The federal government will withhold more than $53 million in mineral payments from the state of Wyoming as part of the automatic federal budget cuts that started this month. Gov. Matt Mead says he received no advance warning before the state received word of the cuts this week. He called the federal government's lack of communication unacceptable. Mead pledged to work with Wyoming's congressional delegation to try to restore the funding. Wyoming, the nation's leading coal-producing state, gets 50% of the revenues from mineral leasing on federal lands in the state. That amounts to roughly $1 billion a year. The federal cuts follow congressional action last year that cut more than $700 million in Abandoned Mine Lands funding that Congress had promised Wyoming over coming years.
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