 - Fremont County's state lawmakers proposed a dozen personal bill drafts during the first few days of the 68th Wyoming Legislature this week, and seven were approved for introduction - including two that have already advanced through their first committee hearing.){kind=link}
(Cheyenne, WY) – Fremont County’s state lawmakers proposed a dozen personal bill drafts during the first few days of the 68th Wyoming Legislature this week, and seven were approved for introduction – including two that have already advanced through their first committee hearing.
One of those two proposals – House Bill 69 – would transfer about 90 acres of land at the Wyoming Life Resource Center to the City of Lander for residential housing.
Another 29 acres of WLRC land would go to the Wyoming Department of Transportation, according to the bill draft.
Larsen
When he introduced HB 69 on the House Floor on Tuesday, Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, who sponsored the legislation, explained that WYDOT has “long outgrown” its current facility in Lander.
The building was constructed in 1939 and sits on a three-acre lot that is too small to house all of the equipment WYDOT maintains in Lander, Larsen told the House Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee during a hearing on the bill on Thursday.
The agency has been looking for a new property for more than a decade, Larsen said, noting that the lot would have to be situated near utilities and the highway, with turn-outs that are large enough to accommodate large equipment.
The 29-acre WLRC parcel meets those requirements, Larsen said – and the Wyoming Department of Health has confirmed that the center no longer needs the property.
“Our campus (has) shrunk pretty greatly since the 1970s,” WDH Director Stefan Johansson told the committee this week. “The parcels (in question) are relatively distant from the campus that we’re operating with clients and residential services. So … we don’t see any impact negatively to our operations.”
WYDOT Chief Engineer Keith Fulton said the property “would be a great piece of land for us to use,” adding that it would also “allow us to bring all of our staff into one location” once a facility is built there.
It was municipal officials who suggested adding a property transfer for the City of Lander to HB 69 this year, Larsen said, explaining that the city would use the land to address unmet housing needs in town – particularly when it comes to affordable housing.
Lander Mayor Missy White said it was “great news” that HB 69 was successfully introduced this week.
The bill’s cosponsors are Wyoming Rep. Ivan Posey, D-Fort Washakie, and Wyoming Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander.
Posey
Posey was the main sponsor of the other local bill draft that advanced through its first committee hearing this week: House Bill 26 – Vehicle registration fees-tribal governments.
The proposal would exempt motor vehicles owned by tribal governments from paying county and state registration fees.
“Currently, there are exemptions for the State of Wyoming, the United States, (and) Weed and Pest – just to name a few,” Posey said when he introduced the legislation on the House Floor on Tuesday. “The tribal governments have never been a part of this, for whatever reason. … I’m not too sure why this wasn’t enacted years ago, but it just affords the tribes to be exempt regarding tribally owned vehicles.”
Larsen, who co-sponsored HB 26 along with Wyoming Rep. Pepper Ottman, R-Riverton, and other state lawmakers, said tribal officials asked about the vehicle registration fees recently when they met to discuss legislative concerns.
“They just posed that question, ‘Why do we have to pay for license plates (when) everybody else doesn’t?’” Larsen told the Transportation Committee during a hearing on the bill on Thursday. “It’s just one of those gaps that has existed for generations, frankly, (and) we’re trying to rectify that.”
WYDOT Senior Investigator Lacey Bruckner said her agency “has no issues or concerns” with HB 26, which she called “pretty simple” and “basic,” but she did suggest adding a provision to the bill draft allowing WYDOT to issue exempt plates for tribal vehicles as well – just like the agency does for “all the other publicly owned vehicles.”
The committee added that language to HB 26 before approving it Thursday.
They also amended the bill draft to make it effective immediately upon passage.
Ottman
Two personal bills from Ottman were successfully introduced this week: HB 103 – Wyoming First Amendment Protection Act, and HB 143 – Free speech for health care providers.
When she introduced HB 103 on the House floor on Tuesday, Ottman asked her fellow lawmakers to imagine a scenario in which they’ve either spoken at a public meeting, written a letter to the editor, or criticized a company’s environmental record – only to “get sued” in response.
“The lawsuit has no merit, but that doesn’t matter because by the time you’ve paid the $50,000 in legal fees to prove it, you are broke,” Ottman said. “That’s (called a) strategic lawsuit against public participation.”
Thirty-nine states have laws protecting their citizens from “SLAPP” lawsuits, Ottman said, but “Wyoming currently does not.”
“HB 103 fixes this by giving Wyomingites immunity when they’re sued for exercising their First Amendment rights,” she said. “It lets them stop frivolous suits early before discovery bankrupts them, and it makes the other side pay their legal fees if the immunity holds.”
The bill also includes “safeguards” ensuring that “a legitimate defamation claim is not blocked, and abusive claims of immunity are punished,” Ottman added.
“This is about protecting ordinary citizens who speak their minds,” she said. “This is a very good opportunity – not only to protect ourselves, but to protect the media and also to protect our businesses that want to come (to) the state.”
Ottman’s second bill also addresses free speech protections, but this time with a focus on medical personnel, she said when she introduced HB 143 on the House Floor on Wednesday.
“We need medical personnel (in Wyoming), and when they are feeling as though they have no right to free speech … there’s a problem, and they’re leaving,” Ottman said. “As we’ve seen the health care professionals decline here, it’s not just about money. It’s about freedom of speech. It’s about being able to do no harm.”
