Prior to the 2022 legislative session the Fremont County legislators were invited by the Riverton Chamber of Commerce to meet with Fremont County businesses and local government representatives and to discuss pending legislative issues important to them. In that meeting Kyle Butterfield and Missy White made note of the huge improvement in the air service to Fremont County and attributed the improvement largely to the Capacity Purchase Agreement (CPA) through the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) with state general funds to increase passenger retention within the state. They also noted the impact on those funds as a result of the COVID pandemic which resulted of less people flying nationally from the middle of March 2020 through December of 2021, this decline required an accelerated use of the CPA funds to keep those flights in place in Campbell, Sheridan, Fremont, and Sweetwater counties. Kyle noted that these funds were eligible for reimbursement through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) but were not included in the legislature’s ARPA funding bill which was SF0066, which is a bill that came out of the Appropriations Committee where I serve as a committee member.

Following the meeting in Riverton I reached out to all of the legislators in the impacted counties to see if they were interested in helping me put the State’s portion of the eligible CPA funds in the ARPA bill as an amendment.

I am please to announce that Gillette’s Senator Jeff Wasserburger moved the amendment in the Senate which was adopted, and the House of Representatives also kept the $8,832058.00 in place and is now available to continue funding of the CPA and insure air service to Fremont County Residents.