CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Wyoming Senate on Feb. 7 approved a supplemental budget bill that bundles emergency spending, transfers and several policy riders while voting down a proposal to strip funding from the Wyoming Public Television endowment and approving a set of contested changes affecting energy, wildfire mitigation and other programs.

The Senate passed Senate File 1, the supplemental appropriations bill, after a final roll-call vote. The clerk recorded the bill as having passed on third reading (final recorded tally: 28 ayes, 3 nays). The roll-call followed more than two dozen separate amendment votes and withdrawals over the day and evening.

Why it matters: The bill adjusts state spending between sessions and includes a set of high-profile programmatic decisions that lawmakers debated loudly — from restoring flexibility for large energy project matching funds to adding funds for wildfire mitigation. Many decisions on the floor were procedural (withdrawals and technical fixes), but several substantive items change how state funds can be used and set priorities ahead of the next fiscal year.

What the Senate did (high-level)
- Passed Senate File 1 (supplemental budget) on third reading (final recorded vote in the Senate: 28 aye, 3 no). The bill included the fiscal “balancer” that pays for the items adopted in the session’s amendment process.
- Rejected (failed) a proposal to remove revenue paid to the Wyoming Public Television Endowment account (Third-reading Amendment No. 8).
- Rejected several amendments aiming to restrict university exchanges and to add immediate prohibitions tied to “foreign adversaries” (Third-reading Amendment No. 9 and related amendments failed).
- Approved restoring the scope of the Large Project Energy Matching Funds to allow projects tied to carbon storage and sequestration (Third-reading Amendment No. 15 adopted).
- Adopted a large change to wildfire/natural-disaster mitigation funding, converting earlier loan language into grants and increasing the grant amount (Third-reading Amendment No. 20 adopted to provide $100 million in grants for wildfire/natural-disaster mitigation).
- Rejected separate one‑time grants for school resource officers and a proposed meat-processing matching fund (Committee/Amendment outcomes noted below).

Votes at a glance (selected amendments and outcomes taken from the transcript record)
- Third-reading Amendment No. 8 (remove Wyoming Public Television Endowment revenue): FAILED — recorded as 3 ayes, 28 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 9 (restrictions related to “foreign adversaries” at universities): FAILED — recorded as 7 ayes, 24 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 10 (reporting on foreign funding at universities; vote was taken by division): FAILED (division: 10 ayes, 20 no).
- Third-reading Amendment No. 11 (delete footnote restricting DEI at the University of Wyoming): FAILED — recorded as 11 ayes, 20 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 13 (technical/charter school salary and position cleanup): ADOPTED — recorded as 23 ayes, 8 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 14 (loan authority for the Mineral Royalty Grant program): FAILED — recorded as 10 ayes, 21 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 15 (restore carbon storage/sequestration eligibility in Large Project Energy Matching Funds): ADOPTED — recorded as 19 ayes, 12 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 18 (narrowing scope of energy fund uses): FAILED — recorded in transcript as 13 ayes and more no votes (amendment failed).
- Third-reading Amendment No. 20 (Wildfire/Natural Disaster Mitigation: change loans to grants and increase to $100,000,000): ADOPTED — recorded as 16 ayes, 15 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 23 (one-year $5,000,000 school resource officer grants, one per district): FAILED — recorded as 10 ayes, 21 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 24 (meat-processing matching fund: $50,000,000 LISRA appropriation, dollar-for-dollar match): FAILED — recorded as 3 ayes, 28 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 28 (targeted relief for special districts in 23 counties; $15,000,000): ADOPTED — recorded as 18 ayes, 13 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 29 (budget balancer that appropriates/offsets the amendments adopted during the day): ADOPTED — recorded as 30 ayes, 1 no.
- Third-reading Amendment No. 30 (technical fixes/corrections): ADOPTED (voice vote).

Other bills and committee actions during the session
- The Senate also considered other bills on the floor (committee-of-the-whole action summaries recorded in the transcript). Notable committee-of-the-whole recommendations that day included do-pass reports on bills including Senate File 164 (pari-mutuel rodeo provisions), Senate File 22 (grounds for termination of parental rights — amended), Senate File 157 (Department of Family Services confidentiality/data-sharing amendments), and others. Several bills were carried forward to second/third reading on the floor calendar.

What lawmakers highlighted during debate
- Supporters of restoring energy fund flexibility argued the state needs the ability to back integrated energy projects that include carbon storage or sequestration and pointed to prior policy work and Wyoming’s statutory authority on pore space and related permitting.
- Supporters of the increased wildfire mitigation grants argued that the large grant program gives local conservation and weed-and-pest districts the scale to respond quickly after fires and invasive-species outbreaks and that converting loan authority to grants would be more usable in hard-hit areas.
- Opponents of the Wyoming PBS endowment cut argued the endowment is distinct from general funds, that the account was set up as an endowment for Wyoming Public Television’s mission, and that removing the dedicated income would undermine trust in state-managed endowments.

What changed in policy/practice (summary)
- The legislature left in place the Wyoming Public Television Endowment funding (the Senate voted down the cut). The endowment’s investment income remains a funding stream in the enacted supplemental framework.
- Lawmakers added flexibility to the Large Project Energy Matching Fund by removing an explicit ban on carbon capture/sequestration (amendment adopted), restoring those project types to the possible uses of that program.
- The Legislature moved to convert a previously-considered loan tool for the Wildfire/Natural Disaster Trust into direct grant funding and increased the total grant amount available to $100,000,000, with implementation directed to local conservation and weed-and-pest districts and the Department of Agriculture processes.
- The session included several technical, position/compensation cleanup amendments for charter and other positions that were adopted.

What’s next
- The supplemental budget bill (Senate File 1) cleared the Senate on third reading. The bill will go to the House (or to governor consideration, depending on the legislative calendar and prior procedural steps) for further action and any House amendments. Specific program rules (for example, the Department of Family Services confidentiality changes and the wildfire grant program) were referred to agency rule‑making or program administrators; follow-up by affected departments (Department of Agriculture, Department of Family Services, University of Wyoming, Wyoming PBS) is expected.

Meeting context and takeaways
- The Senate’s session on Feb. 7 was heavy on budget and policy riders embedded in the supplemental; many votes were party- and regionally-split. Several amendments were withdrawn by sponsors before votes. The debate reflected recurring priorities for the Legislature this biennium: energy project support, wildland fire response, school and local government finance, and questions about the role of state funding for public media and university exchange relationships.

Votes and evidence
- The vote counts and roll-call results in this article were taken from the Senate transcript for Feb. 7, 2025, which records each roll‑call and division vote for the amendments listed above.

Ending note
- Several of the larger policy changes (energy fund scope, wildfire mitigation grants) will require subsequent rule-writing or program guidelines from administering agencies before money flows. Lawmakers flagged the need for follow-up oversight as departments implement those new authorities and programs.