TORRINGTON – Calling their audience the “grass roots,” State Rep. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) and Sen. Curt Meier (R-LaGrange) offered a review of the recently-completed legislative budget session Friday to the Goshen County Republican Women.

“From my perspective, you’re the grass roots,” Meier told the group last week during its regular monthly luncheon meeting at Deacon’s Restaurant in Torrington. “You give us the direction” at the precinct and county levels.

This year, about 330 bills were brought up for consideration, Steinmetz said, calling the abbreviated session “kind of crazy.”

The list of bills that made it through the process – 71 in the House and 78 in the Senate, she said – included review of the projected $1.15 billion structural deficit. Steinmetz decried that number as virtually out-of-control spending.

“That’s the kind of spending that cannot continue,” she said. “We’re going to need representation from Goshen County who’ll dig into these issues.”

On the plus side, cuts to education were held at just $27 million state wide, Steinmetz said, saying it wasn’t “substantive enough to make any real changes” to the system.

Steinmetz also said something needs to be done to address what she told the group were inequities on the state’s Legislative Management Council, the body that serves as the administrative arm of the legislative branch and the decision-making body when the Legislature is not in session. 

The Management Council consists of 13 members drawn from the leadership of both chambers and both parties in the State Legislature. Where the Legislature is 87 percent Republican, the Management Council’s membership is 40 percent Democrat.

“We’re tried to resolve that imbalance,” Steinmetz said. “Unsuccessfully.”

On the Senate side, Meier said work on the Economically Needed Diversity Options for Wyoming, or ENDOW, legislation this past session had positives and negatives. He pointed specifically to a provision designed to improve air travel from smaller Wyoming communities, saying it wasn’t necessarily economically responsible spending.

“It seems we subsidized three airports just to get one,” Meier said. “Government sometimes interferes where it shouldn’t be. We don’t want to have that happen – government interfering with private enterprise.”

About the only provision of the overall ENDOW package promoted by Gov. Matt Mead to diversify the state’s economy in the wake of ongoing downturns in the energy production sector was expansion of broadband services to rural areas. Access to broadband internet services is important to individuals and small businesses alike, he said.

Steinmetz and Meier both called for changes in leadership at the state level, as well as overhaul of the state’s budget process to simplify it. Wyoming has one of the most difficult budgets in the region for budget scouts to analyze or “probe,” Meier said, because “it’s too complicated.

“It’s a shell game,” he said. “I know where the rabbit-trails are – where money goes in, where money goes out. Not too many other people understand it.”

Several individuals from Goshen County are seeking state offices right now, including Ed Buchanan, who was appointed Secretary of State earlier this year and is actively seeking election to that office, and Meier himself, who announced in March his intention to run for state treasurer. The list also includes Steinmetz, who announced in March she would run for Meier’s seat in the senate and several individuals who’ve made clear their intentions to seek Steinmetz’s current seat representing House District 5.

“It would just be amazing if we could get three folks from Goshen County elected,” he said. “We could do some great things.

“Right now, we don’t have Republicans and Democrats in these two bodies, we have conservatives and liberals,” Meier said. “Don’t be cavalier when you’re deciding who you’re going to vote for.”