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(CHEYENNE, Wyo.) - At the Hitching Post Inn, the cocktails
were flowing and the roast beef was rare, courtesy of a
local fertilizer company. State lawmakers and dignitaries
bent elbows as lobbyists worked the reception. Talk
drifted, as if often does these days here in Wyoming's
capital, toward the spending of some serious money.
A state senator from Casper, or so this evening's rumor had
it, was about to propose a $100 million infusion into
Wyoming's higher education system. It would be huge, said
the University of Wyoming's president, Philip L. Dubois, a
glass of red wine in hand: 30 or more newly endowed chairs
in a faculty of about 600 members.
"It would be the largest single investment in higher
education in the state's history for any purpose, at any
time, ever," Dr. Dubois said later in an interview.
While many other states are still struggling to find their
financial footing after years of budget turmoil, Wyoming's
tiny government is awash in cash. Part-time
citizen-lawmakers who pride themselves on being so
parsimonious that they do not have staffs or even offices
are pondering how to use an enormous budget surplus. It is
the largest surplus in the nation as a percentage of the
budget, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures.
The tax transfusion is driven by the energy industry, as
most things in Wyoming tend to be. Extraction of natural
gas, especially through the process called coalbed methane
mining, has boomed, and gas prices have surged at the same
time. Wave has built upon wave, resulting in what budget
officials now expect will be about $1.2 billion more in tax
revenues over the next two years than the state had
anticipated.
To put that number in perspective, Wyoming, the nation's
least populated state, with only 500,000 people, spends
about $5 billion a year on everything. Much of that is for
highway repair and construction, linking up the dots of its
far-flung communities. Or think of it this way: A surplus
of similar percentage in California, which is struggling
with the nation's largest budget mess, would just about
erase all of that state's fiscal troubles this year.
The college idea, as it turned out, was true. State Senator
Charles K. Scott, a Harvard-educated cattle rancher and a
Republican, said in an interview the next morning at the
Capitol that his amendment was intended to exploit the
tough times other states are facing. While those states cut
spending on higher education, he said, it is time for smart
people with money in their pockets to steal away the best
professors.
"Their universities are open to being raided," Senator
Scott said. "I believe we ought to go ahead and do that."
But the talk here is not just about doling out largess. The
deeper issue underpinning the argument about what to do
with all that money centers on the question of time.
No trend in Wyoming economics lasts forever; that is the
etched historical wisdom of the last 100 years or so.
Wyoming is a seller of raw commodities like natural gas to
the global market, and state lawmakers have learned to live
with the certainty that certainty itself is an illusion.
Like the bucking bronco that adorns state license plates,
things that go up always come back down. Old-timers still
talk about the years of the Arab oil embargo in the
mid-1970's when coal was king. Those fat years are just a
memory now.
"There's a prayer around here," said State Representative
Randall B. Luthi, the Republican majority floor leader in
the House, who raises cattle and practices law in the town
of Freedom. "Dear God, give us another boom and we promise
not to waste it this time."
Some politicians, however, led by Gov. Dave Freudenthal,
say that this time may be different.
Mr. Freudenthal, a Democrat, has argued that a structural
change in the energy business, notably the recent
completion of some big pipeline projects in Wyoming,
creates at least the possibility of a long-term wave that
could keep the tax money flowing for years.
If that happens, the governor said in an interview, Wyoming
will have an obligation to start thinking more broadly
about the consequences and costs of the boom - and the
energy extraction that produces it - in order to protect
wildlife and environmental quality for generations.
"The same national energy economy that fills our coffers
could inadvertently turn our state into a water and
wildlife wasteland," Mr. Freudenthal said in a speech to
the Legislature on Feb. 9.
The governor's argument has mostly gone nowhere. He
supported one bill, for example, that would have given
private landowners a bit more leverage in dealing with gas
drillers. Another Democratic idea would have begun a
process for rethinking how environmental regulators
coordinate their work. They were both modest bills,
environmentalists say, but both died on the first day of
the session, hours after Mr. Freudenthal's speech.
Republican leaders in the Legislature say the evidence is
not convincing that this economic cycle will be different.
High gas prices cannot last, they say, especially in a
presidential election year, when pressures are likely to be
intense from Washington to bolster the national economy,
which is dominated by energy buyers, not sellers.
Senator Scott's $100 million college amendment ultimately
died in the Senate on a 16-to-14 vote on Feb. 19. A
retooled $50 million version died on Feb. 22 on a tie vote,
15 to 15. The money he had proposed spending is now likely
to go into the state's savings accounts, he and other
lawmakers said. But Mr. Scott said that he thought the idea
was on the table, and that the close vote suggested that it
had legs, given enough time.
"It's put the issue on the agenda, if this surplus
continues next year," he said.
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