Hathaway Remembered as Forceful Politician

Oct. 5, 2005 -- Former Wyoming Gov. Stanley Hathaway, who died Tuesday at age 81, should be remembered as a forceful chief executive who wasn’t afraid to take unpopular stances, according to Wyoming historian Phil Roberts.

During an interview heard on Wyoming Public Radio, Roberts, an associate professor in the University of Wyoming Department of History, described Hathaway as a forceful governor.

“I’ve heard many stories about how Gov. Hathaway would call state agency heads into his office and really straighten them out on what he wanted to see,” Roberts told WPR. “He was a pragmatic Wyomingite who knew where he wanted Wyoming to go, and was not afraid to twist arms to get it there.”

Roberts described the two-term governor as a “practical moderate.”
“He would not be considered a conservative,” Roberts said. “The Department of Environmental Quality was established during his administration. When it came to taxation, his major accomplishment would be the establishment of the first mineral severance tax, and that would not be construed as being conservative.”

When Hathaway first became governor, the state was in terrible financial condition, Roberts said. The coal boom of the 1970s hadn’t happened, and the oil industry was in a down time. State government was in poor shape. Roberts said he heard a report indicating there was only $58 in the state coffers.

Realizing that another revenue source was needed, Hathaway, who had refuted his opponent Ernest Wilkerson’s call for a tax on minerals, changed his mind and knew it was time to establish a tax on minerals mined and pumped from Wyoming.

“By the time he was in office and learned of the (state’s dismal economic) situation, he wasn't afraid to say the time had come for a severance tax on minerals,” Roberts said.

The mineral severance tax and the establishment of a permanent mineral trust fund, in which severance tax money is kept and invested for future use, were Hathaway’s major accomplishments, Roberts said.

Posted on Wednesday, October 05, 2005