Ask the Governor: Wyoming's 2002 Budget

A. Funding for this program is provided in part by the Ford Foundation committed to encouraging communication and cooperation throughout the world. And by the support of members of Wyoming Public Television. Thank you. Closed captioning powered by Wyoming dot com. Good evening. I'm Susan Anderson tonight Wyoming Public television offers you a real opportunity in democracy if your chance to talk to your governor. We're inviting you to call in and ask questions of Governor Jim Garrison. He joins us here at the State Capitol. Thank you. So for an hour we're expecting

questions from all over the state and we hope that you will just get on the phone and call and say whatever it is you'd like to say and we have done that when we finally had a lot of calls and it was very interesting a variety of it really was Armorel's from all over every topic. Certainly on current events. But we thank you for joining us. Here we are right after your last. Budget session of your. Eight years in office. And right here in the Capitol right were all the well it in fact not that long ago just barely within the last week. It was a pretty noisy and busy place. And now it's all already quiet. You start out. Once again in a really great economic situation. We have been talking before about after September 11 all the states of course are worried about their economy. Now how is Wyoming doing. Wyoming is one of only about four states as I understand it now that it's even looking at a budget surplus. So while most other states on their state economy are either flat or declining somewhat while still maintaining momentum we have. As of February. So just barely within the last month comparing this year to

last year we still have forty eight hundred more jobs. This will be the sixth consecutive year of job growth that we've had in Wyoming. And we thought that that growth rate might be to that. But especially after September 11 we might see a decline and there might be a crossover and something would happen. In fact we have even a lower unemployment rate 3.6 percent. So compared to almost any other state. Wyoming has the momentum that we thought we could have. But we were always sort of hoping that right now as it's coming through what is fueling that. Where are the jobs coming from where the jobs are still in the typical sectors of services. I mean automotive some in health some in private providers for social services. We're also seeing interestingly enough with the announcement that the arch code is going to be cutting back on some of its coalmining. We still have a net job increase in the coal mining area. So gas and oil are still up from a year ago. They're declining from what they were say in December. But compared to a year ago they still have so in our

traditional sectors. We're still seeing as sustained as well as even an increase in employment. There are people who felt that the legislature spent a lot of money and yet your projections of what were available I guess are increased by this good economic news. So there is more money. So far we're tracking a little bit ahead of our forecast revenues but. Well let's say it's around $30 billion. That's still only about 2 percent overage from what we anticipated but still within the noise level. So it's on the positive side and that's good. We'd rather be looking at that than anything else as far as what the legislature spend is really difficult to compare what they did this year compared to last year. But as best we can tell it's not that big of an increase. Education got quite a bit more at all levels. So that help here. But in terms of what we can predict for next year's revenues so far it doesn't look that bad. Well let's talk for a moment about it because it does seem as you said in your closing message that

education was a winner across the board and from watching the ups and downs why on the economy it does seem like you often have a year when all levels of education got my money. Often they've been competing with each other but now you have community colleges University and one of the things that we were concerned about coming into the session would be that the K-12 education would so dominate that we would run the risk of the legislature neglecting other areas they didn't. They responded well public safety and the direction system higher education family services K-12 education or receive votes. We did have an overall reduction in the corrections system. But the other big three family services health and education did well and at all levels they did point out the university last year sort of sat out the request on salary increases and this year made their big request. So they were catching up from what they had lagged a year ago. And then the other institutions received substantial increases as well.

Well this is a very Republican legislature. What. Is behind the thinking. That. This money could be spent. I think overall they looked at the forecast and what would be available. They looked at ways to pull a little bit of additional money in. For instance there was a severance tax set aside that was passed last year that was repealed this year and that brought in another $20 million a year. So that that helped on the balance sheet. Overall though it wasn't a matter of Republican Democrat philosophy it was addressing some pent up needs that were out there and seeing if they could accommodate those within what we thought the budget the revenues might be. And actually that was the phrase I was thinking pends happening because for so long the legislators had to say well I can't give you that. Or what do you cut. And so this is just trying to address them. In terms of politics with this being an election year. There were probably fewer politics played this session than I've seen in a long time. We could have expected some of that. And while they were.

There's always that because we're a political system but it wasn't harshly partisan. Not as much as in times past particularly considering this was the year to redistrict the legislature. Yes. And it was very amicable very compared to 10 years ago which is the big change occurred 10 years ago. This year is quieter than we expected. Of course none of that potential governor candidates or members of the legislature that has to help but we don't know that. Well that's true. The ones that we know of so far we have a question here from everything. And. We would like to know the status of House Bill one on one pertaining to the Department of Workforce Services. Why has it not been signed. Well after the legislature adjourns the governor has 15 days to review all bills part of final disposition. So we're we're looking at over making sure that the because it's a significant transfer of various entities. Several areas of government one to make sure that everything's tracking correctly. So I think the deadline for my action on the bill would be March 28. And we're we're still a week away from that.

