Committee kills vaccine ‘accommodation’ bill

CHEYENNE — A bill that would require employers to accommodate unvaccinated workers died in a state legislative committee Wednesday morning. The vote was five lawmakers against it and four voting for it.
House Bill 32, “Vaccine requirements-limitations,” would have mandated that employers make accommodations for employees who were unvaccinated. It also would have required a five-year waiting period on any new vaccines before the Wyoming Department of Health could require them for K-12 students.
HB 32 also would would have mandated that health care facilities provide “reasonable accommodations” to anyone seeking to visit a patient without proof of vaccination status.
Voting no were Rep. Robert Wharff, R-Evanston; Rep. Jamie Flitner, R-Greybull; Rep. Cathy Connolly, D-Laramie; Rep. Andi LeBeau, D-Lander, and Rep. John Romero-Martinez, R-Cheyenne.
Rep. Sue Wilson, R-Cheyenne, who authored the bill, voted in favor. Other yes votes came from Rep. Clarence Styvar, R-Cheyenne; Rep. Tim Hallinan, R-Gillette, and Rep. Pepper Ottman, R-Riverton.
Most stakeholders who spoke about the bill during Wednesday’s committee meeting did not support it.
Josh Hannes with the Wyoming Hospital Association said he was concerned that the bill did not just cover COVID-19 vaccinations, but also all other vaccines, including those that have been around for decades. He was concerned that it did not specify that vaccine limitations would be allowed based on a medical or religious exemption.
“Currently, those are exemptions that are considered in the process to be exempted from, say, a flu shot. This bill, to my reading, says that anyone who asks for one shall be given one,” Hannes said.
When hospitals make a decision to require a vaccine, he said it is done based on evidence of what will keep patients safe and healthy.
 
“Hospitals are supposed to be a place of healing, and we have a tremendous responsibility to keep patients safe,” Hannes said.
Cindy DeLancey, president of the Wyoming Business Alliance, also spoke in opposition to the bill.
“This is the wrong answer for employer vaccine mandates in Wyoming,” DeLancey said. She added that businesses are best equipped to make decisions on the vaccination issue without government oversight.
“Certainly, it is not consistent of this body to respond to governmental overreach with more governmental overreach, and essentially that is what this bill does,” DeLancey said.
When asked by Romero-Martinez about those employees who may lose work due to failure to comply with a business’s vaccine policy, DeLancey said the free market would respond.
“If an employee does not want to follow any rule of their employers, they are free to go seek employment elsewhere,” she said. “At the end of the day, that is really the choice of the employee to make.”
Carolyn Paseneaux, executive director of the Wyoming Health Care Association, spoke in support of the measure. She said she seemed to be the lone voice in the health care industry speaking in favor of it.
“My administrators and the companies that own the nursing home, they are not on the same page,” Paseneaux said.
She testified that in the last two years, skilled nursing homes have been struck by myriad issues not limited to physical health.
“This whole thing regarding what happens in a nursing home, what we have been left with is loneliness. We know that loneliness kills,” she said. “We are telling families that you absolutely have to have the 20 last vaccines, and you have to have had the four updates. We are cutting off some very important relationships.”
 
This story was published on Feb. 17.