Governors from across the West came together for a three-day conference this week to talk about key issues facing the region, from health care to water to wildfires. Mountain West Reporter Emma VandenEinde joined us to talk about what they discussed.
Day one kicked off with a keynote speech from the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Michael Regan. Championing the work of the Biden administration, Regan said Biden has worked to provide billions of dollars to states through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Unlike before, we have some resources and now we can build upon our partnerships and relationships to ensure that we are all working for the people," Regan said.
VandenEinde noted that while the governors definitely want to work together and agree that there’s opportunity there, they still have some questions. They expressed their concerns in the roundtable that followed, mentioning how outdated legislative language and red tape could ensnare their ability to work together. VandenEinde said that Regan is working on reducing that “bureaucratic headache."
Along with panels about health care and artificial intelligence, VandenEinde shared that Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado debuted the report of his Heat Beneath Our Feet initiative, which looks into deploying geothermal energy technologies for electricity generation and heating and cooling systems in Western states.
“Geothermal is a huge under tapped resource," Polis said in his address. "It's abundant. It's American made. It's secure. It's domestic. It's getting to be lower and lower cost.”
VandenEinde also shared that among all the governors and leaders and sponsors in attendance, there were some young adults present as part of the Western Governors' Leadership Institute — a program designed to promote leadership across the West, especially in the government sector. They were invited to share their thoughts in a roundtable with the governors about how to combat the political apathy among the younger generation.
Josie Thomas, a delegate from the confederated tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon, said one thing that would help is elected officials showing interest in their communities.
“Showing them that you're involved in the community more…would really uplift youth to be wanting to be involved," she said.
The governors at this conference came from very different parts of the political spectrum, but they all sat in the same room and discussed these issues. VandenEinde said the bipartisanship was evident.
"One phrase that was mentioned by the executive director of the WGA, Jack Waldorf, at the beginning was that these politicians 'check both their egos and party affiliation at the door' when it comes to this conference, and most people that I talked to said that was true in the discussions that they saw, that there was no yelling or cutting each other off," VandenEinde said.
She added that Polis summed up the sentiment and purpose of the conference very nicely.
“A wildfire doesn't know a red county from a blue county or a red state from a blue state," Polis said. "We may not agree on every part of every issue, but there's a substantial amount of overlap that it gives the Western governors the opportunity to truly lead.”
The next WGA conference is in November in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