So what are you going to do. Well the bill. I'm going to act on the bill. OK. And that's been a really hot issue. Well it's not as hot as it might be. There might be some individual hot areas in the bill and the consolidation of some of the functions. What we're what we're looking for overall and let me explain the concept we're looking for a demand driven system that recognizes employer and employee needs employer needs and employee care capability. We want a capacity to develop a workforce that needs the needs or the demand of the workplace and how we can do that along with education higher education included and then the other entities that have traditionally sponsored some work type programs for instance and the welfare or the temporary assistance to needy families program we have a work segment that needs to be in the new department. There's a food stamps employment and training and family services that will be in the new department. And yes I am going to approve the bill. It's a

question of how if anything I have to look at any any parts of the bill that may not be compatible. And that's that's a detail to review we're doing right now. So we're. The thing to keep focused on is that while a change is going to be difficult in terms of merging several cultures into one department. The key thing is we need to keep our eye on the goal and that's to develop a demand driven system assist economic development and it's focused on the employer not on all the programs and money we can push at it. But what we can draw into the need for Workforce Development and we talk about demand driven system for people who don't follow your credit talk. What's an example of how that works. Well to give you an example of many federal programs have been funded for so long that the allocation of funds in the program is targeted to an earmark to just keep going on and on even if there's not a need for it anymore. Employers are trying other widget makers but no any theory in mind. And at the same time workers or employers for

these workers they're awful thing. I need people I need these kinds of people. You're giving me these kinds of people. Can we match that up. We're saying yes we can make that work more efficiently through this program. And we see it. I think particularly with the computers and the company I know you're interested in there are jobs for technical people in the state that you just cannot find someone to do things that are. Trained for it. Although that competition is easing quite a bit with the decline in a lot of the technology sector is where we're seeing a resurgence in people who would like to come to Wyoming. And finally we're we're getting a lot of momentum that's built up because we connect our schools we're connecting in hospitals are practicing telemedicine we're doing things through increased broadband and access is a new provider using some of the fiber optic lines that we received as a state to cross state lines that that company is opening up business now within a month or so. So we're seeing with a decline overall nationally in the demand for technology workers

that Wyoming has is going to be in a better position than we were before. And what about the young people coming up. Do you feel that in your eight years in office. I'm a little over 70 you've been able to make that kind of difference you wanted in that area of making them better prepared. I think in the long run the answer is absolutely yes. We've prepared young people to succeed wherever they go and our target is still to keep them in the state or to bring them back. As we've watched the numbers in public schools for instance and the decline in the younger ages that trend is still very disturbing. We're losing between 2 and 5 percent of our young kids per year depending on the part of the state. But that trend can't continue because it's so indicative of the strength of our economy in the long run in terms of what we've done to turn that around. We've changed the emphasis from the traditional sectors in employment to increasing capacity through technology diversifying into areas that are very knowledge based. Depend a lot on the individual's knowledge of any area. In other words broadening that choice is getting far beyond

just the traditional categories. And you'll notice a definite difference in that over the next few years. Katie from Landauer asked the question that everybody asks What can you or the next governor do to keep our young professionals in the state. There is no magic potion for that. But if there's one common thread to all of that is what can we do to enable people to work almost anywhere and live in Wyoming. That to me is going to be the key. That's why I push so hard for technology and connectivity our young people now are coming out of school prepared to use that. And yet fewer than 20 percent of our employers effectively use technology in their business. Well for every enhancement that you do in your business to improve productivity or competitiveness or access to markets either for goods or services and we're doing a lot more services type work through technology that will add to the potential that's out there. We continue to have increasing needs and health care. I mean everybody knows how much healthcare costs have gone up. We need to find new innovations that will pay off there as well.

