The ESPC in Washington, DC

ESPC joins effort to oppose budget cuts that threaten recovery
Appeals to Congress to promote economic security of families

Here’s the basic argument we’re making to Wyoming’s Congressional delegation as they move forward on the current effort to put together a FY 2011 budget deal. Congress needs to reach the deal before an April 8 deadline, when current temporary spending authorizations expire and we could all see a shutdown of government.

As our political leaders struggle to meet this deadline, we’ve joined other advocates from around the country in Washington, D.C. to warn Congress about the impact of cuts that threaten the economic security of families and senior citizens.

We spoke with Sens. Mike Enzi and John Barrasso Wednesday morning and will meet with Congresswoman Lummis’ staff this afternoon (March 31). Other groups from around the country will meet with their members of Congress as part of a three-day organizing meeting hosted by Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), a national organization that works to achieve economic security and independence for families.

The cuts proposed in the House budget will require cutbacks in basic federal programs like Head Start. The demand for these services is high. The Early Head Start and Head Start programs on the Wind River Reservation have a waiting list of 140 kids. Others around the state serve many families.

In Wyoming and nationally, the proposed federal budget spending reductions will slow job growth and weaken the already tenuous ability of millions of families and seniors to make ends meet. We contend that cutting programs that are helping families and senior citizens stay afloat is short-sighted and jeopardizes their economic security.

Leading economists are projecting a loss of 700,000 jobs nationwide if the most recent House spending bill for fiscal year 2011 (HR1) is enacted, according to Wider Opportunities for Women. The potential deal is a moving target subject to intense partisan politics. National Public Radio reported this morning that a proposal seeking more than $30 billion in cuts has been offered by Democrats. The proposal that the House put on the table several weeks ago, passed on strictly partisan lines, includes $61 billion in cuts. We’ll see if that gap can be bridged.

The proposed budget passed by the House includes billions of dollars in cuts to job training, education, elder assistance programs. Slashing these budgets will directly affect families, communities and the nonprofits that serve them in many ways, such as:

• Eliminating volunteer programs including AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. According to Serve Wyoming, the House budget eliminates funding that supports 1,900 people of all ages and backgrounds who help meet local needs, strengthen communities, and increase civic engagement through 33 national service projects across the state;
• Cuts to Head Start, special education (IDEA) and schools in low-income communities;
• 44 percent cut to the Community Services Block Grant program, which provides nutrition, employment, health and other necessary services to over 20 million, including low-income and disabled people. Programs like the Downtown Clinic in Laramie would be affected, depriving many of care that helps keep them out of the emergency room where their care costs much more.
• Cuts to Low-Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which many Wyoming families depend on to stay warm in winter;
  

As the nation struggles with a slow recovery that is producing few jobs, we hope the Wyoming delegation and Congress will propose solutions that create jobs and don’t undercut the middle class.

Yesterday, Sen. Enzi said that the budget talks are going on at a very high level with little opportunity for other members to offer their ideas. He said senators are unlikely to be given any opportunity to offer amendments when and if a budget deal is reached.

We still believe that as members of the very tight circle that is the Senate, the Wyoming senators certainly can let their negotiators where they stand on programs essential to the economic security of the working families walking the edge of financial disruption and even ruin.

Note on the photo: Sen. John Barrasso speaks with Wyoming visitors in Sen. Mike Enzi's office in the Russell Senate Office Building. Wyoming's senators meet with constituents visiting Washington every Wednesday morning.

State insurance commissioners meet in Texas

Brokers: the first casualty of the ACA?

Consumers reps fear NAIC will undercut health care reform

By Barb Rea
ESPC healthcare advocate

In 1993, American insurance companies were spending 93% of insurance premium revenue on health care claims. This percentage has been steadily eroding and now some companies spend only 50% of premium revenue on healthcare. The rest goes into administrative costs (which include paying fees to salesmen called brokers) and profits.

This calculation is called the Medical Loss Ratio. It is interesting for consumers to note that companies consider what they spend on health care to be a loss.

To encourage companies to work more efficiently, more transparently and to provide more value in their products, one of the new provisions in the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to spend 80% (85% in large group markets) of premium revenues on health care and less on profits. If they fail to meet these guidelines, insurers will have to pay a rebate to their customers.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) was in charge of figuring out how to calculate and monitor the MLR and last October, after seven months of very transparent work, the commissioners passed the details of how this regulation would work.

