No such thing as a mandate — Legislators should take time to consider legislation

We are less than two weeks away from the beginning of the 2025 legislative session.  This session will be very different from other recent sessions, with new leadership, new committee makeups, and a lot of new members.  Our legislators are going to have to learn how to cooperate to make new laws or risk stalemate and ineffectiveness.

With that in mind, some communications from the incoming legislative leadership has caused concern.  In particular, one recent email claimed that the public had given the Freedom Caucus a “mandate” to institute their policies, followed by a list of five “key bills” that they intended to pass in the first ten days of the legislative session, which they refer to as the “five and dime” approach.

The word “mandate” is concerning, as it is usually used as an excuse to ignore input, especially input contrary to the official’s preexisting preferences.  It is also concerning because “mandates” do not really exist.  Elections, like people, are complicated, and voters may have any number of reasons for their choices.  It is oversimplifying and erroneous to say that the public has made a statement on any one piece of policy by their vote.  Rather, voters must weigh many different potential policies when they choose their candidates.  They often agree with the candidate they vote for on some policies while disagreeing on others and claiming any particular policy proposal is the cause for victory oversimplifies the complicated nature of human choices.

Instead, candidates should recognize that voters chose them for their judgment.  They must be willing to do the hard work of considering legislation and evaluating whether it addresses the right problem, whether it addresses the problem in a meaningful way, and whether the legislation needs to be amended before it is ready to become law.  Sometimes, that means voting against legislation that addresses a real problem because the solution is not a good one or there are too many unintended consequences.  That is the business of legislating.  Demanding support for a particular policy based on a claimed “mandate” is not.

My concern with the claimed mandate also extends to the “five and dime” approach announced in the same email.  Having legislative priorities is a good thing.  Announcing what those priorities are to the public is good as well.  Rushing the legislation is not.  The problem with the “five and dime” approach is that it does not give the legislature and the public time to participate in the legislative process in the way that these issues deserve.

Wyoming already has very short legislative sessions, and this causes issues.  Our legislature is tasked with considering, voting on, and amending hundreds of bills in just sixty legislative days over two years – not counting interim committee work.  This means that many bills are debated, amended, and voted on in just days, and before interested or knowledgeable parties can give their input.  It is a structural problem with our legislature that is not the fault of any of the current legislators, but it is a problem nonetheless.  If we want good law, we need to allow our legislature the time for consideration and fact-gathering that is necessary for them to make informed decisions.  The issue with the “five and dime approach” is that it takes what some legislative leadership believes are the most important issues and undercuts the ability to fairly consider them.

My concern is not about the policies themselves yet, because I do not know whether the policies they will be pushing are good or bad.  We need time to consider them and evaluate whether they will have unintended consequences, whether they address a real problem, and whether they can be improved.  Insisting that they be passed on the fast track does not allow for that.

We need to remember the purpose of our legislators.  A republic, like the United States and the State of Wyoming, requires us to elect representatives to do the work of considering and crafting law.  We elect those representatives based on their judgment.  A republic recognizes that humans and human problems are complex, so the solutions must be complex as well.  Direct democracy is not well suited to nuanced questions, so we elect representatives to study and understand those problems before voting on them.  Claims of “mandates” and demands for quick action without affording our representatives the ability to do the work we elect them to do undermines the effective operation of our government.

Wyoming has plenty of capable people to solve our problems if we will let them.  Put simply, the legislature needs to act slowly and carefully when considering their legislation.  We will all be better served if they take the time to do their jobs well, not just quickly.