So there's not one segment of the economy that we can target and say this is going to be the area for Wyoming to work in a way we can do is say what can benefit every sector of the economy and enable innovation. Technology again is not the magic potion but it's a common denominator to all those. And then at the same time do things like the university research commercializing that spinoff businesses that can come from there using our community colleges to upgrade skills and way of targeted skill areas where we have shortages around the state teaching everything a lot of those fields that people might want to stay here. Now the level of professionals such as engineering we still export about 95 percent of our university graduates where teaching we keep but we're having them. Attorneys we keep over half of them will continue to target those areas of professional shortage and try to attract young people if not directly out of school attract them to come back to Wyoming. I want to remind our viewers that we're live from the Capitol and we'd love for you to call in and ask your

questions of the governor. It's a toll free number. So give us a call right here at the state capital and. Governor Jim garing. What he has planned for the next while he's in office and any other questions that you're interested in. You mentioned the idea of making it so you can live here and work anywhere else. And one example of that while consultants are probably one of the primary ways that we do that. There's the opportunity to teach people can be based here and travel other places. There are people who live in Wheatland or Jackson or with the team who practice an activity where they can work almost anywhere else. As an example Jackson is becoming a financial center. We call it a mini financial center where bonds are traded in American Capital Group the Brandywine funds. So we're like that. There's a think though of the largest nonprescription drug company is headquartered in Jackson and they process their orders up there. So order processing server farms. And it's not just the mail order services that are provided not just goods that are provided to this kind of

thing. And it's not just a single individual doing that out of their home it's whole companies who work here and deliver their services elsewhere. The Boise Cascades a good example of Boise Cascade. Mike Adams up in Cody Wyoming is an Internet web provider and he does it everywhere. And another example of a professional coming back to Wyoming. Mike Pietra his dad used to be the director of game fish but he's worked down in Phoenix for years. He's bringing his company a new company that he's founded voice dream. They're going to hire about 40 professionals in Laramie and set up business. Tom Perkins when he came back to Sheridan from Houston he he brought Phoenix fuels. Now that's an example of a company who works in Wyoming or operates from Wyoming and deliver their product worldwide. He delivers jet fuel to oh. Twenty five hundred airports worldwide. Just from Sheridan you know when you talk about this and I'm I'm glad it's not just consultants flying around because our air service. Is not what it should be

and you would think that if that were our hope for the future we wouldn't be getting there that. Well we're were probably less impacted than many other states. So even while we're struggling with our own air service here we are still less impacted than other states. That's only by comparison. It's not as good as we'd like. Great Lakes is a competent carrier but well as an example given the bailout that Congress passed that said that the airlines could have a certain amount of money to get through the impact of September 11. Great Lakes only this month started receiving their allocation of that. So some of their difficulties even of late have been just because of a cash flow in the allocation of funds to assist the airline industry as a whole for this. And a lot of their business will depend on what happens with United. The two main line carriers that affect Wyoming will be united and Delta probably united more than Delta but we'll look to both or anybody else who wants to enhance service but commuter airlines still need to work in Wyoming. We'll continue to work with them. KEITH.

How is great like we hear stories that they're you know years on death and they're in trouble. And then they seem to bring it back up and now that they've caught them waiting for their assistance from the federal government how there are headquarters. Well see there's only one airline in America today that's on the plus side of the ledger and that's Southwest Airlines. So a lot of great lakes woes are reflective of what's going on in the industry overall. I'm confident that they're going to be around for a while. And as I mentioned some of their difficulties are a cash flow situation in terms of their equipment leases. There's at least one lease program that I know of where the lease holder did not want to make modifications to the airplanes to fly at high altitude. Well they're primarily a high altitude provider right now. Those are management issues that we don't get involved with but we try to maintain an awareness of where the company is because we want them to be successful. We're not going to subsidize them but we want to help them through their management issues where is appropriate so that we keep them operating in Wyoming.

Right and it was certainly a hopeful thing that they would come to Cheyenne and create jobs and also serve the state with better service and they have. And again that is led by comparison in other states as it is to what's absolutely happening here. We need improvement and we work in fuss at them and try to get them to make improvements. But compared to if they were still in Spencer Iowa or if they located in Nebraska instead of Cheyenne we would be significantly worse off than we are today. I want to remind people to call in and ask questions and John from Rock Springs has a question for you the general question is what is going on with the prison industry. The governor formed a. Committee to study it two years ago or so and we haven't heard anything since. I'm not sure what that task force would be. We will see if I can understand that. We made recommendations on what to do to build a new facility that was done and we recommended the expansion of that new facility and that was done about that time we started to become

aware of just how poor condition the old facility was and the old facilities not that old know that that somebody might want to be five years old now that that older facility the north facility was so poorly constructed and poorly located that it has lived less than half of its useful life in terms of its capability to do what what's needed. And it was not designed well for the type of prisoners who would be placed there. So we've had to deal with that. My recommendation to the legislature was to upgrade that. That didn't happen. So we would we did a more detailed evaluation and that turned out to be. One of the factors by the legislature didn't want to put money into it again. It's going to cost as much to fix the old one had to build a whole new one. But we're taking a different approach and that is can we reduce demand for jail cells. Our overall goal should be that we don't have any prisoners. And that continues to be it. This is not a part of the Wyoming economy. It's a part of what we need to do to improve our society. The most significant bill that passed this section was the substance abuse treatment

