CHEYENNE - Doug Anesi, a longtime Lander resident, said he's generally happy with the way the Legislature is spending state money.

The exception, Anesi said, is dollars spent to manage wolves and grizzly bears.

"That's where we're spending money in the wrong place," Anesi said.

A new statewide Casper Star-Tribune poll found that few Wyoming voters are concerned about runaway spending by the Legislature and governor, even after several years of significant government growth.

The poll asked voters whether "state spending to provide and maintain public services in Wyoming has grown" the right amount, not enough or too much.

Forty-seven percent say spending has grown the "right amount," and 28 percent say spending has grown "not enough." Just 17 percent say spending was "too much," while 8 percent answered "not sure."

The poll showed that women, Democrats and independents were somewhat more willing to support spending that men and Republicans.

Republicans were slightly more likely to say spending is too high (18 percent compared to 16 percent of Democrats), but a full 51 percent of Republicans - the largest of any group in the poll - said the state is spending the right amount.

The percentage of voters who said spending was too high was nearly steady across all categories, varying just two percentage points between Democrats (16 percent) and Republicans (18 percent).

Jim Thompson, a former coal miner living in Wright, said the state isn't getting its money's worth on what it does spend.

For the money it spends on schools, for example, the state education system should be far better than it is, Thompson said.

And state officials ought to be doing more to return some of the state's wealth to hard-working Wyoming citizens, he said.

"We're sitting on a pile of money, and I think we ought to give the taxpayers a break once in a while," said Thompson, who participated in the poll.

The telephone poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research of Washington, D.C., on Jan. 18-21, surveyed 625 registered Wyoming voters from across the state who said they regularly vote in state elections. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.