of my time in the legislature. And I'd like to clean it up so that we know, you know, where money's at and where it's going and try to pull some of that back into the budget and get it into the budgeting process. 

(David) 
And I heard several members of the the Appropriations Committee say that one of their main goals this session was to try to untie the giant knot of Wyoming's finances. How far down that road did you get? 

(Begin Ad Block) 

Okay. Hold on just a second. After every single session, there is always an article of the Freedom Caucus did x, y, and z to kill this many bills. There were at least two of them last year, both of them written by Trotsky Wolfson. The first one was on the opening day of the session where the Freedom Caucus killed 13 or so committee bills, Deservedly so, by the way. Just because a whole bunch of liberals work on a bill in committee does not make it a good bill. Take, for example, the Regulatory Reduction Task Force. The name sounds fantastic. It sounds like one of those committees that would be set up by a bunch of conservatives, doesn't it? Sure does.    

But listen to who was on it. Democrat kangaroo Mike Gireau, Bob Nicholas, the guy that sponsors seven different amendments to the anti red flag gun seizure bill, senate file one zero nine last year, Ogden Driskll, Stacy Jones, Bob Davis, drag show Clark Stith, Wendy Schueller, and Mike Yin, another Democrat. 

According to Evidence-Based Wyoming, all of them together voted with the Democrats an average of 85% of the time. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is not exactly the voting record that comes to mind when you think about reducing regulations. And they didn't, by the way, but it's a great example of a committee that creates legislation that the media will claim is fantastic because of the name of the committee and because they spent some time on it. Again, just because a whole bunch of redcoats spend a bunch of time on a bill does not make it a good bill. Anyway, at the end of last year's budget session anyway,  Trotsky wrote what has become, I guess, the obligatory article saying how many bills the Freedom Caucus killed. Great bills if you're a red coat, that is. Let me just give you one example. Among the bills that died at the end of last year's budget session was Medicaid expansion.    

A fantastic idea if you're a red coat, a budget busting disaster of socialism if you're a conservative. The same thing happened this year. Look at all those great committee bills that died. Yeah. Committee bills that were crafted by a whole bunch of redcoats in committees that were dominated by redcoats and only had one or two conservatives on any of the committees.    

And then at the end of the session, the same obligatory article, look at how many bills that mean Chip Niman killed. There were a whole bunch of great bills that never got heard. Blah blah blah. But you didn't see a single article talking about the bills that died in the senate at the hands of senator Slithers. Let me just give you a couple of them that never got a hearing. There was the ban on ballot drop boxes. That may have been a good one. Prohibiting foreign adversaries from owning property in the state of Wyoming. That sounds like a fantastic idea. Or runoff elections or ballot harvesting or maybe prohibiting your tax dollars from funding drag shows. All good ideas that made it through the house, went over to the senate, and died in senator Slithers' drawer. But you didn't see Trotsky write about that, did you? Nope. That's not gonna happen. Way too conservative for the cow pie or wild pile or the red star or the Wyoming turkey vulture or any other liberal rag in this state.    

My point is that there were a whole bunch of really common sense bills that you never heard about for two reasons. First, the media will only criticize conservatives. And second, Trotsky and his ilk know that the bills that were that died in the senate absolutely resonate with Wyoming citizens. Let's get a word in from our sponsors, and then we'll return to our discussion with representative John Bear. 
Weekend update is brought to you by Morton Buildings. 

And now back to our discussion with chairman of the house appropriations committee, John Bear. Before the break, I had asked the good chairman about what were seemingly common sense no brainer bills that died either in the house or the senate. Here is his response. 

(John Bear) 
Well, I carried, a half a dozen bills that did that, and I got, four of them through to the senate, and they were summarily killed in the senate. So none of those efforts made it, but then we did have a couple of efforts come over from the senate, and we were able to carry those through, and those are on the governor's desk right now. So those in particular eliminated a couple of accounts that we no longer really used, appropriately. They were additional checking accounts, if you will. So cleaning that up was a good thing. You know, we've asked our staff to that works on finances to tell us, you know, what would you do and how could we simplify this. And that effort is it started back in 2016. It was the first memo I've seen of, you know, how could we do go about doing this. And to date, only a couple of those things have gotten accomplished, and most of it happened in this session. 

