CHEYENNE — Wyoming’s State Construction Department (SCD) is requesting additional funding and staffing as its workload expands and new legislative requirements add pressure to an already stretched department.
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During a Thursday meeting of the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee, department leaders outlined both recent successes and ongoing challenges that are shaping budget requests for the upcoming legislative session.
SCD Director Delbert McOmie told lawmakers that staff capacity has been strained by a growing list of responsibilities, including more than 5,000 active major maintenance projects across 48 school districts and 21 Most Cost-Effective Remedy Studies (MCERs) affecting 28 school facilities statewide.
SCD’s standard budget request totals $227,749,001, with $214,212,379 — about 94% — allocated for major maintenance projects. The remaining funds would support staffing, materials and operational divisions needed to manage the work.
The department is seeking approval for two additional positions funded through the School Foundation Program: a finance and analytics manager and an additional or higher-level senior policy and planning advisor.
McOmie said SCD’s Operations Division has long relied on Chief Financial Officer and database administrator Jerimi “JJ” Revell for complex data analysis and financial oversight. Efforts to train at-will employee contract personnel have been unsuccessful due to turnover.
“They were in a lower-paid position, and as soon as we got them trained up, of course, their skill sets were pretty good, and they were out the door,” McOmie said. “And we didn’t have a backup.”
The proposed finance and analytics manager would help oversee between $100 million and $500 million in public funds across school districts, state agencies and community colleges.
“We’ve got an awful lot of data, and we need help keeping up on those reports and pulling that out,” McOmie said.
McOmie said the position would have been particularly helpful during the current budget cycle, citing an example of staff struggling to replicate work Revell completed in minutes.
“We finally said, ‘OK, we’re gonna go knock on JJ’s door, because he’s working on the budget stuff,’” McOmie said. “He had it to us in 15 minutes, and we had a couple of staff spend two days on it. We need to be able to get that out, to have those reports.”
The department is also requesting additional senior-level planning support as it takes on expanded duties, including management of MCER studies — a task assigned by the Legislature to streamline oversight but which significantly increased staff workload.
SCD has also faced two major legal challenges, including one tied to an MCER study in Laramie County School District 1. Those cases required extensive staff involvement, including testimony, document review and coordination with legal counsel.
At the same time, SCD is preparing to implement the Statewide Facility Strategic Planning process mandated by legislation passed in 2025.
“Given this expanded and increasingly technical workload, the department’s leadership is stretched thin — balancing strategic oversight with growing daily operational demands,” the department’s request states. “Over the past two biennia, SCD’s School Capital Construction funding has increased dramatically, from $181 million to over $560 million for the 2023-26 period. With this rise in funding comes increased public and legislative scrutiny, necessitating stronger internal capacity for policy alignment, fiscal planning and compliance assurance.”
Lawmakers last session directed SCD to develop a 20-year statewide facility strategic plan but did not allocate funding for the effort. To comply, the department is requesting $750,000 to hire a consultant to establish the framework and begin phased implementation.
McOmie said the goal is to improve transparency and provide lawmakers with a clearer long-term view of capital needs across the state.
“The absence of a statewide facility strategy would perpetuate reactive maintenance, inconsistent funding decisions, and inefficient budgeting across the state’s diverse portfolio of over 40 million square feet of facilities,” the department’s request reads. “It would also increase reliance on emergency repairs, elevate long-term costs, and delay implementation of best practices for workforce development and lifecycle management.”
SCD also submitted design and construction funding requests for multiple schools based on data from the 2023 condition assessments, capacity lists and resulting MCER studies.
The department requested $15,739,855 for design work at Moorcroft Secondary School, Cheyenne’s East High School, Hobbs Elementary School, Riverton’s Rendezvous Elementary School and Jackson High School. An additional $77,359,731 was requested for construction at Moorcroft Secondary, Hobbs Elementary, Rendezvous Elementary and off-site infrastructure improvements for Cheyenne’s Arp Elementary School.
The full SCD budget will be reviewed and potentially revised during the legislative session scheduled for February.
Originally reported by Ivy Secrest Wyoming Tribune Eagle in Wyoming News.
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