bill. And over time with an investment we'll see a decrease in demand for prison sentences related to drugs either as a primary or a related defense for both men and women. We can see the same thing potentially and hopefully reflecting in the juvenile justice area. So the plan to address the caller's question. The plan is to work away from the need to have that many prison beds. And so what's going to happen in Rawlins will largely depend upon how successful we are in doing that. And in the interim regardless of whether we build a new one or rehabilitate the old one we need to contracter beds elsewhere. We turn first to our local county jails where they can take them in and go out of state to contract beds. Now the new facility in New Orleans was built for maximum security and special needs prisoners. So the lesser risk or lesser problem type prisoners can be contracted out in other facilities. And that's that's easier to do than to contract out the higher risk for the maximum security ones.

Couple more questions along those lines that there was always a lot of discussion that the people who work in the prisons are terribly underpaid and there's a lot of turnover which can lead to a potentially violent situation. Do you feel the pay has been improved enough. Well I'm I'm not sure that it's enough yet but it's the most increased. Segment of our state employee. Workforce if you will. It's been more substantially increased than anywhere else to the point where people are working and the other corrections facilities in other parts of the state are saying why only Rollin's you know what about us and we've beat that up as well and in this year of course added to employee health insurance program just to keep pace with the rising costs that that one kind of caught us by surprise and have quit that went up and now we at least made up the difference for now. So in terms of recruitment and retention We've beefed up training we beefed up salaries. We're working on all kinds of morale issues but it's a tough industry. Nationwide 30 percent turnover is

not untypical. But we'd like to keep that. But we'd like to work that down to about half that rate. Because when you've invested in somebody through training and through experience we'd like to keep them. You've really raised really broad expectation big expectations for a substance abuse bill by saying that one cure for our prison overcrowding is that by putting this kind of effort into substance abuse we don't have as many people in prison. Elaborate how that can happen and how. We might take. It. Off. I don't know how soon but we have to have that as a goal because we can't afford the trends that we currently have either for you. And if I look at them the tougher youth situations that we deal with the boys school and the girls school and young people aren't placed there unless they've committed what would be a felony if they were of age. So what they're saying is there because they are quote delinquent and that means that they committed what had been a felony had they been older. 85 percent of the girls and 100 percent of the boys have a substance abuse problem in those categories that are men's and women's

corrections system. The numbers run typically 80 to 85 percent having a substance abuse problem in most cases. It's a contributing factor to the felony they committed not the primary reason. So as we reduce that the probability of committing a drug related offense for instance or sentence for armed robbery or attempted extortion or even attempted murder those might be related to beating a habit or confuse judgment or poor choices as we go through the substance abuse treatment programs they actually change a person's life if they're done correctly which reduces the probability of returning to prison or even committing that crime in the first place. And for the many years that we talk about substance abuse problems are there new techniques that make you think that right now putting some money into it will make a difference in people's lives. Probably the most significant changes in the. Time of the period of intervention where an individual in the past was sentenced to an eight week or four week

program and that somehow would change their lives. It doesn't happen. Now there has to be a program that many times can be indeterminant you don't have a. Specific sentence or treatment period. You have a certain goal that if the individual reaches that goal then they are considered to have had effective treatment. So there's been a shift in how treatment is provided and the conditions under which are provided so that there is an adaptation back into the community working with the employers working on these skills that the individual needs that they have an intensive treatment you end up with our state prison and less for the women that are there. And I've spoken to two of their graduating classes and have had breakfast with yet the third one now. There's a lot of uncertainty when you go from a prison dependency back into the workforce and for some of them it might be the first time they've held a job. So they're going into a situation that's rather different and the treatment program that we have there is focused on helping restore that person to society and work and family and

community situations. I would talk to you about this a lot longer but I think I'd better ask you some of the questions that Peter and calling in and we appreciate you calling in Joe from. This is a pretty specific one. The county commissioners opposed the grizzly bear food storage and land habitat. Where do you stand on this and bring you back to commission. Well I would tip typically on just about any issue back are local government or the federal government where we're given the choice. I'm not that familiar with the food storage issue relating to Grizzly bears and it has to do with the proposal by the federal government as to how people will store food if they're in an outdoor situation. Presumably I guess to be less tempting to the Bears. We need to increase the amount of cooperation on developing plans for how we deal with any kind of wildlife management between federal agencies and our local governing entities. We've established a national trend just out of Wyoming on how to deal with these difficult issues. The National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act have always

been federal government focus. In other words they decide what's right and they push it down. We've set a trend through what we call the cooperating agency status where we are invited as a cooperating agency. The state or a local county entity is invited to participate in even aquatic conservation district there by providing advice and ways to manage that can achieve the same goal. A whole lot less controversy like these issues are. So whether it be the new listing of plant species in Fremont County which just came out last week potentially it's going to be listed I guess is threatened and that endangered species act and in the food storage issues we looked at the federal government to be looking to the states for advise on how to better manage issues rather than just. Coming out and updating us on their decision. We have a question from Cody from Steve who says why do you think that the wildlife legacy trust fund failed to pass. Do you think there are issues between the public and the game of fish.