(David) 
A lot of the news reporting focused on the this assertion that this session was more divisive than any of the others. I've been watching the legislature for five years now. I can see some arguments on either side to say that, well, you know, perhaps it was a little bit more divisive. I'm starting to really,  that that word is starting to really irritate me. But, in in your estimation, this is a question I asked Ken during our interview today. But, do you think that this session was, more contentious, or do you think it was the same, or what's your feeling there?     

(John Bear) 
Well, let me put it this way. I've always found it interesting. You know, when the conservatives were in the minority, we would come in smiling even though that we were losing. And the other side would become angrier and angrier and angrier as the session went on, because I suppose in their mind, we should be coming along with them and we shouldn't be criticizing. We were just happy there to be a voice for the people of Wyoming, especially those that didn't agree with the tax and spend mindset. So, they were angry then when they had the majority. I think they were angrier now when they're in the minority and, basically, their ideas are resoundly rebutted and denied as far as votes are concerned. And that frustrated them. 

But they at the same time, they were very good at filibustering. And so they were up at the mic a lot, and it frustrated them that conservatives, after listening to the same argument over and over, would no longer go to the mic. They just wanted to vote and move on. And that frustrated them because they wanted to continue doing that. And the conservatives weren't having anything to do with it, and mostly because we had a lot of good bills that we would have liked to have seen passed. I I know there's been some criticism of how many bills died in the house. And, you know, that's one of the areas that I think that the Freedom Caucus could do better in some of those lower or maybe third tier bills, ensuring that we prioritize those a little better than we did this session. But when you start with 555 bills, 300 or more of those in the house with 62 people debating them, you know that in a twenty day, well, it's actually a forty day working session, 37 of which we really worked, it's tough to get that many bills done. So you know Especially when a bill must be filled. 

(David) 
I think that I would disagree with that because, I mean, yeah, there were a lot of bills that died. However, I saw a lot of bills come through that were sponsored by, actual Democrats, honest Democrats, maybe we could call them. A lot of bills that were sponsored by folks on the other side, red coats. They made it to the floor. Some of them made it through.   And I think when you compare that to,  perhaps other sessions, it was pretty rare in previous sessions when the redcoats were in charge that some of those bills from that were sponsored by a conservative even got a hearing. And even if they did, most of the time, it was way late in the session when, really, there probably wasn't enough time to get it through. So I don't know. I mean, I think some of the bills I mean, I think just about everybody got at least one of their one of their bills heard on the floor. 

(John Bear) 
Yeah.  That's absolutely true. And that's due to our leadership. You know, they took very seriously, their jobs, making sure that the process worked and that everybody, was able to represent their constituents. And I heard comments from Democrats that, you know, that it was the best time they'd ever had because they had honest hearings for their bills. Even in appropriations, we had that. So, we've been accused of being a freedom caucus stacked committee. So, we may have killed the bill, but we gave it an honest hearing. And, you know, as a legislator, you appreciate that. That's how we do the work that we do. 

(David) 
Now I I want to talk about your committee, for a little bit because appropriations is works a little bit different than the rest of the committees.   You end up meeting a lot more, and, you really you kind of work throughout the year. So what's next? What's on the schedule for your committee? When do you start meeting? And, what can we expect in the interim?    

(John Bear)
Well, we've got three big meetings and then a fourth one for the budget, in December. So those big meetings throughout the interim are really dealing with topics, much like the other committees. And, we'll get assigned exactly which topics we'll get by the management council on April. And then, then we'll work those issues throughout the summer. But then December comes along and we have a week long meeting to go over all the budgets. I'm anticipating that each of the members will be, working with the department heads and the agencies that we've assigned them. And so, you know, behind the scenes, every one of the members of the Appropriations Committee is going to be working throughout the summer, getting prepared for that biennial budget that we will be working on in 2026.           

(David) 
Okay. Now the last topic on my list, we've kind of gone through these kind of fast, so we're going to have to maybe fill the time a little bit. 

