2025 Wyoming Legislature
Week #4 Feb. 3, 2025
LWVWY Lobbyist Marguerite Herman
marguerite.herman@gmail.com, 307-630-8095
The 2025 Wyoming Legislature enters its fifth week with work done by the House and Senate on their versions of the supplemental budget bill. They now start work on the other chamber’s budgets and eventually rely on conference committee members to find a compromise.
Legislation approved by the House and Senate has started to “cross over” to the other chamber for debate and amendments. (Use the “engrossed” version of bills after they cross. i.e. “Engrossed” means the final version)
Meanwhile, some 65 bills and resolutions died at the end of last week when they failed to pass out of committees. The biggest die-off, though, was the 93 bills written in the House but never introduced. (All Senate files were introduced.) Another large die-off occurs Monday, with the deadline to pass the initial floor debate in Committee of the Whole. In the House, 65 bills and resolutions sit on General File, and most won’t make it. The Senate General File has 24 bills. This is when critics of the Legislature blame long-winded debates early in the session for the death of so many bills.
Find all the deadlines in the session schedule on the Legislative Service Office (LSO) website.
The House and Senate were preoccupied last week with reading through appropriation bills SF1 and HB1 and two rounds of amendments. The Freedom Caucus in the House held together to support most positions by the House Appropriations Committee. A frustrated Rep. Ken Pendergraft compared people writing budget amendments to children who beg for a cookie and won’t take “no” for an answer. Rep. John Bear wrote a column comparing advocates for agency budgets to “lobbyists.” The mirror budget bills started out at about $680 million. The Senate added about $200 million and the House about $100 million.
Public testimony has contained mistaken ideas about paper ballots and machine tabulation of votes. To hear Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee give a good explanation of the process to Senate Corporations Friday morning, watch the committee meeting on YouTube between minutes 20 and 50. (Bills to require only hand counting of ballots are gone for the session.)
~ LWVWY opposes legislation that restricts elections or injects partisan politics without benefiting voters or elections. LWVWY supports full funding of public K-12 schools.
For the full list of bills use LWVWY’s bill tracker, available here.
THE FOLLOWING is a status summary for some bills and constitutional
amendments the League of Women Voters of Wyoming OPPOSES.
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HOUSE BILLS
- HB102 Attorney General-elected (House General File)
- Makes Wyoming AG a statewide elected office, answerable to the governor and Legislature
- HB131 Ballot drop boxes prohibited (Senate)
Only mail or hand delivery allowed for absentee voting
- HB156 Proof of residency-registration qualifications (Senate)
Adds requirements to prove citizenship and state residency for 30 days before
an election.
- HB157 Proof of voter citizenship (Senate)
Adds requirements to prove citizenship for voter registration
- HB160 Voter identification – revisions (Senate)
Students cannot use school ID to confirm name at the polls
- HB199 Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act (Senate)
Allows families to claim about $7,000 per child for schooling (no testing or
income limit.
- HB206 Elections-acceptable identification revisions-2 (Senate)
Requires a photo ID to confirm identity at the polls (removes Medicare card)
- HB245 Pen and paper ballot (Senate)
Counties must use pen and paper ballots (disabled voters may use machine
marking
- HB321 Election judge selection (House General File)
County clerks would use lists prepared by political parties to name election
judges.
SENATE BILLS
- SF98 School board trustees-party affiliation (House)
Permit trustee candidates to list party affiliation on election ballots
- SF162 Education-block grant model amendments (3rd reading Senate)
Require districts to pay teachers only what the Legislature’s funding model
specifies.
- SF190 Election transparency (Senate General File)
Omnibus bill to reduce early voting, increase citizen ID requirements, increase automatic recount threshold, machine voting only for disabled people
- SJ1 Convention of States (House)
Joins call for states to meet and rewrite one or more parts of U.S. Constitution
- SJ6 School capital construction-constitutional amendment (3rd reading Senate)
School facilities built with local bond issues
- SJ10 Legislative and executive authority-taxation and spending (Senate General File)
Removes judicial review of public school funding
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LWV WYOMING SUPPORTS THESE BILLS
- HB178 Work allowance (Senate)
Gives voters a 2-hour work break to vote early or on election day (Senate)
- SJ8 Political expenditures (2nd reading Senate)
Asks Congress to write a constitutional amendment to authorize federal and state governments to set reasonable limits on contributions to influence elections.