At the October meeting of the NAIC, the insurance industry came in at the last minute with requests for changes that would have effectively meant insurance companies could operate at a 63% MLR. The commissioners, who are clearly proud of their rigorous methods, stuck to the intention of the law and dismissed those last minute amendments – to the great benefit of consumers.

The NAIC is meeting again this weekend in Austin, Texas. A few days before the meeting, consumer representatives learned that brokers, those agents who help sell and service insurance policies on a commission basis, were requesting a vote from the NAIC that would endorse HR 1206, the Access to Professional Health Insurance Advisors Act of 2011. The bill would remove brokers’ fees from the Medical Loss Ratio calculation entirely.

The brokers contend that insurance companies will start paying them less in order to meet the MLR rules. This may or may not be true. We don’t know because these fees have always been invisible to consumers and to many regulators, too. There is very little data to determine how much brokers are being paid or how much impact this will really have on the market.

One thing is certain though, brokers’ fees were clearly on the administrative side of the MLR equation when the benchmarks were established. The solution to just eliminate fees from the equation altogether would effectively undo the intention of the law.

According to Prof. Timothy Jost, one of the NAIC Consumer Representatives, "This bill would effectively end the MLR as a tool for reducing insurer costs, would increase premiums by whatever brokers chose to charge, and would transfer a billion or more in rebates from consumers to producers(brokers)."

All sides of the healthcare reform debate agree that one of the major goals of the ACA is to bend the cost curve ---that can only mean that at some point, some people who are making money from the current system will make less.

By 2014, buying insurance will be much easier as other provisions in the ACA standardize insurance language and benefit packages so people can make apples to apples comparison when they shop for a new policy.

We will never achieve the real goals of reform if every time some stakeholder is going to lose money, they can simply write a bill to eliminate that part of the ACA. Brokers may be the first casualty of the effort to cut health care costs.

The MLR went into effect January 1, 2011. Insurers are submitting additional forms to their commissioners which will make all these numbers transparent for the first time. We will have ample information to see which companies and which states are having trouble meeting the MLR and where brokers’ livelihoods are indeed threatened. In the meantime, there is already a waiver process available to states that can demonstrate market instability. We don’t need a sweeping solution at this time.

Consumer representatives are asking that commissioners slow down, analyze the data and address these concerns on a state-by-state basis instead of hacking away at important consumer protections that can help reduce costs in the long run.

Dealing with structural racism

Questions about hybrid districts and Wyoming’s new county elections law

Somebody lied on the way to changing Wyoming law governing the creation of election districts for county commissioners.

The story begins last spring, when federal district Judge Alan B. Johnson ruled in favor of five Native American plaintiffs who challenged Fremont County’s system of electing county commissioners at large. The plaintiffs successfully argued that the system violates the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Native Americans.

Judge Johnson found that Native Americans, specifically members of the tribes of the Wind River Reservation, have been victimized by historic and continuing racial discrimination in Fremont County. The county’s at-large system of voting denied them access to the institutional power through which they could address this racism.

The county’s 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. These districts were rejected by Judge Johnson because they “perpetuate the separation, isolation and racial polarization in the county, guaranteeing that the non-Indian majority continues to cancel out the voting strength of the minority.”

Under federal court order, Fremont County then drew five single-member county commissioner districts and held the first elections in three of them in January (the other two commissioners were carried over and will be up for election in 2012).

Meanwhile, Fremont County also appealed the decision – at taxpayer expense – and the matter is now pending before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The county also turned to the Joint Interim Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee last year. In September, the county asked the committee to approve a new law that would allow the hybrid districting plans.

When the bill, SF 14 - Counties – election districts, was proposed, tribal leaders argued the county would use it to try to influence the appeals court. The ESPC opposed SF 14 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.

But since last fall, the chairmen of the Senate and House Corporations committees repeatedly assured their committee members, witnesses, and the public that SF 14 would have no effect on Fremont County’s appeal. It was clear to observers at the interim meetings that members of the committees also supported the bill only as forward-looking, rather than anything that could or should affect the appeal.

