Modern Wyoming parable: Who moved my severance tax cheese?

Wyoming’s current economic situation reminds me of the famous business book Who Moved My Cheese?

After living off severance taxes from the energy industry for half a century, the Cowboy State is enduring a time when the state is trying to maintain services without the money to pay for them. As fossil fuels decline, severance taxes paid by energy companies for coal, oil and natural gas extracted from Wyoming are diminishing rapidly.

That famous Cheese book by Spencer Johnson is about how people react to unpleasant change. It stars some mice and what happens when their regular supply of ch...