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Despite the unprecedented challenges of the past year – and the demands they imposed on our state leaders – Western Governors continued to pursue their bipartisan policy work through WGA and maintained their irrepressible spirit of bipartisanship, collegiality and positivity. It is in that same spirit that we offer WGA’s annual 'Top Ten List' for 2024.
2024 marked the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Western Governors’ Association (WGA). Throughout the year, the Association hosted several meetings to highlight the Governors’ longstanding commitment to bipartisanship, including a celebration in Washington, D.C., on February 24 (WGA’s exact founding date), which included nine Western Governors for WGA's Annual Cabinet Breakfast with Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dennis McDonough, and Administrator of the Small Business Administration Isabella Casilla Guzman.
In the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, while WGA’s staff were in the nation's capital, they also met with 19 Senate offices from 11 western states.
To further commemorate the anniversary, WGA created a special website that contains an interactive timeline highlighting the Association's landmark achievements, a photo gallery, a collection of historical WGA policy reports, and testimonials from former WGA Chairs.
In 2024, Western Governors continued to showcase their ability to develop bipartisan policy resolutions that have a meaningful impact in Washington, D.C.
During the 2024 Annual Meeting in Olympic Valley, California, they also approved resolutions on water quality, water resource management, cleaning up abandoned hardrock mines, transportation infrastructure, and disaster preparedness and response.
At the 2024 Winter Meeting in Las Vegas, the Governors announced the approval of policy resolutions focused on air quality, compensatory mitigation, energy, health care, and workforce development.
The nine resolutions approved in 2024 are a part of a larger suite of policy statements from the Governors. Read all 29 here.
Despite the Congressional deadlock in 2024, Western Governors secured several key policy victories in 2024 thanks to their continued bipartisan advocacy, including:
- The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act
On December 17, President Biden signed the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act into law. In March 2024, WGA sent a letter to Senate Leadership in support of the bill, followed by a letter to House leadership in October. The bill’s passage is a significant milestone in a nearly 30-year effort to establish legislation that would allow Good Samaritans to remediate abandoned mines and represents a major victory for Western Governors’ policy in their Cleaning Up Abandoned Hardrock Mines resolution.
- The EXPLORE Act
On December 19, the Senate passed the EXPLORE Act by unanimous consent. The House passed the legislation in March 2024; WGA sent a letter to Senate leadership in support of the bill on September 3. The legislation includes numerous WGA policy priorities outlined in WGA Policy Resolution 2022-12, Recreation and Tourism on Public Lands, including the ability for Good Neighbor Authority to be used for recreation projects. The legislation now heads to the President’s desk and is expected to be signed into law.
- The Water Resources and Development Act and Water Data Improvement Act
On December 18, the Senate passed the Water Monitoring and Tracking Essential Resources (WATER) Data Improvement Act. The bill reauthorizes the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Federal Priority Streamgage Network and the National Groundwater Monitoring Network, both programs that are supported by Western Governors. In September of this year, WGA sent the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources a letter supporting this bipartisan legislation.
Before handing over the reins as Chair of WGA to New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham at the 2024 Annual Meeting, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon completed his WGA Chair initiative, Decarbonizing the West, by releasing a special report that outlined several policy recommendations for advancing the carbon capture, utilization, and storage industry.
This report is the culmination of an extensive stakeholder process that engaged experts from across a range of states, industry sectors, and levels of government. This process was facilitated by the leadership and support of other Western Governors, who, through hosting a series of regional workshops, highlighted the growing need and diverse set of approaches to decarbonize the West.
“I am very happy to say that today America has demonstrated, yet again, that innovation will trump regulation and that we can move forward in a future which is beneficial to all of us,” Governor Gordon said when he released the report at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Olympic Valley, California. “If we can continue to work together, there is so much that we can accomplish.”
In the face of mounting land management challenges, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Xochitl Torres Small spoke with five Western Governors at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Western Governors’ Association about the importance of intergovernmental cooperation.
To this end, the Governors signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), expanding the scope of a previous shared stewardship MOU that the USDA signed with WGA in 2018.
"Shared stewardship, as the Deputy Secretary alluded to, is where it's all hands on deck," Idaho Governor Brad Little said. "It's the Forest Service, it's the Bureau of Land Management, it's the tribes, it's industrial owners, it's private woodland owners, it's everybody. Because as she eloquently said, those fires, watersheds, and wildlife don't know where those borders are.”
The USDA wasted no time in actionizing this agreement.
