Ongoing economy, incoming Governor and Legislature

At some point during the recent election cycle I quit posting on Wyoming's economy.  I'm not sure why, I just did.

It's not like the news on the state's economy came to a halt.  It did seemingly reach a sort of stasis, however.  Prices weren't wildly whipping around in the mineral industry and the other news was, well the news that had been around for awhile.

But there has been some recently news, to be sure.  And with a new Governor and a new Legislature coming into office, that's going to matter.  Indeed, we have reason to suspect that the new Governor might depart from Governor Mead's views on quite a few things (and on one thing totally unrelated to this, I hope that they do).

Governor Mead leaves office just at the time that his ENDOW study has really come into place, which is unfortunate in that it is well thought out but we can really question the extent to which the new Wyoming legislature, which is more conservative, if anything, than the prior one, will be taking office.  A really dedicated effort to plan around the factors that give rise to the boom and bust nature of Wyoming's economy, I suspect that Governor Gordon will support much of it, but I'm skeptical that the Legislature will.  I hope that I'm wrong on the latter.

One thing that was going on in the local economy the last several months is that the petroleum industry saw prices stabilize, and then rise.  Not rise in the rocket manner that has sometimes happened in the past, but steadily rise in a fashion that the national economy appeared likely to be able to handle. That was good news for the mineral sector of the economy. Then prices suddenly fell, and steeply.  Analysts have been predicting that the drop would be temporary, but that's been said many times before. So far, the industry is keeping on keeping on with the view that the fall is a bump in the road, but we'll see.

Coal has stabilized at a new low, compared to the prior boom, but the trend is clearly downward.  Coal isn't recovering so much as continuing a long slow slide, and that appears to be the likely projection for the foreseeable future.  That was predictable, but it was contrary to what many people seemed to think they could engineer around.  Now, hardly anyone is talking that way, and people seem to have resigned themselves to the fact of the decline.

One thing that hasn't resigned itself to the fact of the decline is the state's budget, which is still heavily coal based. 

The Tribune recently ran an article revealing that the often cited "70%" of the state's income coming from the mineral industry is in error, but the deeper story there is that not only is it between 50% and 60% (still a very large percentage), that's actually more of the norm and has been for a very long time.  70% does occur on occasion, but it's not the norm.

And that brings us back to Gordon and the Legislature.  It could be an interesting session.