2025 Wyoming Legislature Report
Marguerite Herman, LWVWY Lobbyist
307-630-8095, marguerite.herman@gmail.com
Week #3: Jan. 27, 2025
Going into Week # of the 2025 Wyoming Legislature, we have 295 bills and resolutions profiled in the House and 191 measures in the Senate, with a growing number of proposals that challenge tradition and a few that seem unworkable.
Find legislation, digests of action-to-date, and ways to contact legislators and follow committee action on the Legislative Service Office (LSO) website wyoleg.gov.
I had the privilege of testifying in Senate Judiciary (Not Corporations) against a proposed Article V convention of the states, which included our League commitment to one-person-one-vote and support for the National Popular Vote. (The measure, SJ1, passed out of committee 5-0). Our support for proportional representation is sorely tested by a bill that revives a concept (rejected during the 2022 state redistricting) that every county should have at least one House seat but also comply with the U.S. constitutional right to equal protection. Doing a little math produces the following: Using the smallest county population (Niobrara), that would require 243 members of the Senate and 483 in the House. (Read SF174 – Constitutional Apportionment-2). Not sure how that would be accommodated anywhere in Cheyenne, allowing everyone to sit at a desk.
Recall that LWVWY won a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 that we should ignore the one-county-one-seat provision of our state Constitution and draw districts with equal population. Right now, that is about 10,000 people for a House district and 20,000 for a Senate District.
Education bills of interest to LWVWY include a private vouchers bill (HB199) and a bill to take money from school districts to help state-authorized charter schools pay for administrative costs (SF73).
Several election bills are still in play to restrict registration (HB156), to prohibit use of ballot drop boxes (HB131), and to reduce allowable IDs to confirm identities at the polls (HB160). Legislators also want more hand-counting of ballots and tighter restrictions on testing of election equipment. HB187 would give voters a two-hour break to get to the polls, including for early voting. SJ8 is a resolution seeks a U.S. constitutional amendment to authorize federal and state governments to establish reasonable limits on political contributions made to influence elections. It states that unlimited election spending is not free speech: “This unlimited spending is drowning out the free speech interests of actual constituents, narrowing debate, weakening federalism and self-governance in the states and increasing the risk of systemic corruption.”
The Senate will cut off the bill introductions on Wednesday, according to the schedule approved by legislative leaders in the Management Council, so leadership may leave the most extreme measures on the desk to die for the 2025 session. Sen. Charles Scott of Casper, just re-elected to another four-year term, has several measures to cut back state funding for school construction and take over or sue allegedly under-performing schools.
The deadline for bill introductions in the House is Feb. 3.
The top priority of the 2025 session is the Supplemental Budget, to update a two-year state budget bill passed 12 months ago, with spending that is considered urgent. The Freedom Caucus is focusing on the term “emergency” to characterize expenditures that should be considered now. The budget bill will start its way through the House and Senate as “mirror bills” on Friday. Committee of the Whole is given two full days of explanation and questions in the two chambers, then a break for members to write amendments, and then a second reading and third reading with hundreds of suggested changes.
The Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, has enjoyed almost unchallenged influence to get its proposals through committee and onto the floors of the House and Senate. One important exception was when the House rejected a rules change that would have made it extremely difficult to change budget decisions brought to the House by Freedom Caucus members of the Appropriations Committee. The House voted “no,” favoring an idea put forward by some veteran representatives that they should exercise their own authority to make funding decisions. The House also voted to reject the idea of “push button” voting, opting instead to keep the vocal roll call process they have been using for decades. HB254 is a bill to install microphones on representatives’ desks so the public can hear the voice of their legislators as they call out their votes. (Currently, roll call votes take 2 minutes. Consider how long a roll call vote would take with 486 members.)
Please make use of the LSO’s Legislature Citizen Guidebook as a reference for participating in the session, complete with seating charts, phone numbers, and Capitol maps.
The LWVWY priorities for this session can be followed on the bill tracker—Bill Track 50—included on our website, wyominglwv.org:
- Constitutional Issues
- School Funding and Finance
- Access to Healthcare
- Ballot Initiatives
- Election and Voter Services
- Government Accountability and Transparency
- Process of Open Meetings
- Public and Press Access to Government Work
- Rules and Procedures of the Government
You can track other personal priority issues by following various advocacy organizations (some are listed below the tracker on the league website).
Contact Marguerite Herman with questions about the Wyoming Legislature, the legislative session and bills, and the LSO website. LWVWY is www.wyominglwv.org.