Wyoming Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, agreed that “there is some amount of speech required of our healthcare providers that is causing some of them to leave” – but he argued that those requirements “came from the legislature” in the form of laws that, for example, “force” medical professionals to tell patients to have an ultrasound before receiving chemical abortion drugs.
“How will this affect the free speech of those healthcare providers?” Yin asked.
In response, Ottman said an ultrasound “is required for any OB-GYN examination,” while HB 143 “helps OB-GYNs (to) not be required to do an abortion in their training.”
Salazar
Wyoming Rep. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, proposed two pieces of legislation this week, too, but only one was approved for introduction: Senate File 88 – Sex offenders-residence near child care facilities.
The bill would prohibit registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a child-care center – a provision that Salazar called “self-explanatory” when he introduced it on the Senate Floor on Wednesday.
His other proposal, which failed introduction on Thursday, was Senate Joint Resolution 7 – Right of health care access-separation of powers.
The bill would have amended the Wyoming Constitution to specify that “the Wyoming legislature may define ‘health care’ for purposes of the right of health care access and to clarify when and how the legislature may impose restrictions on the right of health care access.”
Currently, Salazar explained, the Constitution “gives every competent adult the right to make their own healthcare decisions” – but it also “lets the legislature enact laws to protect the public health and safety.”
“Until recently, those laws were subject to the same ordinary levels of scrutiny as any other laws we passed,” Salazar said. “Now, laws regulating health care are potentially subject to the highest levels of scrutiny, which puts many existing statutes at risk and takes important decisions out of the hands of the people’s elected representatives.”
SJR 7 would have ensured that “in the realm of health care, the branch of government closest to the people can do what it was created to do – to pass laws that protect the health and safety of the public – and that those laws get the same scrutiny as any other laws that we pass,” Salazar said.
Cooper
Wyoming Sen. Ed Cooper, R-Ten Sleep, also had a mixed record of success with his personal bills this week, with one failing introduction while two others advanced: SF 98 – Eligibility for veteran property tax exemption-amendments-2, and SF 99 – Prescriptive easements for electricity delivery.
If it becomes law, SF 98 would expand Wyoming’s veteran property tax exemption to those who did not experience combat, Cooper explained when he introduced the bill on the Senate Floor on Thursday.
“There’s a lot more to combat than just being on the front line,” Cooper said. “(This) brings our veterans all across the state the same benefits that our combat veterans bring.”
Cooper’s other bill, SF 99, would provide an easement for electric transmission lines and distribution systems in the state – a provision that wasn’t needed “when we electrified the state,” Cooper said when he proposed the bill draft this week.
At that time, Cooper explained, “all the rural people, all the ranchers, said, ‘You bet, bring it.’ (So) we didn’t worry about easements. We didn’t worry about how we were going to get it there. We just built power lines and turned the lights on.”
In more recent decades, however, “we’ve had a lot of people come into the state that weren’t privy to that agreement,” Cooper said, so “we’re running into access issues” when trying to repair old electrical lines.
The easement structure outlined in SF 99 was developed by all of the stakeholders involved in the issue, Cooper said, calling it “a good bill” that “meets the needs of everybody involved.”
Cooper’s bill that failed introduction this week was SJR 2 – Upholding the principles of federalism.
The proposal is “basically a repeat of (a) resolution we brought last year to address foreign money and out-of-state money in our elections,” Cooper said when he described the bill on the Senate Floor this week.
This time, he said, the resolution “addresses only foreign money in our (elections).”
“We don’t have the ability to track that,” Cooper said. “So, this resolution asks our delegation to address that back in Washington. …
“It’s about time that we step up and tell the rest of the country that we’re bothered by what we’re seeing here.”
Case
All three bill drafts Case proposed this week failed introduction: SF 76 – Distribution of taxes on large electrical loads, SF 83 – Major political parties-state central party voting members, and SF 86 – Wyoming property tax relief authority.
SF 76 would have applied to facilities like data centers, which consume “very large electrical loads,” Case told his Senate colleagues when he proposed the legislation this week.
In fact, Case said, “there was a proposal a month or two back for a single data center that would consume more electricity than the entire state of Wyoming – multiple times more.”
“I looked at that, and I thought, ‘Wow, … their electricity bill (could) be a million dollars a day,’” Case recalled. “Sales tax on that … in a year could be almost $20 million. (That’s) a lot of money.”
SF 76 would have let the state take “a bigger share” of that income than it would under Wyoming’s current sales tax distribution formula and use the money to fund the direct distribution that goes to local governments each year, Case said.
In other words, he explained, the proposal “takes these significant economic events that happen in one place and spreads that money around (to) benefit all of Wyoming.”
SF 83 would have required major political parties in Wyoming to conduct “weighted” state central committee votes that reflect “the number of registered voters” in each county, according to the bill draft.
Currently, without weighted voting, “our smallest counties have the same representation in their state central committee as our largest counties,” Case explained on the Senate Floor.
“This bill says, ‘Hey, you at least have to think about the fact that bigger counties have more members of your party than smaller ones,’” Case said. “They don’t deserve unfairly proportioned representation. (They) deserve representation based on the number of registered voters of that party in the county. So that’s what this bill does.”
Case’s final proposal, SF 86, would have created the Wyoming Property Tax Relief Authority – a program that would let landowners pay their property taxes using private bank loans that would be “underwritten by the state” based on “the value of the property,” Case said.
“It gives people an option where they don’t have to go begging to their county assessor and receive authorization from the county commissioners,” he said, referring to the state’s existing property tax deferral program. “Nobody wants to do that.”