Meeting agenda is online — State apportionment meeting coming to Newcastle

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the date of the meeting. 

A reapportionment subcommittee created by the Wyoming Legislature will bring its work to Newcastle this fall, giving Weston County a hometown stage for its calls to honor constitutional guidelines on legislative representation. The agenda for that meeting has been released at wyoleg.gov.

The meeting is scheduled for Sept. 25 and was announced during the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee meeting Aug. 15 in Casper. The agenda and purpose were later released online.

“The purpose of this meeting is to begin the subcommittee’s interim work. The subcommittee will receive information on: (1) constitutional apportionment of legislators; (2) history and principle of redistricting; and (3) alternative proposals from the community,” the meeting notice states.

In addition to attending in person, a live video stream will be available at www.wyoleg.gov. The notice says a limited number of participants can sign up to provide public comment virtually for a specified agenda item.

“The total amount of time dedicated to virtual public comment is set by the Subcommittee Chairmen per Management Council Policy,” the notice says. “Please fill out the public comment form to ensure the Subcommittee knows you intend to provide public comment virtually.”

“Only those that fill out the form to provide public comments virtually and who are e-mailed the Zoom invite from the Legislative Service Office will be permitted into the Zoom meeting to testify,” the notice continues. “The deadline for members of the public requesting to provide live testimony will be 5 p.m. of the day immediately preceding the day on which the topic is noticed to be discussed by the committee. At the chairman’s discretion, testimony may be accepted after this deadline if it is in the best interest of the work of the committee.”

Anyone with questions regarding the meeting should contact Legislative Service Office committee staff Matt Obrecht and Heather Hunter at 307-777-7881. Individuals planning to provide materials to the subcommittee should provide them in an electronic format to committee staff, as well as sufficient hard copies for members of the committee, staff and interested members of the public.

“All materials provided to the Committee in written form will be part of the official record of the Committee’s meeting and will be on file at the Legislative Service Office,” the notice says.

Persons with disabilities should contact the Legislative Service Office at the above number or by email at lso@wyoleg.gov for assistance with required special accommodations.

How we got here

As previously reported, the committee was given the go-ahead to create a subcommittee to examine the possibility of constitutional apportionment of legislative seats. This subcommittee was announced during the committee’s May 8 meeting in Lander.

The authority to create the subcommittee was provided through Senate File 174, a bill that directed formation of a committee to look into the conflict that exists between the state and federal constitutions when it comes to legislative representation in Wyoming.

The bill states that “the Legislature shall make a good faith effort to apportion itself as required by the 14th Amendment in conformance with the principle that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the State” and that the Legislature “shall make a good faith effort to apportion itself as required by Article 3, Sections 3 and 48 of the Wyoming Constitution by providing for legislative districts that follow county lines and legislative districts that have at least one (1) representative and one (1) senator per county.”

Article 3, Section 3 of the Wyoming Constitution states that every county “shall constitute a senatorial and representative district.” Article 3, Section 48 states that “at the first budget session of the legislature following the federal census, the legislature shall reapportion its membership based upon that census.”

The committee was created to “study apportionment of the Legislature as provided by this act during the 2025 interim.”

Members of the subcommittee are Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander; Rep. Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette; Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas; Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Torrington; Rep. Steve Johnson, R-Cheyenne; and Rep. Nina Webber, R-Cody.

Proposals

At this time, the News Letter Journal is aware of two different proposals that have been provided to the Legislature for consideration.

The first is the Founder’s Plan, prepared by the Concerned Citizens of Weston County.

“Per (Secretary of State) Chuck (Gray) and (Wyoming House Speaker) Chip’s (Neiman) testimony during the Legislature, we believe this may be something they support, as they each questioned the judicial interpretation of the 14th Amendment,” Concerned Citizens member Patricia Baumann wrote in an email to the NLJ. “Our proposal is in compliance with the judicial interpretation of ‘one man, one vote’ just in case we have to go there.”

Key features of the plan include a hybrid method combining county integrity (“political subdivisions”) with population-based apportionment; formulas that ensure voting power deviations stay below 1.40% in the House and 3.80% in the Senate, and that can be used regardless of census results. Unlike the current system, it guarantees that each of Wyoming’s 23 counties has at least one representative and one senator.

The plan would use a “sideboard” to add or remove seats if a county’s voting power on the floor “deviates too much from its population share.”

According to the proposal, the objective is to “preserve county boundaries as legislative districts while minimizing population disparities, in compliance with the Wyoming Constitution and federal legal standards.”

Supporters say the plan will avoid confusion and arguments during redistricting by using fixed county lines. They also argue that it aligns with Wyoming’s geographic and demographic needs and legal precedents.

The other proposal, provided by former Weston County attorney William Curley, “outlines a population-adjusted voting system to apportion Wyoming’s Legislature in compliance with both Article 3, Section 3 of the Wyoming Constitution and federal Due Process Clause requirements of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Key features of Curley’s plan also include county lines as district boundaries, guaranteed representation with each county retaining at least one representative and one senator (as required by Article 3, Section 3 of the Wyoming Constitution) and votes weighted by population to ensure “one person, one vote” (as required by the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause).