As Wyoming faces a $300 million deficit to fund schools, some leaders are pitching the idea of a statewide 1% sales tax to help pay for K-12 education.

The Wyoming School Boards Association (WSBA) will consider a resolution this week that would support the new tax.

“While few desire more taxes, limited measures that are specifically designated for school funding may be preferable to the severe cuts that would be warranted as the sole solution to the budget deficit,” the resolution says.

WSBA members will vote on the resolution and a few others on Wednesday during a virtual delegate assembly. If it passes, the association’s support will be relayed to the Wyoming Legislature, which will have to determine whether it wants to create a new 1% tax.

“Frankly, I don’t think it will pass the delegate assembly. It will be interesting,” said Park County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees Chairman Greg Borcher, who serves as the WSBA president.

Borcher said he supports the idea, because he would like to have a discussion to see what people in the community and state are willing to do for K-12 education.

“Our Legislature says there’s no more money, and a lot of them are looking at additional revenue sources. Others are saying, no more revenue sources, we’re not going to raise taxes,” Borcher said at last week’s school board meeting. “But it at least gets the discussion started.”

If the resolution passes the WSBA delegate assembly, Borcher said the Powell school board can bring it to the community for discussion.

“What does the community of Powell think about having a 1 cent sales tax dedicated to education?” he said. “Now, you can see what the election just did with the 1 cent sales tax for general purpose in the county — it didn’t fly very far.”

Park County voters shot down that tax proposal Nov. 3, with 60.7% opposing it.

Trustee Kim Dillivan said the 1% general purpose tax “didn’t have any specific place where it was going.”

“I wonder if they had identified certain uses, maybe that would have made it more popular,” he said. “And perhaps this being toward education, it might be something that ultimately could be passed.”

Superintendent Jay Curtis noted that lawmakers can impose the 1% sales tax for education without voter approval, though “the accountability with that is that the public can then vote them out, if they don’t agree with that.”

An extra 1% of sales tax would have brought in an additional $191 million across the state in fiscal year 2020, though Curtis said officials at the legislative level have estimated it could raise $250 million a year.

“So when you’re talking about a $500 million biennium shortfall, a one penny sales tax erases that,” he said.

Curtis noted there’s been a lot of discussion about the state’s need to diversify the revenue stream for education.

“We’ve been in this boom-bust cycle for decades and decades, so it creates a lot of uncertainty for future budgeting,” the superintendent said.

Whenever a 1% sales tax is proposed, he said there are concerns about low-income residents or those on fixed incomes.

“In Wyoming, the way it’s structured, it is actually less likely to impact those populations, because food is excluded from that; our farmers have all sorts of exemptions,” Curtis said.

Meanwhile, additional mill levies (property taxes) are not really shared as a community, but only by those who own property, he continued.

Tourists also pay a large portion of sales tax, Chairman Borcher added.

South Dakota — which Curtis called “maybe the only state in the Union more conservative than Wyoming” — passed an additional 1% sales tax for education to catch up with surrounding states, and it was well-received and well-supported, he said.

“As a result, we stopped getting teachers [applying for jobs] from South Dakota the way we once did,” Curtis said.

A couple of Wyoming legislators brought the idea for a 1 cent sales tax to the Wyoming School Boards Association, Borcher said.

“I still don’t know who they are — I guess they do not want to be identified at this point yet — but they are part of the recalibration committee,” he said.

Trustee Kimberly Condie noted that during recalibration meetings, a consultant presented data showing Wyoming had about the lowest sales tax, except for Montana, which is one of a handful of states without a tax on sales.

“I think it’s a good time to bring it up,” she said.

Trustee Lillian Brazelton said if a 1% sales tax was imposed for education, it’s important to ensure it goes toward schools and not somewhere else.

Vice Chairman Trace Paul said that while he likes having low taxes, he also loves education.

“With what we’re facing as a state, it’s going to get tougher,” he said. “Nobody’s a fan of what they see coming down the road.”

Paul said the state can’t cut its way to success.

“I don’t think taxes are the right answer either, to solve the issue entirely,” he said, but there needs to be “a lot bigger decision making at the state level to get diversified on revenue.”

“That’s not a problem that we can solve within this room,” Paul said. “That’s a much bigger discussion than what we can have here.”

State leaders need to be willing to have that conversation, Borcher said.

“We all know that the revenue is drying up in Wyoming, and I’m afraid it might get worse, with having the new administration come in nationally [and] hurt our mineral industries even worse,” he said.

The chairman asked if anyone was opposed with moving forward with the resolution, and no board members responded.

“See where it goes,” Borcher said, noting that a tax proposal could take years to pass the Legislature. “Start the conversation.”