Lawmakers turn attention to interim with eye on taxes, wildlife, maternity care

JACKSON — The work isn’t done for the 67th Wyoming Legislature.

Although a special session was narrowly avoided, lawmakers are turning their attention to the interim. It’s the period between sessions when they travel across the state for meetings to study issues, draft bills and hear public testimony.

The bills drafted throughout the interim are often given priority when heading into the upcoming session because they are the result of months of vetting.

Management Council, a group of the legislative leaders, met Monday to approve the 2024 topics and meetings for committees and task forces. Senate President Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, called for cutting back the time, energy and money spent on legislation during the interim.

“I will tell you, I’ll be fairly hard on part of your committees, or most of them, as far as trying to cut some days off and shorten them up,” Driskill told Legislative Service Office Director Matt Obrecht. “We’re in an election year, as y’all know, and we’re at a time that I think it’s appropriate to look pretty tight on what we do.”

This comes after a 2024 session when less than 70% of bills vetted by interim committees were introduced in the budget session as the Wyoming Freedom Caucus blocked them from getting the necessary two-thirds of the House chamber votes.

Calculating the cost of enacting a bill — whether that be for legislative staff time spent drafting the language, travel expenses for committee meetings or in-session debate — can be complicated. But developing a “medium bill” or “significantly complex bill” can cost between $4,628 and $5,770 in taxpayer money in the interim. The cost can climb as high as $13,703 when the bill goes through a session, according to a Legislative Service Office cost analysis from 2020.

Last interim, Obrecht said there were 610 total bill drafts requested. Committees chose to send 131 bills to the full Legislature for the budget session.

Senate Minority Floor Leader Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, lamented that many of those bills were not introduced for lawmakers to debate.

“That’s a little bit disconcerting that that much effort went into the process, and then those bills were not given due consideration,” Rothfuss said.

On Monday, more than 20 legislative groups came before the Management Council asking to tackle issues from protection orders to foreign ownership of land in Wyoming. Some topics from previous years returned, such as housing, education funding, mental health services, gun rights and property taxes.

Bills that Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed also returned.

“Senate File 54 from 2024 is a priority heading into the interim,” said Rep. Andrew Byron, R-Hoback. “I would like to see this bill come out of the Joint Revenue Committee and into the session unchanged. We have made progress with property tax reform and relief, but the work isn’t over.”

Gordon vetoed SF 54, the “Homeowner tax exemption,” expressing concern that it wasn’t targeted and would jeopardize the financial stability of the state and counties. The bill called for giving homeowners a two-year, 25% exemption on up to the first $2 million of assessed value of single-family residences, including vacation homes.

Byron sits on the Joint Revenue Committee and Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee with Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson. He said he is interested in working with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to support efforts to bring back mule deer populations from the “tragic winter of 2022-23.”

“Public land access for recreation is so important for Wyoming,” Byron said, “and I look forward to continually supporting these policies.”

The entire Teton County delegation expressed interest in further addressing property tax relief, and Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, said it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come out of a committee.

“As for my personal bills, if we don’t get SF 54 back as a committee bill, then I’ll work on it myself for additional property tax relief,” Dockstader said. “I usually develop a list of personal bills along the way as I visit with people in Lincoln and Teton counties.”

However, Dockstader said his initial focus will be on issues in the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee that he co-chairs.

“Our priorities will be coordinating oil, gas and pipeline issues, in addition to the newly developed rare earth mineral resources,” he said. “The carbon capture projects announced for Rocky Mountain Power’s faculties will come across our desk as well. We’ll be in Gillette to review the Integrated Test Center as the university takes more of a leadership role there.”

Attention may be brought back to Teton County under the chairmanship of Senate Minority Whip Mike Gierau, D-Jackson. He co-chairs the Regulatory Reduction Task Force established last year to reduce regulations and government interference in agriculture, energy and housing. The spotlight was placed on Teton County for its approach to solving its housing shortage, and Gierau hopes one of the task force’s meetings will be in Jackson this year.

“It’s actually a great opportunity because a lot of people around the state think they know what Jackson’s housing program is about, or what it’s not about,” he said. “We’re going to get a chance to have a meeting in Jackson to really get the whole task force to really learn what Teton County does. There’s a good story there, and there’s a lot of things we could learn from the task force.”

One of the main priorities for House Minority Floor Leader Mike Yin, D-Jackson, is addressing the emergence of maternity deserts.

He sits on the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee, and members plan to study ways to increase the number of labor, delivery and maternity health care professionals in Wyoming, along with child care facilities.

“The conversation about maternity care and child care is extremely important,” Yin said. “Hopefully I can bring some voices that I know Teton County has about those issues.

“Especially in the context of things we could have done many, many years ago that would have helped bolster those specific issues, such as Medicaid expansion and not banning reproductive care. Because those things affect whether doctors can even make a living in the state without going to jail.”

Lawmakers also have an eye on campaign season. A failed special session vote Sunday has already become election fodder for Republicans.

“I think that there is a little bit of a lack of trust in each other in the entire body right now,” Yin said. “So I hope that that can be refocused, but it’s an election year. I suspect that a lot of the fights will become more external to talk about candidates as people declare campaigns.”

Yin said the August primary could impact when meetings are held, and how candidates use them to their advantage.

“The risk is that any meeting that happens before the primary can become a little bit too much of a campaign spiel when they are having those discussions, rather than ensuring that people get their best work done in the meeting,” Yin said.

This story was published on April 4, 2024.