Wyoming Legislature's Joint Committee meets

The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Committee on Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources held a meeting in Thermopolis last week to go over a number of items in the State Park system as well as discuss the RFP’s for the Star Plunge and Days Inn.

The group discussed a draft bill that would allow more of the money gathered from state park fees to be used to offset budget cuts.

Currently, they can only use 30-percent the monies collected for maintenance of the various parks in the system. By allowing the use of a portion of fees to be used for other means, it would both keep visitors to the parks happy and help with the budget cuts by augmenting their budget, meaning less money would be needed from the state’s general fund.

The monies could be used for help with salaries, creating master plans and even construction if the bill were to move forward.

Fees generated from the parks amounted to $3 million during 2019. The number of visitors to the parks continues to climb, hosting more than four million people in 2019.

A surge has been seen in state park visitations the last few months and it is believed its due more from Wyomingites visiting the parks than out of state visitors, something the committee would like to see continue.

One of the concerns they have been hearing, however, is locals not being able to get camping spots because of the influx of out of state campers.

In-state campers were offered a 30-day pre-registration period before the reservation system was opened up to those traveling from other states, so there was less flack from local campers.

Going forward, the committee would like to be able to give Wyoming residents a week head start with reservations. Another idea was setting aside a percentage of spots for Wyoming residents only, but they are unsure that would work.

Crunching numbers shows there were 8,254 camping nights for out of state visitors while Wyoming residents made up 13,156 nights. In revenue, the numbers come out about 50/50 as the out of state fees are higher.

A reason the bill is critical at this time is the committee would rather keep the lights on and keep everything running smoothly than end up having to use the fees for capital construction, build a bunch of new stuff, then end up having to close everything up because they cannot pay their workers.

The main goal is to eliminate the use of money from the general fund. The committee understands the state has revenue concerns again this year and this bill would give the state parks system the ability to increase fees to offset those reductions.

The committee discussed the fees throughout the system and find they have some “wiggle room” before reaching the caps previously set on state and out of state options like camping, visitors fees and annual camping fees. Although they discussed eliminating the annual passes, they did not take any action that direction.

Senator Ogden Driskill said, “Its time for a re-set on a lot of things,” while talking about law enforcement within the parks.

How many calls do they get that need an absolute law enforcement person?

Game and Fish are law enforcement within the parks. Sheriff’s offices may be a long way off and the system has to take care of things as best they can, however, things can get out of hand very quickly, especially in park areas that have more of a party atmosphere.

The Territorial Prison in Laramie was also part of the day’s agenda.

The committee said it is something that is definitely worth saving. Originally, the prison had been privately owned and those owners could not make a profit so it was turned over to the state.

Not wanting to see it destroyed, the state puts in about $350,000 a year into the running of the prison. The payoff is a $900,000 impact on Laramie with jobs and services, making it the most profitable historic site, making more than some of the smaller parks.