There are probably a variety of reasons why that may not have passed. There's a long standing. No I'm not sure what to call it. I'll just put it concern if he will be killing many people in the agriculture industry that may be Game and Fish isn't as open as it could be. I think they are in the game with fishes really trying to work with all of our citizens on habitat management team management. The key thing I guess is that perhaps the public doesn't understand how much is expected of the game of fish these days. It's not related to game animals and fish. Most of the funding for our Game and Fish Department comes from license fees. These are the people who are in the consumptive side of wildlife fishing and hunting in both small birds and game and big game. That's where most of the income comes from. Most of the expenditure is going toward other areas conservation of habitat for endangered or threatened species evaluations and things that we've

never even thought of before. Now all of a sudden we have to manage plants as well as animals that are being listed. That money is being siphoned off of other areas and the goal that gave the Bush legacy was to set up a means to fund that. The fear was I think that the game and fish might say well here's some money that we have had to devote our own money to. Now we can put our own money back and it doesn't really enhance their ability to evaluate those new areas. That was one concern that was expressed directly to me. I think what we need to remember though is that there are greater responsibilities expected of Game and Fish they're not being. Well-funded. It's going to slow down every part of both economic and first like TVs in Wyoming if we don't deal with it. Growth in every area from mining to minerals to tourism to even just personal recreation will be hampered in part if we're not able to keep up with all of these reviews required of the game and fish. So whether it be the legacy as a way to generate income through a trust fund or some other funding mechanism we need to fix that problem. And at the same time build trust

between those who would be on the side of getting the fish and those who might be concerned about it. Kevin from Cheyenne wants to know what your personal opinion is about Tamlyn. Well I think term limits were a good idea that they don't want to have any practical application in Wyoming. And I say this from the perspective of the legislature not from my position as governor I think eight years in a position like I hold is probably enough I would have stayed just eight years regardless of term limits. But when it comes to the legislature wanted when you look at what it takes to build up an institutional knowledge and sift out some leadership that can take over we will lose a lot of our institutional knowledge with term limits and what that does is it will weaken the citizen legislature compared to other things. What would be the courts or the executive branch or whatever. So where I think the greatest impact from Term limits will be is potentially negative on our legislative process. They'll

be more dependent upon state agencies more perhaps even dependent upon the executive branch to guide rather than being a co-equal branch. And I think that. At some point it would be wise to repeal term limits for legislators because of that citizen legislature made sure that the people are not full time employees and. Can't grasp all that and then be voted out of office if they're have to leave office or out of office even without term limits. We have a substantial turnover in the legislature. But what we're not doing is preparing well for a succession of leadership. In light of this is from Brad and Cody in light of new stories indicating a need for new revenue sources in the next biennium. Would you oppose the elimination of all or any sales tax exemptions currently available under Wyoming lobby for. Implementing an income x I think income tax is probably the lowest on the list of any potential probabilities out there. We've asked for elimination of

sales tax exemptions. One of the things to look at is that. Most services in Wyoming are exempt from sales taxes. Two thirds of our economy is services based. So sales taxes were to be applied and all exemptions removed the most significant area would be services. Now services include commercial television newspapers a lot of. Professional services such as attorneys and the like so there will be quite a clamor about that as there was two years ago when that was proposed. So but that would include those exemptions and I have actually recommended that in the past route from pavilion. Are you doing anything about increasing manufacturing in Wyoming. We are it's one area that's been growing in Wyoming. We have through our Wyoming business council a special group called the Mid-America manufacturing and technology center. And what that group does is it. Well let me give you several examples. We have a program called the Small Business Business Innovation

