Lawmakers question Wyoming Public Media’s funding
The public radio station is headquartered on the UW campus and receives some state funding via UW’s block grant. WPM weathered a 10% cut when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was axed.
State lawmakers from the Joint Appropriations Committee grilled University of Wyoming leaders this week about their use of state funding for gender studies courses, environmental education, and more.
Following those other more combative questions, the lawmakers spent a few minutes discussing Wyoming Public Media’s funding, some of which comes from the state via UW’s block grant.
Wyoming Public Media, like many public media outlets, are trying to weather a severe budget crunch amid the federal defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The CPB, which officially voted itself out of existence this month, supported PBS, NPR and their various member stations, including in Wyoming.
Before the appropriations committee Friday, WPM General Manager Christina Kuzmych said CPB support accounted for about 10% of her station’s budget.
“When we discovered that there would be some issues with funding, we started planning immediately,” she said. “We cut our operating budget as much as we could without eliminating services that were critical to the Wyoming public.”
But Kuzmych said the true saviors were individual donors, who increased their support in the face of disappearing federal support.
“We fundraised very heavily, and we were able to cover the 10% loss in our budget through fundraising, budget cuts, vendor discounts, programming discounts, and general staff ability to work in different areas and be amenable to making the station run,” she said. “We survived the federal cuts, thanks very much to Wyoming donors who were very enthusiastic in their support.”
That doesn’t mean the station is safe. It has so far covered the $400,000 it will lose from CPB in 2026, but fundraising efforts are ongoing to cover the $400,000 CPB would have provided in 2027.
Wyoming Public Media’s annual budget is about $4 million. The breakdown of that budget shifts over time and the eradication of the CPB will shift the percentages again, but Kuzmych told lawmakers WPM’s current funding has come primarily from individual donors (41%), state funds via UW (17%), the CPB (10%) and corporate sponsorships (7%), as well as relatively small amounts from grants, in-kind donations and investment income from a $2.2 million endowment held by the UW Foundation.
In 2024, WPM received roughly $850,000 from UW, which itself receives about $250 million a year from the state.
Kuzmych said Friday the WPM distribution for 2025 was closer to $800,000, which is in line with how much the station received from UW in 2023, making 2024 the high watermark of the last several years.
The lawmakers did not voice their opinions about WPM’s funding, nor did they discuss making any changes to the portion of it that passes through UW.
But the committee could revisit WPM’s allocation next week when it begins to “work” the state budget, making recommendations about what to fund and what to cut.
Every two years, the Joint Appropriations Committee crafts a biennium budget bill — a rough draft of government funding for the next two years. During the budget session, which begins this year on Feb. 9, the full legislature will have the chance to amend and advance the budget bill to the governor for his signature and line-item vetoes.
Digging into the University of Wyoming’s block grant is unusual. UW typically requests and receives most of its standard budget — the amount it costs to keep providing the education, research and other services it already offers. Most of that comes in the form of the university’s block grant, a pool of money UW directs.
However, lawmakers can add stipulations on that spending. That’s how they defunded the diversity office in 2024, reducing UW’s block grant by the exact amount it once spent on the diversity office, then tacking on a footnote stating no government funds could be spent on such a program.
But legislative questions and decision-making more frequently focus on UW’s “exception requests” — additional, often one-time, funds meant to serve a specific purpose or kickstart a new program.
Ahead of this year’s budget session, UW requested more than $44 million in exception requests, which were discussed by UW leaders and state lawmakers in December.
But the appropriations committee “called back” UW for a more detailed look at some of its other “standard” expenses Friday.
Gillette Rep. John Bear (HD-31), the House co-chair for the appropriations committee and a leading member of the state’s right-wing Freedom Caucus, had called for the review of WPM’s state funding.
Whereas the other expenses and programs questioned by lawmakers took on a more critical tone — during one exchange, fellow Freedom Caucus members interrogated UW officials about whether its course offerings represented “a direction that the university should be going” — neither Bear nor any other lawmaker asked Kuzmych about public media’s staff or its reporting.
The caucus has been critical of public media’s coverage in the past, especially its coverage of LGBTQ+ events.
WPM’s Wyoming Public Radio has profiled Bear and other caucus members, including fellow appropriations committee member Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (HD-4). It has also conducted investigations into the financial activities of the caucus’ members and allies, as well as into the claims they have made about election security, abortion, and climate change.
Wyoming Public Radio broadcasts to 90% of the state and boasts 60,000 listeners. In addition to statewide news coverage both on-air and online, WPM broadcasts syndicated national and international programs, as well as music via Classical Wyoming, Jazz Wyoming and Wyoming Sounds.
Disclosure: Jeff Victor, the owner and editor of this news outlet and the reporter who wrote this story, is a part-time employee of Wyoming Public Media.
As the readers of The Laramie Reporter may be aware, the PBS Newshour on weekends has been discontinued. Although I suspect many Wyoming legislators welcome the end of reliable news services so that we hear only President Trump and the echo chamber, now is not a good time to lose such outlets. The efforts to undermine public broadcasting is a conscious effort to queer the pitch. You'll know this has been effective if, next time an ICE employee kills someone, it seems perfectly normal.
Simple question to any legislator asking these questions. Name a program on WPR.