(John Bear) 
But I noticed I don't think we'll have any trouble with that. 

(David) 
Yeah. Something tells me we won't have a problem with that. Now one of the things that I noticed is that there were a lot of bills that to me seem to be kind of no brainers that, you know, you, I I call them bills that should we leave the lights on at the prison? I might say no on that one. But you would think that there would be bills that just about everybody would agree with. One of those was house bill one fifty four. That one was interesting because it it would have it would have made it a crime to vote in two different states in the same election. The reason I say it's a no brainer is you would think that would already be against the law. And I guess to some degree, there is a statute that says you can't vote more than once, but according to the secretary of state, he says you could read that to just pertain to Wyoming. So why is it that, in your opinion, that a lot of these seemingly pretty, you know, common sense bills had such a hard time getting through the legislature? I mean, most of them died, you know, in, in the senate. Ballot drop boxes, house bill one fifty four. There's several examples of them. 

(John Bear) 
Well,  I can't really like we said earlier,  I can't really speak to what the senate was doing because I was busy over on the house floor. But, you know, I just don't think that their priorities were the same as ours. We, were working with the secretary of state, our polling data, and our times at the doorsteps and town halls told us that election integrity was really the primary thing to be concerned about. And, I guess our colleagues over in the senate didn't agree with that. Obviously. Yeah. It really comes down to, having your ear to the public, and that's why the house is supposed to be the closest to the people. We're elected every two years and, I feel like we really have been doing that especially as the freedom caucus. You know, I put a pretty scathing op ed out during the session which     

(David) 
Yeah. Let's talk about that. 

(John Bear) 
And what I said was that, you know, people need to know that there are government lobbyists on the floor voting. And, really, what it what it is is that as a legislator, I feel it's my responsibility to represent my constituents, which I consider to be the taxpayers. And many legislators, you know, they get down to Cheyenne, they don't hear from the people who voted for them, and they do hear from the bureaucracy throughout the session. And pretty soon, you know, that's who they're defending is the bureaucracy. I just don't think that that's the way our government was designed. I don't think that's what the people of Wyoming want from their legislators. And I have made it a habit of kind of shining light on what's going on in the in the House of Representatives. And so I think that op ed really it still holds true, and I would stand behind everything I said in that op ed. 

(David) 
You really got the attention of Steve Harshman on that one. That was that was quite a speech that he gave on the floor. I get it that some people got a little bit irritated, but in my mind, if what is being exposed really rubs you the wrong way, then maybe you're the one that, is responsible for doing that.   Another one that that really interests me was there was a several legislators that I guess the best way I can describe it is they just lost their cool on the floor. There were multiple occasions where, one of my favorite pals down in Cheyenne just lost it. And it's I think that that speaks to the frustration that you mentioned earlier that, last session they could get anything they wanted passed, and, this session, well, not really the case. So I guess my next question would be, have you had any or some of the folks on the other side coming to you, with offers to work together, or is it is it pretty much been the same type of obstruction? 

(John Bear) 
You know, I didn't have those kind of offers back when, we were in the minority, and I haven't had any of those kind of offers now that we're in the majority.   And, you know, I could understand it a little bit than being apprehensive since it's the first time we've been in the majority, But, you know, they should have been giving us a little bit more respect back when we were in the minority. They didn't have to, but they should have. And so now they're in this position of, well, they probably don't want to come to us, you know, feeling like they're begging us for something because we have the majority. And that's not how I would see it, but I think that's how they would see it, because we didn't ask them for any kind of favors while we were the minority. But what we did do is, you know, we made good faith offers that, you know, hey, would you accept this or would you accept that, and help us get it passed.  And at times, they would, and at most time, they would not. 

(David) 
Fair enough. Now I know that we're only four days removed from the session, but I'm assuming that you've got some town halls that are set up, meetings with your constituents. What's the response you've received from your district about the performance of the house? 

(John Bear) 
Well, we haven't had that those town halls yet.  They're coming up next week and the week after that. But, you know, those people who were really paying attention to the legislature, I've gotten good, good feedback. They're happy with what the Freedom Caucus has done differently. I will say this that there is a very vocal minority in my district that, have been lying about my votes on, the Campbell County High School and I have supported the Campbell County High School construction from the beginning. 

