Calls for a special session denied by legislative leaders

CHEYENNE — Leadership in the Wyoming Legislature denied calls for a special session on Monday, arguing it would not “effectively address” the governor’s vetoes on the 2025-26 biennium budget and other non-budget bills.

Gov. Mark Gordon used his line item veto authority before signing the budget on Saturday morning, hours before the midnight deadline.

Throughout last week, the governor signed off or vetoed a number of bills that came out of the budget session. Some vetoed bills include one that would repeal gun-free zones in Wyoming, one that added restrictions to abortion and another that would have given a 25% property tax reduction to all Wyoming homeowners.

Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, who chairs the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, and Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, called for a special session in separate news releases on Saturday, shortly after Gordon signed the budget. Bear asked legislative leaders for a special session on behalf of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, arguing the budget session ended when the Legislature still had three days in the bank to extend it.

The three aforementioned bills were mentioned in Bear’s news release, as well as Senate Files 103, “Wyoming PRIME Act,” and SF 13, “Federal land use plans-legal actions authorized.”

The Freedom Caucus chairman also mentioned the governor’s veto of part of a budget footnote so that diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the University of Wyoming could continue to receive funding.

“Our founders wisely created a system of government characterized by a division of power between three co-equal branches of government,” Bear said in the release. “Legislative leaders have destroyed this division of power, elevating the Governor to the position of an empirical king with unilateral, unchecked authority.”

Steinmetz specifically addressed Senate leadership in her request for a special session, so that lawmakers could have a chance to override Gordon’s veto on the property tax bill and the repeal gun-free zones bill.

“These are just two of the actions taken by the Chief Executive in our absence that require our attention,” Steinmetz said in the release. “Many sage Legislators warned we should never leave town without the Governor completing his work and the Legislative veto intact. I would say we learned our lesson.”

However, Senate President Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, and House Speaker Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, said a special session wasn’t an effective measure to override the governor’s decisions.

In response to Bear’s comment about the extra three days, the Legislature’s presiding officers said lawmakers who are now rallying for a special session never asked to put those three days to use.

Furthermore, many of the same lawmakers who are requesting a special session are also responsible for the many delays during the budget session, Driskill and Sommers wrote. This included attempts to “resurrect zombie bills, bringing procedural motions and filibustering debate.”

“Simply put, they squandered precious time in a budget session where time is our enemy. We had plenty of time in our established calendar to pass bills and do veto overrides,” Sommers and Driskill jointly stated in a guest opinion piece.

“In fact, we created a calendar where budget debate began in the first week of session, for the very purpose of having enough time to resolve our differences in a conference committee and do veto overrides on the budget.”

Why it wouldn’t work

Driskill and Sommers gave a number of reasons why efforts to use a special session to override Gordon’s veto of specific bills are fruitless. For one, unless the rules are suspended, the Legislature would have no control over which bills are brought back, where lawmakers would have to start over from scratch and follow standard legislative process.

Each bill would have to pass an introductory vote, be referred to committee and then be heard on three separate days in each chamber. Afterward, a joint conference committee — made up of five appointed members from each chamber — would negotiate differences on the bills before sending them back to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto.

The Legislature needs to be in session to override any gubernatorial vetoes, which would require a two-thirds majority in a special session.

Driskill and Sommers estimated the whole process would take eight to 10 days, costing up to $35,000 a day.

“Should we spend $350,000 of taxpayer money because we couldn’t get our job done within the calendar that we had agreed upon? This call for a special session appears to be political grandstanding for upcoming campaigns, not responsible governance,” they said in the release. “Wyoming taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for that.”

Driskill and Sommers added this would create an additional burden on citizen legislators, staff and their families, who would have to sacrifice another two weeks of their time in the Capitol.

Lawmakers aren’t happy

Several legislators broke their silence late last week and over the weekend, sending out statements to express their disapproval of the governor’s vetoes.

The most recent was sent by Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland, who stated that the governor “unconstitutionally plays politics with people’s lives.” Gordon line item vetoed funding in the budget to replace an “aging water tower” in Haroldson’s district, which he said could “breach at any moment.”

“The Governor has chosen to dangerously put lives and livelihoods in my district in jeopardy with one signature of his pen,” Haroldson wrote. “Within the area of this aging tower are countless homes, churches, a nursing home, a school and more.”

Haroldson said he joined 20 other House members in a vote “against what constitutes the largest budget in Wyoming history.”

Reps. Steve Harshman, R-Casper; Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, and Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs, expressed their own disappointment in a joint release about the governor’s veto of SF 54, “Homeowner tax exemption.”

This tax reform package, the lawmakers jointly stated, was a “culmination of hundreds of hours of work, responding to constituents’ cries for relief from runaway property tax hikes.”

The governor’s veto frustrated both legislators and their constituents alike, the representatives added.

Driskill and Sommers were not exactly pleased with the governor’s vetoes, including his messaging in accompanying veto letters. The legislative leaders broke their silence late last week to criticize Gordon’s decision to nix a few bills passed by the Legislature from the green books.

“We have become increasingly concerned about the Governor’s disregard for the will of the people’s representatives and the legislation we have passed,” Driskill and Sommers said in a joint release last Friday. “Our concern was further heightened last night by the veto of Senate File 54, which provided all residents of Wyoming with substantial property tax relief.”

However, both lawmakers said in their Monday op-ed that the best move for the Wyoming Legislature is forward.

“What is needed now is not to come into special session to rehash old ideas, but to charge our legislative interim committees with developing bills with input from all interested parties and address the needs of Wyoming,” they wrote. “We look forward to our legislative committees working around the state this interim, taking your input and suggestions to find Wyoming solutions for Wyoming problems.”

The Legislature’s Management Council will meet at the Capitol on April 1, where members will discuss interim topics for the 2025 general session.

This story was published on March 26, 2024.