Posts

Corporations suck profits out of Wyoming and offer little but low-paying jobs. A proposed tax on "big box" businesses like Walmart would help keep some of that money in our communities.

FIVE FACTS: The National Corporate Profit Recapture Act

There’s a lot of hype, misinformation, and outright lies surrounding a proposed corporate income tax in Wyoming. Here are five facts you need to understand.
Wyoming's rural hospitals struggle to care for people like Beverly Kolacny, who lives on a ranch near Powell. Medicaid expansion would provide resources to rural hospitals and clinics in Wyoming for better healthcare.

Wyoming’s rural hospitals (and communities) would benefit from Medicaid expansion

Expanding Medicaid would help Wyoming’s struggling rural hospitals offset state budget cuts, provide mental health treatment, and attract and retain physicians to provide better services.
All people in Wyoming would see the financial benefits of expanded Medicaid.

Expanding Medicaid would drive down people’s healthcare costs across Wyoming

When hospitals treat people who can’t afford to pay, they pass off those losses to everyone else, raising medical costs and insurance premiums statewide. This “uncompensated care” amounts to 6 percent of Wyoming hospitals’ total expenses. Medicaid expansion would cover those costs instead, helping hospitals and driving down the price of healthcare for everyone.
Don't nuclear waste, immigration prisons, and opiods just inspire you to think of growth and prosperity?

Wyoming's economic development disasters

If Wyoming wants to diversify and develop its economy, it should focus its efforts on building communities where people desire to live, instead of desperately jumping on each pile-of-garbage "opportunity" that passes our way.
Expanding Medicaid would provide healthcare to tens of thousands of low-income Wyomingites.

Revenue Committee votes to sponsor Wyoming Medicaid expansion bill during 2020 Legislative session

The committee's support—and Wyoming's worsening budget situation—gives Medicaid expansion the best shot it's had in years.
With few other viable options for revenue, that big pot of Medicaid expansion money is looking better and better.

Revenue Committee to consider non-tax proposal to bring hundreds of millions of public dollars to Wyoming

A bill to expand Medicaid would help close the state’s sizeable budget shortfall (and it would help poor people get healthcare, too).
Without decisive action from state leadership, staying strong is about all folks in coal-dependent places like Gillette can hope to do.

Wyoming’s woeful response to coal’s collapse

As the coal industry falters, costing Wyoming hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost revenues, state leaders struggle to act.
The Wyoming Office of Tourism forefronts public lands in its national advertising.

Wyoming Public Lands Day and our economic future

How “keeping public lands in public hands” is critical to diversifying and strengthening Wyoming’s economy.
Tax experts dismissed the argument that the tax would violate either the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause or the Wyoming State Constitution's Uniformity Clause.

Opponents of a proposed Wyoming corporate income tax say it’s unconstitutional. They’re wrong.

Naysayers who don’t want to admit they support Walmart over Wyoming schools are using a bogus technical argument.
Wyoming coal contains less sulfur than coal from the Midwest or Appalachia. But companies didn't care until federal regulations forced them to care.

Federal regulations created Wyoming's coal industry

Wyoming politicians whine about the federal “War On Coal.” But no one was buying the Powder River Basin’s low-sulfur product until the Clean Air Act made it more affordable than its competitors.
Wyoming misses out on millions of dollars the federal government offers us.

Wyoming lawmakers have a “cultural bias” against accepting federal funds

When times are good, no one questions whether the Legislature’s refusal to accept federal funding is wise. But as Wyoming’s budget problems continue, those questions are beginning to arise.
Wyoming lawmakers capped special education spending in 2018, leaving school districts wondering how to cover the costs of services children need.

As state money for special education dries up, Wyoming looks to Medicaid

Dwindling mineral revenues threaten Wyoming’s ability to provide costly special education services. Legislators can pursue federal Medicaid funds to help, like most states do. But they’re learning there’s no such thing as easy money.