Legislators need to stick to the budget

Legislators need to stick to the budget
To the Editor:
The Wyoming Legislature is back in session — a brief session supposedly dedicated to dealing with vital financial issues for our state. Unfortunately some members are more focused on the sex and reproductive lives of Wyomingites than on taking care of business. 
In pursuit of their obsession with what goes on between other people’s thighs, some have sponsored or co-sponsored bills seeking to limit or end rights for our young transgender citizens (SF0051), and two bills severely curtailing those of all Wyoming women of reproductive age (SF0083 and HB0092). One especially egregious bill some have proudly added their names to would condemn pregnant women with substance abuse problems to 10 years in prison for ’child abuse’ instead of offering them the medical care and support they need (SF0089).
One senator who frequently speaks at local government meetings while waving a copy of the Wyoming Constitution which clearly says that state laws are subordinate to federal law, is co-sponsoring a bill claiming that the state can disregard any federal laws they don’t like about firearms, in direct violation of their oaths of office (SF00102).
Perhaps the most despicable bill, though, is SF0097, which limits Wyoming citizens’ right to vote in the primary of their choice, an unquestioned right since our days as a territory. 
Limiting citizens’ rights instead of protecting them is the work of people who are afraid of the People, the only source of power in our state and nation. Are these co-sponsors afraid of us and the values we hold dear? Every one of these bills comes not from citizen movements, but from out-of-state partisan political organizations, which convince gullible members of state legislatures to introduce them as their own work.
Fortunately, in these days of the pandemic and the connectedness of the internet, we citizens of the state can participate much more easily to stay informed of what a few members are trying to foist upon us, what rights they are willing to take away in the name of their ideology. Tune in, contact them, let them know we refuse to allow them to turn our state into an autocracy.
 
— Marci Shaver, Torrington