2019 GENERAL SESSION CONNECTING WYOMING’S PEOPLE TO THEIR GOVERNMENT WELCOME TO THE PEOPLE’S REVIEW Dear Friends: I’m honored to introduce the Equality State Policy Center’s third annual People’s Review. Thanks to your support and your interest, we’ve been able to create this tool following each Wyoming State legislative session since 2017—and it remains a unique offering in this state. Thank you for using it and supporting this project! Our primary goal with the People’s Review is to make it easy for all Wyoming people to track how state legislators voted on important issues—especially at the moments in the session when their votes mattered most. This should help us all gain some important insights into our lawmakers’ values, priorities, and vision(s) for Wyoming. We also hope this year’s edition of the Peoples Review will inspire us all to raise the level of our civic engagement and get involved as much as we can with our state government in the days, weeks, and months ahead. If you’re reading this, you’ve already taken to heart the basic fact that the quality of our government relies on informed and engaged voters like you staying informed and engaged over time. It’s a never-ending task, but also a meaningful and rewarding one. So, thank you for your interest and thank you for helping make Wyoming government better year after year! IMPORTANT NOTE: While vote records are generally a good indicator of where legislators stand on the issues, at times they might not reflect the nuances of their positions or the specific reasons behind a given vote. And legislators can often be persuaded to change their positions, especially if they hear from constituents like you. So, we encourage you to contact your legislators if you have any questions or just want to have a conversation about one or more of the issues they considered during the last session. They ran for office with the understanding that, if elected, they were signing up for public service. So, they expect (and need) to hear from you to help them do a better job. In our experience, lawmakers tend to be very approachable and nearly all of them are willing to listen and consider your views, even if they disagree. Thank you again for staying informed and engaging with Wyoming’s government. And please share this tool with any of your friends, neighbors, and family members who might also be interested! Sincerely, Chris Merrill Executive Director Equality State Policy Center About Us: The Equality State Policy Center is a broad-based coalition of social justice, conservation, and labor groups in Wyoming working to improve the lives of all Wyoming’s people through transparent government, fair elections, and thriving communities. equalitystate.org 2 OUR COALITION THE EQUALITY STATE POLICY CENTER IS A BROAD-BASED COALITION OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, CONSERVATION, AND LABOR GROUPS WORKING TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF ALL WYOMING’S PEOPLE THROUGH TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT, FAIR ELECTIONS, AND THRIVING COMMUNITIES. Social Justice Conservation Wyoming Education Association Powder River Basin Resource Council Wyoming Interfaith Network Greater Yellowstone Coalition Matthew Shepard Foundation Wyoming Wilderness Association Wind River Native Advocacy Center Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association Wyoming Outdoor Council Wyoming Equality Sierra Club Wyoming Chapter Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence The Wilderness Society and Sexual Assault American Civil Liberties Union, Wyoming Juntos Labor Wyoming State AFLCIO Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Federated Fire Fighters of Wyoming Southwest Wyoming Central Labor Council United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters of America, Local #192 United Steelworkers Union, Local #13214 SMART Transportation Division of United Transportation Union Utility Workers of America, Local #127 Wyoming Building and Construction Trades Council International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local #415 Wyoming Public Employees Association Operating Engineers, Local #800 Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, Wyoming About Us: The Equality State Policy Center is a broad-based coalition of social justice, conservation, and labor groups in Wyoming working to improve the lives of all Wyoming’s people through transparent government, fair elections, and thriving communities. equalitystate.org 3 LEGISLATION Party Affiliation Changes (HB 106 – Failed – Opposed) If passed, this bill would have taken away a citizen’s ability to change party affiliation on or anywhere near primary election day. We believe Wyoming already has it right when it comes to voter registration. Same-day registration and the freedom to change one’s party affiliation honors our state constitution and respects the intelligence of Wyoming voters. It also protects their rights as citizens to make up their minds—and change