 - Local residents had a chance to hear from Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon in person last week during a town hall event hosted by the League of Women Voters of Fremont County.){kind=link}
(Lander, WY) – Local residents had a chance to hear from Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon in person last week during a town hall event hosted by the League of Women Voters of Fremont County.
The hour-long session began with a series of questions about Wyoming’s election system, which has been the focus of dozens of proposed legislative changes in recent years.
Event moderator Linda Barton, who serves as Chair of the League of Women Voters of Fremont County and the President of the League of Women Voters of Wyoming, characterized those proposed changes – 45 of which were introduced during this year’s legislative session, she noted – as attempts to “micromanage our elections and the county clerks who implement them.”
“Most of these bills failed, (but) another 11 such bills were brought back in this summer’s interim,” Barton said, asking Gordon to “help us understand why the Legislature is treating our county governments as if they are untrustworthy and incapable, requiring state oversight and in intervention.”
“Does this constitute governmental overreach and an unfunded mandate on the counties?” she asked.
Gordon replied that the “possibility” of an unfunded mandate exists in “some” of those proposals – but he also expressed his belief that “the Legislature has the desire to make sure that elections are handled well.”
“There’s always the opportunity to improve the process,” Gordon said. “Now, is there overkill? Perhaps.”
He took that sentiment a step further later, sharing his concern that “the Legislature is trying to take to itself the powers that aren’t accorded to it in the Constitution – of how to run elections.”
Gordon had been referring to The Federalist Papers No. 48, in which James Madison wrote, “The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”
The quote illustrates that “this is a tradition that this country has always wrestled with,” Gordon explained – and also that “a separation of powers is absolutely critical.”
“When you see one branch of government … that is trying to take all those powers to itself – the judicial, the executive, and the legislative – that’s the definition of tyranny,” Gordon said. “This is something that our Constitution is very aware of, and as voters I think it’s important that we weigh carefully what we see happening, in terms of ebbs and flows in that division of power. … As citizens of Wyoming, that’s a choice. We want to see if that’s really a good one, or if we really want to make sure that we stay with local government closest to the people.”
Property taxes
Gordon talked about the importance of local government later in the hour too, when Barton asked if he thought the voting public had “fully understood” the “downstream impacts” of the property tax reductions the Legislature has enacted in recent years.
Wyoming communities are just starting to “wrestle” with those impacts, Gordon said, citing constituent complaints about shuttered small-town libraries and city parks that “aren’t as neat as they used to be.”
“These consequences are going to be larger and larger,” Gordon said. “(But) what really is unfortunate about that is that there was a notion that property tax was going to the state – and it goes to local governments. … It’s how it’s how fire departments are funded. It’s how parks are funded. It’s how roads are funded, senior centers – all of that stuff is funded from local taxes.”
As a conservative, a Republican, and someone who grew up in Wyoming, Gordon said he would rather let local voters decide about the property taxes that are levied within their communities – not “a supermajority of the Legislature.”
“I don’t want that to be imposed (from) on high,” he said. “I want to be able to (contact) the actual people that collect it – the people that put it forward – to ask them questions, to be able to talk to them and to say, ‘No, I don’t think that’s appropriate for us to be paying taxes for … but when it comes to this, I’m all for it.’”
As it is, Gordon worried that, “by cutting ourselves so close to the bone … we are setting ourselves up (for) very, very hard times” – and it’s largely because people, including Wyoming lawmakers, “did not understand (that) the state doesn’t collect that property tax – it’s your county that does.”
Fortunately, Gordon said, the Wyoming government is “accessible” and “responsive,” and it has the ability to “correct itself.”
“If you get good people to run and if they have the support of their communities and you get a preponderance of that, you can get more things done here in Wyoming than (you) can anywhere else in the world,” Gordon said. “(So) I would encourage you to really get deep into the election process. Go for the candidates you want. Don’t give up on us, please.”
Other topics Gordon discussed during last week’s town hall include election fraud, voter turnout, civility within government, accountability of elected officials, and keeping young people in Wyoming.
County 10’s stream of the entire town hall is available below.