By Ivy Secrest
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

CHEYENNE — Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers made headlines over the past few weeks when an advocacy campaign revealing the agency’s struggles with funding, retaining staff and maintaining a safe work environment took to social media.

Lawmakers responded with a raise for state employees, which was approved Monday when the Legislature sent the 2027-28 biennium budget to Gov. Mark Gordon. 

Advocates hope it will alleviate some of the stress troopers are facing, but it’s unclear if that will be the result.

Based on 2024 numbers, Wyoming troopers rank 44th out of the 49 states that have a state highway patrol. The state also does not currently offer any step increases over the term of employment, leaving Wyoming troopers further subject to permanently insufficient base pay, according to Wyoming Highway Patrol Association President Lt. Matt Arnell.

“Once these compensation adjustments go into effect in July, then that may move things around a bit,” Arnell said. “We’ll have to see how that all shakes out.”

Pay is not the only struggle the agency is facing. It is also struggling with a high turnover rate and concerns around overtime.

The campaign “WHP Matters,” formerly hosted on the Wyoming Highway Patrol Association website, detailed stories of troopers who felt they had to leave a job and state that they loved over poor pay and working conditions. Alongside those stories, other troopers discussed why they were sticking it out, regardless of those same challenges.

“I no longer serve the State of Wyoming — not because I wanted to leave, but because the State made it increasingly impossible to stay,” one anonymous trooper wrote.

The trooper described four-and-a-half years of service to WHP, during which he experienced firsthand the growing retention crisis. He described low pay, excessive mandatory hours, minimal opportunities for advancement and a persistent lack of meaningful support from the state, which caused him to leave in 2020.

“Lip service does not keep patrol cars staffed,” the trooper wrote. “Virtue signaling does not reduce fatigue. And appreciation does not pay mortgages.”

The trooper reportedly still works in law enforcement in California, where he’s able to live comfortably, citing competitive compensation, collective bargaining, overtime opportunities and incentives designed to retain experienced officers.

“The contrast is stark and, frankly, embarrassing for a state that prides itself on supporting law enforcement,” the trooper wrote.

Letters sent to legislators during the campaign described the geographic and population strain troopers face, safety concerns, serious issues regarding retention, the cost of turnover, expansive patrol areas and the recruitment crisis that WHP is facing.

The Legislature has since approved raises for state employees, including funds in the recently passed budget, raising them from 2022 wages to 2024 rates. Those funds provide for a single increase, with no guaranteed raises in the future.

Though this year’s raise will make a big difference for troopers and their families, it is still unclear if the increase will return the WHP to a competitive rate.

“If they go to another agency that’s better staffed, they have more help,” Arnell said. “So the working conditions are better, of course, but with this compensation adjustment, hopefully that’ll help with that.”

Heather Kittelson, who is the wife of a trooper and mother of four, noted that the raises will definitely make a difference.

But beyond pay, Kittelson has been most concerned with the safety issues that understaffing presents. The understaffing has increased areas of coverage, putting a single trooper on duty covering a county or two by themselves. While agencies in Wyoming are generally good about assisting each other, the lack of a partner on patrol presents several concerns.

“Many times have our troopers been put in situations where they’ve almost been completely taken out during a snowstorm, and there’s just them,” Kittelson said. “It’s just very unsafe.”

Kittelson also noted that being alone in response to a suspected DUI or during a stop turned drug bust can be dangerous. She said she knows from her husband’s experience that troopers work so hard to ensure that the roads are safe, and fewer troopers means less people out to get those at-risk drivers off the road.

Arnell said that this stress on the job is exacerbated when the workforce shrinks.

“That leaves gaps in our coverage, and so we have troopers working more to try and fill those gaps, and they have to cover more area,” Arnell said. “So they may have to travel a couple hundred miles just to get to somebody that needs help or to back up some other agency that needs help.”

According to Arnell, there are anywhere from 15 to 20 troopers actively able to patrol the approximately 6,859 state highway miles in Wyoming on a given day.

In letters sent to legislators, Arnell noted that this staffing crisis means each trooper actively patrolling is responsible for covering up to 343 miles of highway per shift.

He also explained the costs associated with recruiting, hiring and training a trooper just to have them leave. Of the 135 troopers hired between 2021 and 2025, 76 have left, Arnell said, which cost the state $7.3 million.

The total upfront investment for one new trooper is $116,717.

“Not only are we not paying our troopers what they deserve, but we’re also paying to train other states’ troopers because they’re leaving us, and that’s putting us millions of dollars in the hole,” Kittelson said.

Arnell noted that while the work isn’t done, he hopes the pay raises will help. In the meantime, the WHPA intends to continue working with legislators to plan future pay increases.

“We’d like to work with the legislators to try and put a process in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” Arnell said. “… (So) we don’t fall so far behind so drastically, and we can stay current with pay scales before we get into such a deep hole that it takes so much to dig us out of it.”