Experience needed

To the Editor:

The process of on-the-job training has been a very successful method of moving workers from civilian life to professional employment. It has come from the old system of being an apprentice to a skilled craftsman, to working in a skilled trade in a single endeavour but it did little for training in a broader field.

The Wyoming State Legislature has basically used on-the-job training to educate the public to become legislators. Traditionally, a person would serve several terms as legislator before becoming a committee chairman, usually one of the minor committees and then as others retire he would move up the ladder of authority. I was elected to the legislature in 1979 and came from a strong family background in politics, but soon found out that I knew nothing about legislating. I may be a slow learner, but it took a term of two years for me to learn the basics of the operation. I was lucky to have a very skilled Speaker of the House, Warren Morten, who had been in the legislature for 16 years, and he was preceded by Nels Smith who also served 16 or 18 years. The system then was basically seniority in both the Senate and the House. Much of the bodies’ time was often spent going over bills to make corrections to previous bills to correct errors from the past year. The legislative service office is composed of lawyers whose job is to write correct bills, but often in their attempt to satisfy a legislator they make errors, which have to be corrected by more legislation.

This year we have a unique situation where the speaker has only four years experience and many of the legislators have no prior experience. A common experience is that often new people come down with a list of new ideas, only to be told that we tried that years ago. The newcomer soon learns to talk with the older people to gain knowledge about how to approach a problem. However, this year there are so many new people they have formed the freedom caucus with enough numbers to be able pass bills — which are not in the best long-term interest of the state. These bills are often very populist, that is they try to address a problem with a populist answer that may have unforeseen problems that seasoned legislators can see but are unable to correct. It becomes the responsibility of the governor to sign or veto some bills to prevent damage to the state, but the legislature may over ride his veto.