The Open Range Record is doing an ongoing series of interviews with some of the interesting people in our state. Some are elected officials, others will be people you'd like to know. Our goal is to introduce you to them.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Wyoming State Auditor Kristi Racines.
Kristi graduated from college with an accounting degree and went to work in public accounting. Once she completed her CPA certificate, she worked for a firm in Cheyenne doing audits. She loved the work, but it was a lot of hours. After having a baby, she looked for something that had a more predictable schedule. She said that a lot of people in accounting, when they’re ready to start families, look for a job with the government because of the 40-hour work week.
She went to work for the Supreme Court as an internal auditor, going around the state
auditing circuit courts. She was ultimately promoted to CFO of the judicial branch, where she prepared the budgets for all of the state courts: Supreme Court, district courts, and circuit courts.
This position required her to present and defend those budgets to the Joint Appropriations Committee. Spending many hours in committee hearings, she learned about how the legislature works.
Cynthia Cloud, State Auditor from 2011 to 2019, decided not to run, and Kristi felt strongly that the position should be filled by someone with an accounting background. Surprisingly, there is no requirement for the State Auditor to have any knowledge of accounting. Kristi felt that the office was too important for the auditor to just be a figurehead, so she decided to run.
Kristi said, “I stepped up and it was very terrifying, because you think of like, the CPA/accountant stereotypes, they’re all true. I’m super introverted. It was really, really hard.” Both the primary and general election were contested, and she won. “It was crazy,” she said.
When asked what she enjoyed most about the job, she talked about the boards she serves on, the back office work, and being yanked in directions that are uncomfortable that have led to her meeting and getting to know people from all over Wyoming that she would not have otherwise met.
She said, “On my prior path, it would have been, ‘Oh I’ve really narrowed it down to like I only talk to these twenty people that mostly think like me. Now, my circle has gotten wider and wider.’ It’s very cool. Not easy, but very cool.”
Kristi is going to run again and is up for election this year. The job is not a steppingstone for her; it’s the job she really wanted. It fits her background and she believes it’s important that it be done well.
She said she has immense respect for what the legislature does, regardless of the composition - good, bad, or indifferent. “If they write it into the law, I do it, whether I agree with it or not, right? That’s the law.”
One thing she would like to have changed as a clarification for the people of Wyoming, is that while in the state constitution her position is called the State Auditor, she doesn’t really audit anything; she doesn’t have statutory authority or powers to do that. The actual duties of her job are more in line with a comptroller: her office is the official accounting record of the state, handling accounting and payroll and the like.
Her position being called State Auditor is a bit of a misnomer and creates a lot of confusion for citizens who look to her for things the Department of Audit does. But, if she had the power to audit, then the things she does do would have to be moved somewhere else, and that would just be complicated. She would like to fix it, because her office is constantly confused with the Department of Audit, to everyone’s detriment.
When she’s not working, she loves the outdoors. Her favorite place in the world is a small cabin and a section left from her great-grandparent’s homestead in Washakie County. She hikes and does a lot of hunting, but now that she has a child who is “hunting all the things,” she mostly just tags along.
Kristi refers to herself as a “casual distance runner” – it’s how she stays sane and fit. People can often see her running around Lions Park at lunch.
She talked about her kids; about how much fun they are as teenagers and the vast amounts of food they eat: one of them is a cross-country runner.
When asked if she saw this job as her lifelong career, she said, “definitely, for sure” she hopes she gets re-elected, adding, “I think I’m relevant. I love my job. Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not. Do I think I’m doing a pretty good job? Yes.”
She is not going to be ready to retire any time soon, so “what does life look like after elected
office? I don’t know yet. I will at some point, but hopefully not next year, but maybe next year. Maybe in four years. I don’t know.”
She said she definitely doesn’t want to be governor, or ever go to Washington, D.C. She is not interested in higher elected office, but she would really like to be a walking mail carrier. She’s very detail oriented, and because she loves the outdoors, she feels she would be a good mail carrier. She runs in all four seasons, but when I asked if that included sub-zero temperatures, she said that about five degrees is her limit, because any colder it gets hard to breathe.
At this point I asked her, “If the legislature could give you power that you don’t currently have, what would it be?”
After some thought, she described the state’s online checkbook, called WYOPEN.gov, where all state expenditures are posted for the public to view. She said, “If I could have a magic wand and do that for all of our counties, towns, and special districts, that would be magical.
“Everyone does better when it’s all out in the open, and for the most part, it’s all very boring. But the absence of information creates distrust. And so, when it’s all out there, if there’s anything wrong, you can see it. But most of the time, there’s not going to be anything that interesting, but everybody’s going to feel better because we know.”