Legislators share session info

Alexis Barker
NLJ Reporter
 
The 2019 Wyoming legislative session came to a close on Feb. 28, and local legislators attended a legislative symposium, hosted by the Newcastle Area Chamber of Commerce and the Weston County Republican Party, on April 6 to present a wrap up of the session. 
Three of the four local legislators attended the event, Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, and Reps. Hans Hunt, R-Newcastle, and Tyler Lindholm, R-Sundance. Each legislator summarized what he or she thought was important during the session before answering questions posed by the people who attended. 
According to Steinmetz, 720 bills were drafted for this regular session, with over 500 being “jacketed” and worked on by either the House or the Senate. In the end, the House received 119 Senate files, with 92 of those passing into law, and 167 House bills were received by the Senate, with 99 passing into law. 
“The Senate was a little bit ahead of the House passage-wise. We (the Senate) had a passing percentage of 52% and the House was just over 30,” Steinmetz said. “We did some really good work this year.” 
The first “good” piece of work accomplished by the state Legislature this year, in Steinmetz’s opinion, is the passing of funds for a veterans’ skilled nursing facility in the state. 
“This has been in the process for 30 years, and we are the only state that didn’t have one (a skilled nursing facility for veterans),” Steinmetz said. 
The state now needs to apply for federal funds for the project, she said, but state funds have been appropriated. 
Steinmetz also highlighted a personal bill she had been working on for four years that dropped the legal blood alcohol content for boat operators to 0.08 percent, the same limit for vehicle operation. She said that this makes the limit consistent across the board. 
Both Steinmetz and Hunt recognized the importance of House Bill 171, which legalized hemp production and Cannabidiol, or CBD, oil in Wyoming. 
“This is a good bill for ag producers,” Steinmetz said, “I know there is some controversy, but we did this for all the right reasons.” 
Hunt said that the hemp production bill, which he cosponsored, has a lot of “economic potential” for the state and that the bill went into effect immediately. 
“We have a conference on hemp in Casper coming up with 150 people who are excited to get started on hemp in Wyoming,” Hunt said. 
Lindholm reported on bills involving elections in the state, solar panel regulations and broadband coverage in rural areas. 
“Corporations committee was a big one this session, and we did a lot of looking at election issues, voter ID issues and campaign finance situations in the state,” Lindholm said. “One thing we looked at is how to deal with “dark money” groups that formed up in the last campaign.” 
According to Lindholm, these groups seem to form overnight and then disappear after sending out campaign promotion information. 
“We want to know where that money is coming from and who is pushing it,” Lindholm said. 
Lindholm said that another big topic of interest is the mandates on how many kilowatts can come from solar panels because current statutes are not being followed. 
“We are looking into something along the lines of the utility making that decision because they know the load and customers the best,” Lindholm said. “These limits might differ from Black Hills Energy to Rocky Mountain Power.” 
Other discussion focused on broadband access in rural areas. 
“There is not great service unless you are in town, and we asked the companies how much they are building in these unserved areas, and they said they are not,” Lindholm said. “So if they are not, the state is not seeing sales tax return on builds, so we asked them if we put an exemption in place if they would be more motivated to build in those rural areas.” 
Lindholm said that the companies responded positively to an exemption, so a bill was ran and passed into law placing exemptions on those builds, hopefully motivating more broadband work in rural Wyoming.