(Lander, WY) – The incumbents running for re-election to Wyoming House Districts 54 and 55 had the opportunity during this week’s Republican Party Primary Election Candidate Forum to comment about the mailers that were distributed recently criticizing their voting records in the Wyoming Legislature.
Wyoming Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton, who currently represents House District 55, referred to the mailer targeting her as a “hit piece” that featured “verifiably false” information.
“(It’s) very concerning,” she said. “We’re really going in a bad direction with … explaining things to voters when they’re getting absolutely false information.”
For example, she said, the document stated that she “voted to keep Trump off of the ballot” in Wyoming – but “that’s not what state legislatures do.”
“If we did vote on that, I certainly would not support it,” Oakley said. “(But) that is absolutely not what we voted on.”
Another portion of the mailer indicated that she voted against legislation capping annual property tax increases at 4 percent – an assertion that Oakley found “especially confounding, because I was a co-sponsor of that bill.”
Oakley serves on the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee, which also “vetted” that bill and approved it this year, along with several other pieces of property tax legislation – including the 50 percent “homestead” exemption for homeowners ages 65 and older who have paid property taxes for 25 years or more.
Oakley said she “actually brought that concept to the Revenue Committee” after speaking with a Fremont County landowner who asked, “At what point do you own your own home (and) not have to pay rent to the government?”
When asked how she would propose backfilling the loss resulting from the property tax exemption, Oakley pointed out that the fiscal note associated with the legislation only amounted to about $10 million, which “seemed a reasonable amount” to spend on property tax relief for “the people that need it the most” who are “older and on fixed income.”
Wyoming is “financially sound,” Oakley said later, describing the state’s savings and investment strategy as “thoughtful” and “complex.”
“There’s something we can really, really be proud of in Wyoming,” she said. “The third biggest payer of our bills is investment income.”
Wyoming also has “the extreme luxury of having an oil and gas and mineral industry that pays more than half of what we end up spending,” Oakley noted.
That’s why the state has no income tax, no corporate tax, a “relatively low” sales tax, and a property tax rate that is among the lowest in the country, she said, calling Wyoming’s current system of taxation “adequate.”
“Everybody wants to always discuss taxes – and that’s fair, (because) we should look at that,” Oakley said. “But … to say that we need to restructure and we’re paying too many taxes is overall not an accurate statement in Wyoming.”
Regardless, she said she would “continue to work on those issues … in a thoughtful way, in a strategic way, (and) in a comprehensive way” if she is re-elected to serve a third term in the Wyoming House of Representatives.
“I will continue to focus on legislation that addresses real issues that are facing Wyoming,” she said, adding, “We have real work to do in the legislature.”
She later clarified that the “real work” she was referring to involves the “nuts and bolts of running government” – not debates about “national issues” that “aren’t really … facing the state.”
“People are really focused on these national issues – and I get that, and they’re interested in it – but when they start being … 50 percent of the bills, (it’s) really to our detriment,” she said. “I think we’re doing a disservice to our very duty of what we’re supposed to do as the State of Wyoming when we go down to the Legislature (and) we’re focusing on the wrong thing … for a significant percentage of the time. And then we don’t get to the real work.”
In fact, Oakley listed Wyoming’s “very nonserious legislators” as one of the most important challenges facing the state.
“We need to vote in people who … understand the issues,” she said, referencing comments from members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus showing that they “don’t even understand that property taxes don’t go to the general fund.”
“If people are going to be willfully uninformed and continue with rhetoric like that … my answer to it is, I think they should be voted out.”
Oakley’s challenger, Joel Guggenmos, is one of the local “Freedom Caucus” candidates who declined to attend this month’s candidate forum – a decision that “appalled” the incumbent, who said she would “go so far as to say I condemn their actions.”
“He does not want to debate (or) represent people who don’t align with his, quote, ‘extremely conservative values,’” Oakley said. “That is just something I can’t understand.”
By contrast, she said, “there is not one person that I represent that I will not have a discussion with,” because those conversations are “at the very heart of representative democracy.”
“I pledge that I will listen to everyone,” Oakley said. “I will stand on my own record and my own knowledge … as an old-school Wyoming Republican (with) a live-and-let-live form of conservativism that I believe has served as the heart of Wyoming for generations.”
To watch the entire forum, click here.
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