That was going to happen and needed to happen sooner than later if we're going to save money. And so it's actually quite funny because I purposely removed all of the k 12 capital construction from the budget because, frankly, it's not an emergency thing, and the budget should have been for emergency only. So so is the governor? Yeah. So I didn't want anybody to vote against, the that k 12 capital construction thinking that, well, this is an emergency. It shouldn't be here, so I'm voting against it. So I removed it and passed a a bill out of the house that had Campbell County High School in it. Well, when the senate killed the budget, guess what? That was the only vehicle for Campbell County High School to get funded with. And, so you would think they'd be a little more appreciative of what I did, but I think it really goes back to my holding people on our local school board accountable when they wouldn't take the masks off the kids and things like that. You know, there's just some contention there because I hold people accountable everywhere I go, and I I try to hold myself to that same standard too.    

(David) 
The high school in in your district is interesting because I had a lot of conversations with different legislators, and I kept telling them, guys, that's the same school that when I was in school. And it was old then, and it's even older now. And I was I was kind of surprised at the at the reaction I would get. Well, you know, it's only 40 years old or what. I don't even remember the number. But, I was like, well, don't you don't you think that the that all of these reports that are coming to you, at least have some validity? And, like I say, if there was a high school that, in in my opinion, that needed to be worked on, it was probably that one. 

(John Bear) 
Yeah. We had plenty of anecdotal evidence that, you know, there were problems there. And then, you know, we had a full report that said it needed to be replaced. The problem is what happened in the budget session the year before. And I don't know how much your listeners know about this, but we funded Rock Springs High School in the 25-26 budget. Well, funding two very expensive high schools back to back like that is it's hard for the state to do. We had to take money out of savings to do that. So, you know, that's difficult for conservatives to vote for something like that.    

But at the same time, why did that happen with Rock Springs in the first place? Because they still haven't even completed the report that says that they really should have a new high school. It's still ongoing right now. Well, you'd have to look at what happened in the last session. There was a coalition of conservatives in the senate that were basically, kneecapping, the senate president at that time.   And it looked like based on a billion-dollar difference between the house and the senate budgets that, you know, we could run out of time and end up having to go into a special session. And so, the negotiations, you know, they were way, way off. And then the senate president basically fired his, senate joint, conference committee and put himself and a few others on that. And basically, it looks like, you know, by adding a high school for Rock Springs at the last minute in that budget, he was able to get the votes he needed to pass the budget before the deadline. 

(David)
And let's just be really clear about how that happened.    

The first joint conference committee, which, it had several arguably conservative people on it. Dave Kinskey, was the chairman of that. They had one meeting, and then Ogden Driskill fired them. It wasn't a matter of, you know, them just not getting the job done. I mean, from the outside, it very much looked like,  you guys tried,  We're done. We're gonna do it ourselves. When in reality, I think that there may have been not saying for sure, but I'm saying there may have been some other things going on there. 

Now one more question as it relates to high school since we're on the topic. There's been some discussion.  I can't tell you where I where I saw this, but going back to a system where schools get built with matching funds, that state provides half, the county in which they're in pays half. What's your opinion on that? 

(John Bear) 
It's difficult because, you know, if you want the local people to pay some portion of it, may not be half depending on, you know, which community it is, you've got to get the people to vote for a bond there. And if they know that the state's going to make up most of it, will they vote for the bond? Or if the state is making up I mean, it's hard to get bonds passed. And so having this centralized control, which is very communistic to me,  allows them to continue building more and more buildings without having to go to the people for a vote. And so, I think that's really result of some of these Campbell decisions where Campbell County sued the state and said, you know, we want our fair share or whatever and use the state money to do that. And then the court said, you know, it's got to be equal across the state. Everybody's got to have the same schools. And so that's how it all got centralized, but it's definitely has its drawbacks because, you know, the system is really being, gamed, if you will. And the taxpayers are probably the ones that are that are really the ones that are losing out on that. 

