2025 Wyoming Legislative Report
LWVWY Lobbyist Marguerite Herman
FINAL SUMMARY
The Wyoming Legislature adjourned its 2025 General Session on schedule March 7. A primary leader of the Freedom Caucus declared himself the “new sheriff in town,” and his House majority held together enough to put a major stamp on many initiatives – but not all, especially toward the end. Friction between the House and Senate had an impact on the demise of a few bills, including the supplemental budget bill and Senate President Biteman’s elections bill.
Standing joint committees met at the end of the session to consider interim topic suggestions from committee members and the public. Topics will be submitted to the Management Council, composed of House and Senate leadership, on April 8 to assign interim work and budgets. The major interim task is the five-year recalibration of k-12 public school funding to make sure Wyoming’s funding model is cost-based, uniform and adequate.
LWVWY leadership had identified 2025 priorities of elections, school funding, government accountability/transparency and constitutional issues. This report will include a wrap up of the bills related to the priorities and how they refer to the interim session. Meanwhile, the governor continues to consider bills passed for signature, veto or to let turn into law without his signature. Track all “enrolled acts” on the governor’s bill page. Track all 556 bills and resolutions drafted and numbered for the session on the Legislative Service Office’s website bill page. A bill’s “digest” tells the entire history of each measure. (Let me know if you have questions.) You also can use the LWVWY bill tracker to see how our issues fared in 2025.
ELECTIONS
The subject of elections was fraught with concerns raised by Secretary of State Chuck Gray that elections might be insecure. He and several public groups who came to the Capitol told committees that:
- Voting machines cannot be trusted
- Hand-counting is a better way to count ballots
- Registering to vote should be harder, and voting should be harder
- Political parties should be more involved in poll-watching and canvassing
- Early voting should be cut short to accommodate campaigners
- We need to crack down on people who help deliver absentee ballots for friends (to prevent ballot harvesting, which does not occur in Wyoming)
- A “bona fide” resident of the state is one who has a physical address for 30 days before voting
- Ballot drop boxes at courthouses cannot be trusted and should be removed, regardless of voters’ reliance on the boxes
All these assertions appeared in one form or another in some 45 proposals prepared for the 2025 session despite the lack of verified cases of voter fraud or malfunction of vote tabulation. None succeeded in 2025, although one (HB156, HEA57) was awaiting Gov. Mark Gordon’s signature or veto after adjournment.
The House voted 23-38-1 to kill SF98 to list partisan party affiliation on the non-partisan school board trustee ballot.
A major source of voting equipment skepticism is a 2024 experience in Weston County, where staff accidentally used misprinted ballots that were then mis-counted by machine tabulators. It was a case of human error, rather than a machine malfunction. All counties use machines to count ballots. Only Laramie County uses machines to mark the ballots, as well. County clerks are considering a demonstration of voting equipment at an interim meeting of the Joint Corporations Committee.
Related to elections was SF174, “Constitutional apportionment of legislators,” to study how Wyoming could reapportion the state to give each county its own legislative delegation (two representatives and one senator), while still meeting the U.S. Constitution mandate of “one person, one vote.” (As of March 11, it was awaiting action on the governor’s desk.) The 1991 U.S. District Court decision in Gorin v. Karpan said Wyoming could keep its own constitutional language for a legislative seat for every county, but it could not follow that and meet the requirement to give every citizen an equal voice in government. LWVWY argued that the Legislature already knew the outcome of any study, but supporters liked the idea of getting clarity for the 2,500 people in Niobrara County. The fiscal note: “It is assumed that the Management Council will assign redistricting to a current standing committee. It is also assumed that there will be sufficient funding in the current 2025-26 biennium Legislative budget to pay for the cost of the proposed redistricting.”
SCHOOL FUNDING
We heard the familiar practice of declaiming the constitutional duty to fund public schools, discounting national testing data that give Wyoming top scores, partially funding school facilities, lowering teacher standards, and calling for more “choice,” a term that lacks a firm definition.
Private school vouchers and more publicly funded charter schools were the response to the calls for choice this session. The “scholarships” set up by HB199 were amended to provide $7,000/child to families earning up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, to be available to pay for preschool, and to be subject to testing. It will cost about $44 million a year.
Meanwhile, a long-awaited ruling came from Laramie County District Court in the case of WEA vs. State, concluding that the State of Wyoming’s school funding program fell short of its duty to fund operations and facilities to meet the state’s constitutional mandate for k-12 schools. The 180-page ruling will provide direction for the Legislature’s recalibration effort. It may have inspired the Senate to approve an amendment to the recalibration bill to provide a $66 million “external cost adjustment” to the state public school budget for the year ahead.
All this happened against a background of a property tax break to homeowners of about 25 percent, achieved by SF69, without provision to “backfill” local governments for lost revenue. Revenue lost to public education will be covered by one of the Legislature’s savings accounts, the Legislative Revenue Stabilization Account. Representatives from so-called “hardship” counties warned their counties did not reap great tax windfalls from rising housing costs in Wyoming, and they feared severe budget cuts.
PLEASE NOTE
During the interim, you may follow committees as they tackle topics assigned by the Management Council. Meetings are posted on the LSO website, along with an agenda and materials and opportunities to testify.
As you read reports from various interest groups for the 2025 session and interim, please note that voting records for legislators should be taken with caution, as a lawmaker’s intent may require context. For instance, a vote could be an objection to the procedure or an amended version of a bill or to help them qualify to be on a joint conference committee. Also, beware of taking a bill’s short title literally, as lawmakers can use license with those. When in doubt, ask lawmakers directly about their votes.