their minds—when and how they see fit. Medicaid and SNAP Eligibility Requirements (SF 144 – Failed – Opposed) This misguided bill had the potential to harm thousands of Wyoming’s most economically vulnerable people by taking away their Medicaid coverage. It’s important to note that Medicaid does not help people pay rent or utilities or buy food or put gas in their cars. People use Medicaid simply to access health care while they’re working low-paying jobs that don’t offer health insurance or to help them maintain their medical care and pay for essential treatments and prescriptions while they’re between jobs. Contrary to some misinformation that was disseminated during the 2019 session, the vast majority of Medicaid enrollees do indeed have jobs, and nearly all recipients lack access to any other form of affordable health insurance. Public Records (SF 57 – Passed – Supported) While not a fix-all for Wyoming’s problems with government transparency, this bill is an important step in the right direction when it comes to improving government responsiveness to public records requests. This law creates a deadline for compliance with requests, and, in a bit of an experiment, it also creates an ombudsman in the executive branch—a point person for the general public—whose job will be to help people who are requesting public records to work with government entities to get the information they are requesting when lawful. Time will tell how successful this approach will be. There is still much to be done to improve other aspects of government transparency in Wyoming and it’s also likely this bill will need to be improved in the years to come. Campaign Finance Revisions (SF 18 – Passed – Supported) This bill closes a previous, glaring loophole in Wyoming’s campaign finance law by requiring third parties (e.g. PACs and Super PACs) that engage in what’s called “electioneering” (disparaging or promoting individual candidates) to report their spending on these activities. This type of reporting was previously not required by law in Wyoming. Voter Fraud Prevention (HB 192 – Failed – Opposed) In the name of preventing non-existent voter fraud, this bill would have unfairly suppressed the vote of many poor, elderly, and minority citizens in Wyoming. The voter verification system in place in counties throughout Wyoming works very well, is much more fair, and is less costly. About Us: The Equality State Policy Center is a broad-based coalition of social justice, conservation, and labor groups in Wyoming working to improve the lives of all Wyoming’s people through transparent government, fair elections, and thriving communities. equalitystate.org 4 Wage Equality State Employees and Programs SPECIAL NOTE ON COUNTY REGIONS AND (HB 84 – Failed – Supported) VOTE RECORDS Had it passed, this bill would have provided a comprehensive evaluation of State employee compensation in order to better While some legislators have multiple understand the wage gap between men and women. It would counties in their district, we organized have then required pay rate adjustments to promote wage county regions based upon the county equity between men and women. predominately located within a legislator’s district. Minimum Wage In almost all cases, the third-reading (HB 273 – Failed – Supported) vote was used as the featured vote in The People’s Review. Had it passed, this bill would have increased the minimum wage in Wyoming from $5.15 to $8.50 with an increase of $0.25 per We believe this vote is generally the most year until 2025. accurate reflection of the lawmaker’s position. Sexual Assault Parental Rights However, In a couple cases (HB22 and (HB 107 – Passed – Supported) HB308) we used the concurrence votes This bill allows survivors of sexual assault to petition the court to instead of the third reading votes—because terminate the parental rights of a rapist. Wyoming is one of the bad amendments were included in the last states to pass such a law. Unfortunately, lawmakers chose to Senate third reading versions, which set an extremely high bar for survivors to be able to use the law. were not in the House version, and which They amended the original bill to require a conviction of sexual caused some senators (who would have assault in a court of law, which is notoriously hard to achieve. The otherwise supported the bills), to vote vast majority of sexual assaults do not result in a conviction. So “no,” simply because they were against the there is more work to be done on this issue. amendments. The offending amendments were later stripped out for the final (concurrence) votes, which makes these Repeal Death Penalty (HB 145 – Failed – Supported) votes better representations of a given This bill drew far more support from state lawmakers than any senator’s positions on these two bills. previous death penalty repeal efforts in Wyoming. It had 13 co-sponsors in the House and five in the Senate, and had the it is important to note that in some cases, support of leadership in both chambers.