Research Grant program. Somebody has a good idea. They want to turn it into a manufactured product product or process. So if an award is made to help them prove out the system then if it looks like it's going to be commercially viable we bring in through the business council what we call Mannatech that's the acronym for American manufacturing. They provide technical assistance to get them on their way at the same time take them through a process of building a business plan and finding investment capital to help back them. That's the kind of thing that we're building a little bit at a time. We don't anticipate being able to recruit a major company like a micron or a Ford Motor Company or anything like that where thousands of jobs would come in if that were to happen it might happen once in 20 years. Even that soon. On the other hand we can build six or eight or ten thousand jobs through just adding a few at a time through these small enterprises and that's what we have decided to focus on are there so far

any success stories from that effort. Well for instance voice technologies I mentioned like Pietra earlier that that success story is very likely. We already have. Stories that go back even further like that tech up in Casper Buckland's propulsion units. We have a big horn Bell company up in Sheraton or manufactured timber products at Wyoming saw mills up in Sheridan where they take what otherwise would be waste lumber and make composite to book for as they are cut so they fit together they're sturdy. They are serving up the resources there. So we have probably several hundred examples of things like that that are going on in the state. Well here's a question about Pioneer license. And this is from Dale in Cheyenne. Why did you sign a law regarding pioneer licenses that required that one be born before January 1 1930 before pioneer license be issued up to 17 years. I thought it went the other way around it. What we're trying to do is make it age dependent not

calendar dependent so that we don't have to change the law every time the calendar changes. That the goal is to say that if a person is of a certain age then they could qualify for Piner license and I depend heavily upon our legislative committee the draft every year to come up with the best way to fix that. And I think it's going to be targeted toward a specific age not a year on the calendar because some land here would like to know how can we get rid of the Attwill policy in the work place and have a three month probationary period instead. I'm not sure where that would apply. We don't have an At Will policy in the public sector. Either. County or state or local government. It may maybe it relates to a specific employer and that that's that's typically what happens in the private sector. The conditions under which an employee comes to work are between the employee and the employer. And this isn't something. The state has. Tried to.

Intervene. Not that I know of. I may be missing the point of the question. And that's all it says but I think it would seem to be talking about private. My guess is it's probably in the private sector because in this case it doesn't apply to the state. The only positions we have in the state are those physicians appointed by sections of cabinet directors or in-turn the division directors appointed by them. For instance within the Department of Agriculture and the division director there it is and. Natural resources would be Atwill to the director of the department but that's as far down as it goes up at Fort Huachuca. Why can't we have gambling in the state and on the reservation it brings in revenue and lower taxes. We had it in the 40s and 50s. Well I'm not sure what was there in the 40s and 50s the the governor is obligated to execute the laws of the state of Wyoming and where the legislature as well as the people and the people voted in statewide referendum that they did not want but a two to one vote that they did not want casino style gaming. So it's not

at my discretion. The question about gambling is now both in the courts and in negotiations. Wyoming is negotiating with the crap over a tribe the Northern Arapaho tribe on just how far we can go within the current law which permits parimutuel gambling as well as Calcutta. Calcutta wagering and within the broad definition of those categories we can negotiate anything beyond that. Would depend either on a vote of the people or vote through the legislature or by the people would be in county. Does the governor feel that using consulting services is as cost effective as having public service employees doing the same job. We use both. Quite often we can't attract somebody to work full time for the state but we need their services anyway. So we frequently and that's gone on for a long time contract for services through consulting in a variety of ways where something is going to be there on an ongoing basis. We try to build the expertise in-house if you will and become the best provider of that kind of

service. Anything from health care to engineering to wildlife to well anything the state does will always have a mixture of both because we need both both on the periodic need for those services and then the availability of people who can perform those services can't come Larramie wife or two terms did you not have an open door policy for me and my representative for the state worker like the past the government I always have always had an open door policy. So I beg to differ with the individual. In fact in terms of total number of people that we touch through the governor's office we have at least doubled and probably tripled what any previous governor has ever done both through direct contact and my community visits and the access through technology and email. So in terms of open door it's more open now than it's ever been. Did you find everything you got. I used to. But it's

there's just so much anymore and for instance on the state Web site. The governor's email address is listed there you can respond. So it could be anything from a very substantive question on economic development which I will answer or if it's a question about a workers comp will refer that to the Worker's Comp division immediately for a quicker response or if it's a request for a map or a vacation planning guide we'll send that to someone else so I don't respond to all of those. But I would guess. Well I don't know how to guess. We we probably touch in some fashion about twelve to fifteen hundred people per week. On how we accessed so. And. Given that we have the smallest governor's staff of any state that's quite a record. And here is a serious economic development question from Mike in Cheyenne who commute from Cheyenne to Denver to make a living and says What does the state plan to do to increase the economic growth and boost the way.