During her keynote address at WGA’s 2024 Annual Meeting, Deputy Secretary Torres Small announced an investment of $12 million from the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA) for 22 Good Neighbor Authority projects across 13 states including Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
She also announced $54.6 million for 41 Joint Chiefs Landscape Scale Restoration Partner projects, a program created through the IIJA to reduce wildfire threats to communities and landowners, protect water quality and supply, and improve wildlife habitat for at-risk species.
Two of the nation’s most respected journalists joined Western Governors for public policy discussions at WGA’s 2024 Annual and Winter Meetings.
Judy Woodruff participated in fireside chats at WGA’s 40th Anniversary Celebration with Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon and former Governors Steve Bullock of Montana, Gary Herbert of Utah, David Ige of Hawaii, Matt Mead of Wyoming, Bob Miller of Nevada, Butch Otter of Idaho, and Brian Sandoval of Nevada.
Their discussions focused on the importance of bipartisanship when dealing with many of the country's complex problems.
"My own view is that at a state level, and I think particularly in the West, you have to deal with real issues," Governor Gordon said. "And I think that's why this group of bipartisan Governors, and I've worked with many of them, really have a terrific perspective on how to get things done, how to move the country forward."
Steve Inskeep joined the Governors for a keynote at the 2024 Winter Meeting about this moment in American politics and what lessons the study of history can lend us today.
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“As I approach that task of covering America and covering the world, I do try to take a long view, and that is one reason, besides just my personal interest, that I write history, that I research history,” said Inskeep in his remarks to Governors. “You realize that while the issues have changed, the technology has changed phenomenally, human nature does not change that quickly, and our basic republican – small R republican – system has not changed completely.”
Along with his address to Governors, Inskeep also sat down for interviews with New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Inskeep’s conversations with the Governors aired on NPR’s Morning Edition – the most widely heard radio program in the country – on December 12 and 13. Listen to the stories here.
The 2024 Western Prosperity Forum, hosted by Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs in Phoenix, was chock-full of in-depth policy discussions about everything from digital equity and workforce development to extreme heat and wildfire mitigation.
Especially noteworthy were the ”fireside chats” between Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves, and Dr. Homer Wilkes, the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
With Deputy Secretary Graves, Governor Hobbs spoke about how states can leverage investments from the federal government to drive innovation, spur growth, and support the development of a modern workforce.
“The world is at an inflection point as we deal with the vast changes that we see going on in technology and industrial development all around the globe,” Deputy Secretary Graves said. “It's changing jobs and the direction of economies everywhere.”
While the Governor’s discussion with Under Secretary Wilkes switched gears to focus on wildfire mitigation and forest restoration, the theme of collaboration rang true throughout.
“Wildfires don't care if they're on state, federal, or private land,” Governor Hobbs said, “so it is essential that we work in partnership to mitigate and manage the risk.”
Following years of underbuilding, underinvestment, and extraordinary growth – driven by a complex mix of factors – the West is facing severe housing shortages.
To address these challenges, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who took over as Chair of the Western Governors’ Association in July of 2024, launched the Building Resilient and Affordable New Developments in the West (BRAND West) initiative. It is focused on expanding access to housing in western states and examine strategies to address housing availability and affordability as well as promote smart and sustainable development in communities throughout the West.
The first workshop of the initiative was hosted by Utah Governor Spencer Cox on December 18.
“I just keep asking the question, are we going to be the first generation in the history of the United States to make life worse for our kids and grandkids?” Utah Governor Spencer Cox rhetorically asked the crowd of housing experts at the University of Utah’s Hinkley Institute of Politics. “Right now, the answer appears to be yes across much of the United States.”
“There's nothing more important right now than what you're doing,” he continued. “This is legacy stuff... This is the work that will change lives. More than anything else we do in government work, this is the stuff that can pay off for a long, long time to come.”
Watch any of the workshop’s panel discussions here.
The bipartisan work of the Western Governors’ Association attracted 14 new sponsors from a wide variety of industries in 2024: the American Heart Association; Amazon Web Services; ClearPath; CVS Health; Energy Fuels; HNTB Corporation; Inseparable; McKinsey & Co.; Merck; National Hydropower Association; PMI Global Services; Polaris; Syngenta; and Western Alliance Bank.
In total, 135 organizations support the work of WGA. Their contributions strengthen WGA’s capacity to execute its mission of bipartisan policy development and critical information exchange. We are forever grateful for their partnership and look forward to what we can accomplish together in 2025.
WGA has been developing a rich trove of policy conversations on our official podcast, Out West. Topics covered since we launched the podcast in 2020 include innovative treatment options for Quagga and zebra mussels; strategies for advancing geothermal developments; improving post-fire restoration; and supporting the transition of coal communities.
Check out the entire series here.