(David) 
During the session, I interviewed, commissioner Scott Clem from Campbell County. And,  he made a comment in there that Campbell County is a little bit different than, perhaps, the rest of the state in one respect, that you guys have the cash.  That's where the coal mines are at, and you've got a lot more money to work with than perhaps, like, I don't know, Niobrara County, for example. 

(John Bear) 
So, yeah.  I mean, it would be a little bit different, a little bit difficult to make the counties pay some portion of it, 

(David) 
But it's amazing to me that you hear counties say, well, we want local control. Well, they want local control until there's something that, they can't handle, in which case, they want the state to handle all of it. And, I mean, there's got to be some sort of balance there. 

(John Bear) 
Yeah. And and Charlie Scott over the senate brought a bill, to to try to solve that.  I haven't had enough time to really research that bill and how what the methodology was. It didn't make it out of the senate where we could look at it in the house, but that bill was starting to chip away at exactly what you're describing. We definitely need to work on it. We need to figure out a different way where there's, skin in the game, if you will. 

(David) 
Yeah. And I I think that that's important, you know. And it's it's interesting when you travel the state. I'm sure you've had the opportunity to do that. You know, different high schools around the state.  The I guess the only way to put this is some of them are better than others. You know, if you go to Thunder Basin High School in Gillette, that's a pretty nice school. If you compare that to, say, Cheyenne East you're really talking apples and oranges. So, I mean, I I don't think that it's an easy problem to solve with this lawsuit from the WEA against the legislature. I mean, I think that that's just going to further complicate things. 

(John Bear) 
Yeah. It will, but we are going into recalibration, and we haven't completed a recalibration since 2005. Really completed and voted on significant changes to the to the model. That is an opportunity and hopefully the entire legislature and the governor will work together and come up with you know, a re-adjustment, if you will, of how we're doing business in in education spending. And, I'm certainly committed. I'm on that committee. I'm committed to working, hard to make sure we come out with a good solution and get things on the right track. I think the best the best thing that could be done, and I don't know how where this fits within the lawsuit and all of that, 

(David) 
I think one of the best things we could do is silo the money. That you get this chunk of money for maintenance, this chunk of money for salaries, this chunk of money for, you know, activities. And that way,  it would force districts to give the raises to people that the money was intended to go to.   During the session, I got a lot of phone calls from across the state asking about the, well, it's called the external cost adjustment, but, really, it was a raise for teachers. And I kept telling everybody, look. The legislature can tell them, hey. This money is for a salary increase, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the district is going to do that. And, you know, that's one of the big hurdles there is the way we fund education in a block grant. 

(John Bear) 
Yeah. It is. And I agree with you silos would be helpful, you know, just making sure that the classroom if the legislature wants the classroom to be well funded, then it should be well funded on the ground. And so, yeah, I agree with you. If we could silo that money, there's some legal challenges to that, but I think we can work through that if we're really determined. 

(David) 
Well, John, I've taken up enough of your time, on a Thursday. If people want to get a hold of you, how would they do that? 

(John Bear) 
Well, they can certainly call me. My phone number is listed, on the Wyoleg website at 307-670-1130, 670-1130. Or I have, a pretty prolific Facebook presence at John Bear for Gillette and then, John Bear for Wyoming on YouTube and Rumble. So lots of ways to get a hold of me there. Email is an okay way, but, and you can get that through the website as well. But, call me if you really want to get a hold of me right away. 

(David) 
Alright. Well, thank you very much, Chairman, and, you have a good afternoon and a good rest of your week, man. 

(John Bear) 
Thank you. You as well. 

(David) 
That'll do it for today's installment of weekend update. Have a good rest of your weekend, and we'll talk again on Monday. Make sure that you subscribe and follow the program. That way, you can be notified every single time there's a brand new episode of Cowboy State Politics. You can do that from the website, cowboystatepolitics.com, or anywhere that you get your podcasts. Don't miss my daily live program that begins every Tuesday through Friday at 8AM. You can get that on YouTube, Facebook, x, and on Rumble. Today's broadcast was also brought to you by the Wyoming Cartridge Company. 

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But for now, from the base of the bighorns at the Cowboy State Politics studio, I'm David Iverson, and this is the one and only Cowboy State Politics.