The lot of the growth. In Cheyenne is a good example to cite. Cheyanne has a very effective local economic development program and they have local leadership. You have to develop the capacity even to track this or help business grow in any community. So taking Cheyenne as an example increased infrastructure for the basics like electricity and the cost of utilities the availability of technology the availability of workers that are trained. Those are all things to. Provide a combination of state education and local providers to help make that happen. Once the capacity is in place and you build jobs from within by encouraging businesses to expand or they feel they can expand what what can we do to increase their business activity. And then recruiting companies to come in and steal for instance or that the helicopter company that came up from Colorado. Those are both manufacturing types of businesses. EchoStar is a technology based company. Lowe's is a distribution warehouse. They don't

happen over night and most of the job growth in Cheyenne as well as other parts of the state will be a lot from existing businesses and help out and help them grow. And depending on where this individual works and what their specialty is we will be able to satisfy all of them. But for instance our our son and his wife moved back from Denver because they were both working down there I wanted to live here. She's found work up here. He didn't but he commutes to Fort Collins and lives up here. So the caller here maybe enjoying kind of the same situation. They'd rather work here. But they found a way to live in Wyoming and still make a living. And in fact back from Cheyenne to Denver is probably not too far from the thing it's all around the country. We lived in Los Angeles. Where we used to live in the California Los Angeles area. It's about a two hour commute. To find affordable housing and still work a decent job. So compared to many places in the country especially on the East Coast a two hour commute is not unusual. So here to Denver is not

unusual but we're in Wyoming. Why in the world would you want to do that. That's right. That's the goal that we all have. Can we. Well governor spends five minutes driving from his house to work. Why can't everybody do that. That really is a good goal to have because this is Wyoming. I have asked various people what they think they really want in a governor. And it occurs to me that what they really want is someone to go out and make a deal and get a job. If you had to say the one thing people really want to know if more high paying jobs there they're looking for a way where something can be caused to happen just like just that quickly. In a thousand job companies. The practical answer is that's not going to happen. The opportunity to bring in another Boise Cascade or ELO's with your 500 person job companies those are going to be rare. As an example last year at peak of the summer we had close to seven thousand new jobs. And the great majority of them were generated from within they were relocated

companies were still forty eight hundred jobs ahead of last year at this time of the year. And yet we've had no major job announcements other than I believe like a Lowe's coming in. So not even 10 percent of the total job growth is coming from any one company. It's coming from little companies expanding or smaller companies saying you know when I was a great place to do business I'm coming here and we do have those happening all the time. You think that. Wyoming people have a particularly entrepreneurial spirit. Well in fact on national grading activities Wyoming has probably the best entrepreneurial environment of anybody and they have that attitude. And part of entrepreneurism is being willing to take your own course of action. Well I'm not going to sit and have somebody hand me a job or go out and make one or I'll go and work for somebody until I find something better. Why only people have that attitude. And they're very happy to go out and try to find a way where they can make something work and have their own business at the same time. So I would say that

Wyoming is on a par with anybody else if not ahead of anybody else in creating that entrepreneurial attitude. You know when you look at the various surveys that magazines are always coming out with about the best place to do this or ranking the various states Wyoming has gotten some good play in some of those recently. A good place to do this. They have. And what we discovered through the business council was. It wasn't that companies didn't know or didn't have a positive or negative attitude about Wyoming. They just didn't know about Wyoming. There was no opinion because there was no information. One of the things that's worked quite well with our business council is to work with the site developers in the site selection People site selection magazines conferences that are held because as companies look at relocating or a CTO looks at a way to relocate and perhaps start a new business they're going to look first through someone else that someone else is the key person. We've cultivated a lot of that as a way to increase our exposure for companies as they're looking for

relocation. It's very seldom that the governor initiates the contact with a company. The governor is usually a deal closer after something else has happened and that's that's the strategy that we've taken advantage of is to develop those contacts develop those leaves the governor goes in and help close the deal and I've done a lot of those. It's not usually the governor initiating the primary contact. It's making people feel like this is a good place to do business. And besides that you have access to the top people in government for all kinds of things from Laramie. Aaron has an air travel question which is has the state ever considered entering into a contract of Great Lakes airlines or another service for all air travel by state employees in order to help subsidize the airline and to make the traveling by air more efficient. And know we have about that we have looked at it. It. It probably wouldn't do much more than what we currently have but we'll always look at that as an option. What we don't have is between city travel in the

