2025 Wyoming Legislature
Week #4 Feb. 3, 2025
LWVWY Lobbyist Marguerite Herman
marguerite.herman@gmail.com, 307-630-8095
The Legislature enters the fourth week of the eight-week 2025 general session with deadlines for bills to be introduced, sent to committees and then reported out of committees. The supplemental budget bill, as finalized by the Joint Appropriations Committee, started its way through the session, and the Freedom Caucus has demonstrated its ability to control 35 votes (or more) on contentious issues in the House. Week #3 was a week of trying to make voting harder for both the voters and county clerks. The other major target was public education dollars.
The 2025 Supplemental Budget, in mirror bills SF1 and HB1, completes a two-day explanation process on Monday, then second reading amendments on Wednesday and final approval on Friday. After that comes negotiations between the House and Senate to find a compromise on their amended versions. If you have ideas for amendments, now is the time to communicate them to your legislators. Keep track of proposed amendments (which usually number in the hundreds) with the “Amendments” tab of SF1 and HB1 on the LSO website bill page.
An item of interest is the absence of Rep. Clarence Styver of Cheyenne from his assigned seat on House Labor. Disappointed at not being named chairman, he announced his boycott of the committee. LWVWY has asked Speaker Chip Neiman if he intends to reassign that seat so this very important committee has nine members to do its work.
The introduction deadline for Senate proposals was on Friday and the deadline for House bills is Monday. All Senate files have been introduced, and several have already passed and are in the House. In the House, several proposals still await introduction, and many more are in committee, Meanwhile, House leadership has been trying to move bills off General File and into Second Reading with some late nights of Committee of the Whole. Senators have written 197 bills and 11 resolutions, almost all still alive in some part of the process. Representatives have filed 341 bills and 6 resolutions.
The Senate debated a lowered bar “alternative” certification for teachers in Wyoming public schools. The House spent hours debating a vouchers bill that would give families about $7,000 per child (excluding pre-school children) in any institution, rejecting calls for achievement testing or limiting the benefit to low-income families. HB199 Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act will cost an estimated $44 million to cover the payments.
The Management Council (legislative leaders) approved a bill, HB316, to launch and finance a year-long recalibration study of what a public education costs in Wyoming, to include virtual education and state-authorized charter schools. The study is estimated to cost nearly $1 million.
Sen. Charlie Scott of Casper, who helped navigate Wyoming through the first stages of school funding models 30 years ago, wants to return school construction to local bonding and property taxes, SJ6.
Three measures are aimed at ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court decision that Wyoming must observe the one-person-one-vote guarantee of the 14th Amendment. They include SF147, HB296 and HB301.
Week #3 was the showcase for a range of elections proposals to require or at least make the default the use of paper ballots and hand counting (HB278, SF184, SF190)). Legislators want to restrict county clerks in their ability to manage workers and observers at the polls (HB321) and their submission to the authority of the Wyoming Secretary of State (HB322). Other measures making their way through the session attempt to reduce the IDs allowed to confirm identity for already registered voters at the polls (HB160, HB206). Prohibition of ballot drop boxes, HB131, passed the House and is in the Senate.
A word about HB278 voting machines bill in House Corporations: dozens of people drove to Cheyenne from the far corners of the state last week to testify about the need to use paper ballots and count them by hand. Testimony continues Monday with the county clerks and voting access advocates, including LWVWY, to describe the delays, errors and disruption of paper-and-hand-counting. Legislators will hear that perspective this week.
Contact Marguerite Herman with questions about the Wyoming Legislature, the legislative session and bills, and the LSO website LWVWY is www.wyominglwv.org.