Lawmakers Put Wyoming Health Spending Under the Microscope Ahead of 2026 Budget Session

Wyoming’s two biggest line items — education and health — are heading into the legislative hot seat. With the 2026 budget session coming up, lawmakers are sharpening their pencils for a deep look at where the money goes and what the state can afford if revenues keep sliding, Gillette News Record reports.

On the schools side, the totals are enormous. For the 2025–26 biennium, the state is spending just under $1.86 billion on the School Foundation Program and a little over $390 million through the Wyoming Department of Education. A separate Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration is already tasked with tuning the K–12 block grant. That’s not optional; the Wyoming Supreme Court ordered the Legislature back in 1995 to adjust funding every two years for inflation and to revisit the entire model every five years to keep pace with real costs. The last full recalibration bill that actually became law was in 2011, and lawmakers trimmed roughly $30 million from K–12 in 2018.

Now comes the other whale in the room: health care. The Joint Appropriations Committee voted last month to set up a three-member subcommittee to comb through the Wyoming Department of Health’s nearly $2.25 billion budget for the 2025–26 biennium. Rep. Ken Pendergraft, a Sheridan Republican who pushed for the move, argues that even “modest” percentage increases at WDH ripple across the entire state budget. His view is blunt: spending is running too hot as revenues cool, and that’s a recipe for a “fiscal cliff.” House Republicans on the panel have taken to wearing red jackets and shirts at meetings to underline what they call an “impending problem with the state budget.”

The revenue picture isn’t helping. A July forecast from the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group flagged an expected $50 million annual hit tied to lower federal mineral royalty rates for coal. Rep. Trey Sherwood, a Laramie Democrat who also sits on the subcommittee, says the real tension is what happens if federal dollars slow down. If Washington trims services or grants, she warns, that shortfall will boomerang through programs and providers in Wyoming communities. For now, WDH operations manager Lindsay Mills says the department hasn’t been told to expect federal cuts. In this biennium alone, WDH has already drawn down more than $655.7 million in federal funds across its programs and is currently anticipating north of $1.03 billion for 2027–28.

Pendergraft stresses that most of WDH’s dollars flow straight to Wyoming residents, not bureaucracy. If cuts do become unavoidable, he says, the aim is to do it in a way that hits the fewest people possible. What that actually looks like is precisely what the new panel is meant to hash out over the next few months.

The subcommittee — Pendergraft, Sherwood, and Sen. Dan Laursen of Powell — plans five meetings: two in Casper and three in Cheyenne. The kickoff is set for Sept. 30 at the Thyra Thomson State Office Building in Casper. Members say they’ve already identified several items they want to probe further, though they aren’t publicly detailing those yet.

Taken together, the twin reviews signal a familiar but high-stakes balancing act. The state’s constitutional promises on education aren’t going away; neither are health needs that touch everything from Medicaid to behavioral health to long-term care. With coal royalties slipping and costs edging up, lawmakers are trying to figure out where to recalibrate, where to hold the line, and where to trim — without breaking what Wyomingites depend on every day.