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From Governing’s Wyoming
Wyoming has more money than it knows what to do with. Literally. Riding high on increased oil and natural gas prices, this low-service state is one of the few in the nation confronted at the moment with the complexities of an overload of cash. This is a problem most states would love to have, but it’s a very real policy conundrum — particularly because the state’s managers know that Wyoming is overly reliant on a single source of revenue. “If prices go south,” says Steve Sommers, of the Legislative Service Office, “we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.” 
Notions like fiscal responsibility and financial constraint can be a tough sell, however, when you’ve got money to burn. There’s some talk of setting up a billion-dollar rainy-day fund, which is legislatively possible, but giving such an account any teeth would require a constitutional amendment — a difficult task at best. Meanwhile, decision-makers are learning that it can be more difficult to balance the budget in times of surplus than in times of deficit. In flush years like the current one, explains Julie Sapp, a policy analyst in the governor’s office, “everybody knows you could fund their program if you wanted to. Every conversation the governor is hearing from agencies begins with, ‘Well, there’s no better time to fund this program; we’re in a surplus.’ ” Budget officials are trying to ensure that the lion’s share of mineral revenue is spent on capital projects with a long-term payback. But with a very weak capital planning process, Wyoming doesn’t have an easy way to ensure that it’s spending money effectively. Meanwhile, legislators are being hit from all sides with capital project proposals. “There’s not much there in terms of a cohesive approach,” says Sommers. “Without that, it’s just a mess.”
Wyoming is beginning to make efforts to coordinate its capital spending. In 2004, the state created a construction management office to oversee planning on a statewide level. “We’re sort of in a learning curve right now,” says Rich Cathcart, the head of the new office. “I know where we need to be: We need expert-level people knowledgeable in construction management. We need long-term planning. We need to know what our inventory is.” Even more serious problems exist in the area of personnel management. One-third of the state’s workforce will be eligible for retirement in 5 to 10 years, but there is no statewide plan for replacing them. Worse, a 60 percent turnover rate exists during employees’ first five years on the job. Human resources director Brian Foster says the state is “in the infancy stages” of outlining an Employee Development Process that will help with succession planning and effectively delineate employee expectations and performance. But the problem is far from being solved. “This is one area where we have really failed as employers,” says Foster. “We’ve always said, ‘This is the output we need to have,’ but we never stepped in to make sure employees had the skills to get that output.” Strategic planning is weak here as well, though improvements seem to be in the works. Wyoming agencies have been producing plans for a decade, but these have played little role in the budget process. This year, however, the state is rolling out a new results-accountability model aimed at linking performance to budgeting, and the chief information officer is developing Wyoming’s first-ever statewide IT plan. At the top of the IT agenda are efforts to implement paperless communication in the Department of Environmental Quality, standardize IT security efforts, and increase broadband access statewide. “Our biggest issue,” says state CIO Larry Biggio, “is data- and information-sharing across agency lines — not from a technological point of view but just getting them talking to each other.”
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