state and in order to develop that we would have to start up with a subsidy before it would catch hold and be able to do that. I've always had that as a personal goal because when you look at all the safety risks that are involved people being on the road and traveling all over the extra time spent the extra expense of hotels and meals and and really the loss of productivity when you're out traveling you're not doing much work. And even if you're on a cell phone it's not as continuous as you would do otherwise. So it's the right Goldhill it's just been difficult to get it up and going but we'll continue to look at it. You think we'll ever see a high speed rail that connects all the cities where would it connect. Well. Catherine Cheyanne. We're just trying to build more four lane highways to do the same thing and we don't have the numbers that support that high speed rail. Works in a highly dense. Densely populated areas. It would work for instance from Longmont to Colorado Springs or even within the Denver metro area. But it's

it's not a. Profitable thing until we have more people in Wyoming if we even want them if we want that. A second question from someone who called earlier Brad from Cody What is your opinion on random drug testing for students in public schools. I think it should be a local option. Whenever in schools through the school. And the community needs what we feel is most appropriate. It basically boils down to a fundamental choice in the local area. What can we do to deal with reducing demand. There are two ways that you can deal with a difficult problem like drug abuse or any substance abuse. You can't keep penalizing and penalize and penalize him or you can. And again on the supply side try to look at ways to cut down on the availability of these substances where you can reduce the need or the demand for it. And that's the the better target. Take away the desire for anything to abuse a substance and all of a sudden the need for random drug

testing becomes minimized. That's an incredibly tall order to take away that my own. It's the only right way to go. It can deter up to a point. And random drug testing works very well in the employment area in the business sector in terms of schools. I'd say target those areas that have specific problems and have random drug testing there but you have to have universal drug testing for that. In gold I mean I think that that in the end defeats the purpose of it so that they ought to be focusing on where they can have the biggest impact. We have a question from Tony in Riverton What's your current status on the statewide drought. Is the state considering additional watershed storage. We are considering watershed storage in this particular section. We asked the legislature for small development projects. Rather than just one large storage reservoir. What about a series of smaller projects that can benefit several areas of the state. So a specific amount of money was set aside for that.

The current crop status is it's a drought. Our drought task force is working. We're looking at declarations that can increase the availability of loans and other assistance activities. Anything that we can do to work with the federal government on lands public lands in particular that protect the lands. From a drought situation which still allow for a transition of agriculture in particular or to deal with wildlife and how to meet them. For instance if somebody runs livestock can't turn out on public lands what do they do with the livestock. Well if they have to sell it that incurs a tax liability all of a sudden. Well the Congress has been working with that our congressional delegation has been working on that. So we looked at the direct assistance indirect assistance ways to enhance what water we do have and to look at alternative crops or alternative occupations to help tide people over and in to help them plan to manage risk because these are these things are going to occur time and again.

Well there's definitely talk that we'll have rationing this summer even though it's been a fairly wet past couple of weeks and nowhere near enough to make up the difference and probably mostly on the over appropriate in areas such as the North Platte drainage in. This southeast corner of Wyoming has the greatest demand for water of any of the areas of the state. And so communities will be restricted. But we already have exchange agreements in place. We've gone through this before. We're not anticipating anybody will actually run out of water and where there might be water cutbacks there will be water shortages for municipal areas. The greatest challenge will be what we do for a tourism agriculture where they're most impacted by the general drought in the state. We have two minutes left and I wanted to ask you before we end what what goals you have for your remaining time. Well where we're getting together with our cabinet and agency directors next week again to say for my administration. There's this period of time left what do we need to do to either accomplish something

or give momentum to work something we'll carry it through. Well we'll outline those areas and we'll concentrate on the big areas such as health health care costs education. Enhanced business opportunities in the state. Those are the general categories that everybody so that's currently working on these issues in this state is not approaching it as well. I have till December to do that. They're approaching it as we have an ongoing task to do and whether I'm here or not. What's the best thing that we can do for now especially the handoff to whoever is in the new administration there should not be a cutoff and then somebody start fresh. There should be a transition that benefits the whole state and we'll we'll work on it that way. And in one minute out what do you feel best about that's happened in the past eight years in your time work working in this office. I guess what I feel best about is that we've developed a sense of optimism in this state a greater sense of how we can make a name for ourselves we don't have to take whatever comes along we can chart our own destiny if you will. See. Six or seven

sequential years we've had of employment growth new businesses coming in enhanced education we're better in so many sectors and we were before. But it doesn't minimize the problems that we're currently having and if anything we've created the notion that we can work together especially with local governments and enhancing the opportunity for more people to be involved in delivery of services. We've really opened the door especially through technology for people to take charge of their own government and the delivery of services. And I feel good about that. And I know you came in with technology of a major goal and you persisted with that for the entire time because it enables the individual to do more instead of having to be patronized by somebody else. We really let people know that they can be in charge. Thank you Governor Jim Garrett here we thank all of you for your questions. We really appreciate them. From Wyoming Public Television we thank you for joining us. For.

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