Latest news with #LegislativeServiceOffice
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'We should all be mindful': LCSD1 considers fiscal impacts of legislative session
CHEYENNE – Laramie County School District 1 officials are keeping a close watch on revenue streams after significant property tax relief and expansion of a school voucher program were signed into law earlier this month. Property taxes directly fund local school districts, with a portion of these taxes flowing into the state's School Foundation Program account. The state pulls money from this account to fund inflationary costs of public school funding through the K-12 public school block grant. With four major property tax relief programs passed last year, and a historical property tax cut signed into law earlier this month, revenue streams into the SFP are expected to take a direct hit. Gov. Mark Gordon recently signed Senate File 69, which provides a 25% property tax exemption on the first $1 million of a single-family home's fair market value. The bill does not have an end date, nor does it include any backfill from the state. Laramie County School District 1 Finance Director Jed Cicarelli said SF 69 will hurt the school district's ability to collect local taxes for funding operations. Decreased local revenue means a heavier reliance on the state for school funding, he said. 'As the local tax collections decrease, the pressure on (the SFP) will increase, because the state will have to make up those entitlement payments,' Cicarelli told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. 'But it also means there's less revenue coming into that account. … So you're kind of hitting it on both sides of the equation.' House Bill 199, "Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act," is another indirect factor to the equation. HB 199 expands eligibility for Wyoming's Education Savings Account (ESA) program by removing the income-based requirement for grades K-12 and increasing the per-child, per-year amount from $6,000 to $7,000. This program will cost the state an estimated $44.3 million per year out of the SFP starting in 2026, according to the Legislative Service Office. 'Both pieces of legislation have kind of the same effect on … that increased demand on the School Foundation Account,' Cicarelli said. 'We should all be mindful of how that does impact our local governments.' On a positive note, however, Cicarelli said Wyoming schools still have a state entitlement that ensures adequate funding. And a recent decision from a state district court judge in Laramie County upped the ante on that entitlement, after he found Wyoming has unconstitutionally underfunded its public schools. The decision was released toward the end of the legislative session, and Wyoming lawmakers wasted no time in restoring the full $66.3 million external cost adjustment through a school recalibration House bill. Declining student enrollment Wyoming's largest school district has lost around 1,000 students since the pandemic, and Cicarelli said lower student enrollment reduces state funding to the school district. LCSD1 was originally estimated to receive an extra $9.3 million in funding from the state this year. However, Cicarelli said the decline in student enrollment is not reflected in the $9.3 million cost adjustment, and district enrollment numbers fell by another 129 students last fall. He estimated the lower enrollment would cost the district $3.3 million in state funds. Revenue projections for LCSD1 are also down by $1.4 million, or half a percentage point, Cicarelli told school board members Monday night. He later told the WTE this decline is not a significant concern, and better estimations will be available in the final quarter of the year. The passage of Senate File 73 also dips into school district funding, since it now requires the district's central office to allocate a portion of its revenue to district-approved and state-approved charter schools. 'That money will come out of our funding and go to those (three charter) schools,' Cicarelli said. However, it has not yet been determined what these fiscal impacts will be. Multiple other bills passed by the Legislature were also discussed Monday night, with many of them expected to have some fiscal impact to the school district. Among those was HB 172, a bill that repeals a majority of gun-free zones throughout the state, including in public schools. Cicarelli said the bill could affect costs for insurance, staff training and lock boxes, but the significance of those costs has yet to be determined.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Another 'arrow in the quiver': 50% tax break on homes up to $200,000 passes Wyoming House committee
CHEYENNE – As representatives deliberated a bill that proposes one of the largest property tax cuts in Wyoming history on Thursday, another bill offering similar, yet smaller relief was passed by the members of the House Revenue Committee. Rep. Scott Heiner, R-Green River, introduced a bill similar to Senate File 69 with his own House Bill 130, 'Homeowner tax exemption-amendments,' in the House Revenue Committee. Heiner told committee members he hoped to approach this property tax relief with a 'win-win' mindset. HB 130 creates a 50% tax exemption for all homeowners up to $200,000 of the residential structure's fair market value. Lowering the ceiling to $200,000 is to help lower the overall cost to both the state and its local communities, Heiner said. The bill's fiscal impact is a revenue loss of approximately $83 million per year, according to the Legislative Service Office. Qualified homeowners must live in the home for eight months of the year, and the bill excludes residential land from the tax exemption. The bill is effective immediately and has a two-year sunset date, ending in the 2027 tax season. 'We're putting a bunch of arrows in the quiver, and as we start going to the archery range, we're going to see which arrow is closest to the mark,' Heiner said. 'I know it's difficult with all these different ideas. Some of them are similar, some of them are kind of radical, but that's part of the act of legislation is finding the best fit.' The bill also includes a $176 million backfill out of the state's general fund. Heiner originally included funding part of this backfill from unencumbered energy matching and large energy matching funds. Wyoming Energy Authority Executive Director Rob Kieger told lawmakers there's currently $46 million left in energy matching funds and $100 million left in large energy matching funds. These funds are pulled out of the state's general fund. Heiner proposed using these monies as state backfill, and funding the remaining $30 million directly out of the state's general fund. However, Petroleum Association of Wyoming President Pete Obermueller said this section of the bill is a 'double whammy' on Wyoming's fossil fuel industries. 'As this bill is written, it's nothing but lose for oil and gas,' Obermueller said. Pete Obermueller Pete Obermueller is president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. The severance tax paid by oil and natural gas companies is a major source of funding for the state's general fund. Not only does HB 130 shift the burden to oil and gas, Obermueller said, but it also claws back an investment in industrial projects. So far, $98 million in energy matching funds have been used to fund projects, 75% of which are fossil fuel projects. 'This bill claws back an investment in projects that my members leverage to help us advance what we do, to provide more revenue to the state, provide more jobs and to ride to your rescue,' Obermueller said. Committee members later removed this provision of the bill through an amendment, so the energy matching funds would not be touched to backfill lost property tax revenue to local communities and school districts. Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation policy advocacy director Kelly Carpenter said her organization supported this bill, 'as it is more targeted support for those truly needing relief.' She said more and more wealthy absentee landowners are acquiring large lots of land, and it's been noted the agriculture industry pays the lowest amount toward the state's general fund. 'It's very reasonable to assume that agricultural land may very well be the next place to look to raise taxes sometime in the future, leaving a larger burden for those legacy ag operations that remain,' Carpenter said. Converse County Assessor Dixie Huxtable said the bill poses a huge administrative burden on county assessors to implement it this year. She told lawmakers an estimated 275,000 applications are expected to be submitted for this tax exemption, and county assessors would only have a couple of months to design and process those applications. 'We would be happy to work on that for 2026, but for 2025, we just don't think, as the bill is written, the application process that could be done,' Huxtable said. Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, proposed an amendment to delay the application period until next year, but it failed to pass the committee. The bill was passed on a vote of 7 to 1, with one member excused. It will now be sent to the House floor for three more rounds of voting, with a chance for members to bring more amendments for debate.
