As usual the first week of the 2014 Wyoming legislative budget session was brisk and many non-budget bills had been filed for consideration. During a budget session any bill that is not an appropriations or budget bill must receive a 2/3 vote for introduction. A number of bills received that 2/3’s vote this year giving committees a lot of work to accomplish in the first weeks of the session. Thursday February 20, 2014 was the last day for bills to be reported out of the Committee in the House of Origin. Those bills that were not reported out were effectively dead for the rest of the session. The last Medicaid expansion bill to be considered was not reported out of committee and so died in committee on Wednesday the 19th. The Chairman of the Committee did not hold a vote on the bill and effectively killed it without having any of the members on record with a vote.
The Wyoming Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Superintendent of Education, Cindy Hill’s case has further confused the future of the Department of Education and the role of both the legislature and the superintendent. This issue has widened the apparent difference of opinions within the Republican Party. It remains to be seen if the legislature will be able to fashion a solution to this incredibly divisive issue or if they will even try.
For the first year in sometime the ACLU was not dealing with controversial reproductive rights legislation which was a great relief. While there were two LGBT issue bills filed they died early in the first week. Representative Connolly filed a definition of marriage bill that would have simply defined marriage as a between two persons. Representative Gay filed a validity of marriage bill which would have denied LGBT couples married in other states any rights in Wyoming. Fortunately, that also died a quick death.
We were left this year to lobby a number of bills that contained interesting but sometimes complicated constitutional issues. We also watched a number of bills that might provide some concern to the ACLU. Normally we do watch the elections bill to make sure there is nothing of note in the changes promoted. Our office also watches criminal bills with the same concern.
Our office was working with Representative Sue Wallis on a marijuana legalization bill when Representative Wallis unexpectedly died a week before the session. Representative Wallis was a great representative who we often worked with on reproductive rights issues and she will be greatly missed by many in the legislature. Her replacement, Troy Mader, has little background for the legislature and once published a book saying that individuals with HIV/AIDS should be prohibited from having sexual relations, quarantined because of their “filthy sexual habits”.
Representative Byrd filed a bill to decriminalize the use of Marijuana that failed introduction. There has, however, been talk of changing these laws for the past two years. There are still many in the legislature that have an archaic view of marijuana use and prefer to see our young people locked up in huge numbers for possession. Ryan Frost had a great op-ed published in both the Casper and Cheyenne papers outlining the argument for the loosening of penalties for possession or use of marijuana. I hope that this bill will come up again in the next session and will at least be given a fair discussion.
