Elections law

County commission districting bill moves forward

Legislature responds to Wind River Voting Rights Act win with potential political quarantine

By Sarah Gorin
ESPC researcher

The Week news magazine always includes a short article called “Boring but Important,” often featuring a governmental process issue that has a significant impact on policy. The ESPC advocates on many such “Boring but Important” issues, which are hard to draw attention to but can affect any area Wyomingites feel passionately about, from education to health care to today’s topic, voting.

We’ve talked previously about SF 14 - Counties – election districts. The bill was brought following a successful Voting Rights Act lawsuit against Fremont County that was filed by several Native American plaintiff.

Voting Rights Act lawsuits focus on discrimination and the reality that HOW candidates are elected can determine WHO gets elected.

The lawsuit alleged that electing county commissioners at-large from the county illegally diluted the Native American vote, making it difficult if not impossible to elect a tribal candidate. A federal district court judge agreed and ordered the county to create five county commission districts from which to elect its five county commissioners. This districting has been accomplished and the first election held on January 18. (The county’s appeal of the decision is pending in federal appellate court.)

Current Wyoming law allows county residents to vote on increasing the number of county commissioners from three to five, and also to vote on whether they want county commission districts. If voters approve districting, however, the only option is single-member districts – one commissioner per district.

Although Fremont County’s county districting was done under federal court order and ultimately resulted in single-member districts, its initial response to losing the lawsuit was to offer a districting plan with a majority Native American district to elect one commissioner, and an at-large district to elect the other four commissioners.

This “hybrid” districting proposal was aimed at preserving the status quo as much as possible, and also was described as a kind of “political quarantine” for the Native American population.

SF 14 changes current law to allow hybrid districting. The ESPC has been working against the bill due to the potential for using hybrid districting to discriminate, not only in Fremont County but in other areas of the state where there are geographical concentrations of minority populations.

SF 14 has passed the Senate and was heard Tuesday (Feb. 8) and again Thursday in the House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee. The House committee adopted amendments offered by Rep. John Patton (R-H29, Sheridan) to include a multi-member district option as well, so counties could design any combination of single, multi-member, or at-large districts.

The bill passed the committee 6-3, with Chairman Pete Illoway (R-H42, Cheyenne) and Representatives Allen Jaggi (R-H18, Lyman), Kendell Kroeker (R-H35, Casper), Patton, and Tim Stubson (R-H56, Casper) voting yes. Representative Lisa Shepperson (R-H58, Casper) was not present but left a yes vote.

Representatives Gregg Blikre (R-H53, Gillette), Jim Byrd (D-H44, Cheyenne) and Jim Roscoe (D-H22, Wilson) voted no.

And now let’s look at the money …

SF 3 - Campaign finance – organizations, passed second reading in the House today and will be up for its third and final vote on Friday.

SF 3 changes Wyoming law to comply with last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allows corporations to make unlimited independent expenditures directly from corporate funds (as opposed to corporate political action committees, which are funded by individual contributions from corporate employees, directors and/or shareholders).

The ESPC has worked hard to keep these new independent expenditures identifiable. It would be easy to create a front organization funded by an independent expenditure from a corporation, hiding the true source of the money from voters and candidates.

The Wyoming Senate added an amendment requiring printing or announcement of the top three contributors to the organization making the independent expenditure. This approach was rejected by the House, which appears on track to adopt an amendment requiring independent expenditure organizations to file like political action committees.

The House version will go back to the Senate for “concurrence,” that is, the Senate will vote on whether to agree with the House amendment. If the Senate votes not to concur, a conference committee will be appointed to try to resolve the differences between the two houses. The conference committee will be comprised of three members from each house, two who voted for the bill and one who voted against.


Another area where process counts

Tuesday’s defeat of SF 52 -Teacher tenure, on third and final reading in the Senate was a victory for due process. It would have changed current “continuing contract” law in Wyoming to allow firing of teachers for any reason, papered over with a hearing process that did not include any basic due process rights such as the right to respond to one’s accuser or to directly confront evidence.

The Senate subsequently passed two bills with a much better approach: SF 70 - Education accountability, and SF 146 - Teacher accountability act. These bills now will move to the Wyoming House for further action.

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