The statements from the chairmen, Sen. Cale Case of Lander and Rep. Pete Illoway of Cheyenne, undercut objections to the bill voiced by the tribes of the Wind River Reservation and the Equality State Policy Center. The bill passed.

The ESPC then explained its concerns to Gov. Matt Mead and met with two of his legal advisors in an effort to secure a veto of the bill. The governor declined, however, and signed the bill Feb. 24.

“We are not messing with the court decision,” Sen. Case said in a WyoFile report on the bill. “This just grants counties more flexibility.”

Imagine their surprise when the chairmen heard the news that the county’s attorney at the Mountain States Legal Foundation has notified the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals about Wyoming’s new law.

The attorney said the new law “may have a bearing on what the state could allow with respect to remedying violations of the federal Voting Rights Act by drafting new county commission districts,” Associated Press reporter Ben Neary reported in a story published in today’s (March 10) Casper Star-Tribune.

Lingering question

So who knew about the county's plan to use the new law in its appeal?
Rep. Illoway said he was surprised to learn of Fremont County’s action. Sen. Case said he “did not know about this either.”

Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese and commission secretary Becky Enos were in Denver Thursday and unavailable for comment on communication between county officials and legislators. The county’s appeal was to be argued before the appeals court today.

No county commissioners were available Thursday, either. The county commission meets again on Tuesday.

Neary noted in his March 10 story that Chairman Illoway opened a committee hearing of SF14 by noting that criticism that the bill was intended to undo Judge Johnson’s decision was “the furthest thing from the truth.”

Rep. Patrick Goggles, pictured above, disagreed. He is the House minority floor leader, lives on the reservation and is a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe.

“If the recent Wyoming legislation is not in response to the Fremont County single district election, then why the legislation?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Sen. Case downplayed the significance of the actions by the county’s attorney.

“I cannot imagine that it would affect the judge’s decision on the appeal, especially given the delayed enacting date of the legislation,” he said in an email message. “And unless there is a successful appeal, FC (Fremont County) must have single member districts.

“Now go way out and assume that FC wins the appeal, I cannot help but note that because single member districts have already been established, the commissioners are unlikely to come up with anything very much different because that is their base.” Sen. Case concluded.

Dismantling racism

Judge Johnson dismantled a classic racist structure when he ordered the end of the at-large voting system in Fremont County’s commission elections. The ESPC consistently argued that the hybrid districting bill erects another structure that easily can be co-opted to impose a replacement racist structure. Counties can use this law to quarantine a minority population in a district of its own while the rest of a county population continues to elect the majority of members of a county commission.

Fremont County officials have made obvious their intention to do as much as they can to maintain a status quo the court found guilty of racism. The county's action in front of the appeals court reaffirms that intent. It's time for Fremont County and the entire state to move beyond the racism that has plagued relations with the tribes.

If this is how the county commissions of Wyoming will use the new districting law, it should be repealed.

House Bill 74 dies in Senate

Senate kills discriminatory anti-GLBT marriage bill

The Wyoming Senate Wednesday took a stand for equality and turned back a bill that would have voided the legal same-sex marriages of Wyoming residents.

The Wednesday vote culminated weeks of debate on the measure during the legislature’s General Session, which ends Thursday. In a last ditch effort to block a vote they knew would be very close, Senate opponents of the measure – House Bill 74 – Validity of marriages – raised procedural objections. Those attempts failed after the Rules Committee retreated behind closed doors to consider each of the objections and returned to the chambers to overrule them.

The clerk then called out each senator’s name to hear and record their votes. Sen. John Hines and Sen. Bill Landen, both of whom previously supported the bill, changed their votes. The result was one vote more than was needed to kill the bill, 14-16.

"Equality of all. In their inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are equal." - Wyoming Constitution

In the gallery, Jeran Artery of Wyoming Equality broke out a big smile. Supporters from Wyoming Watch, the Focus-on-the-Family clone intent on imposing its fundamentalist Christian views on Wyoming’s secular laws, reacted stoically. A few minutes later Becky Vanderberghe of Wyoming Watch was telling reporters that her group was pleased to have the roll call vote and intends to “go after” the senators who opposed them, presumably a reference to the 2012 elections.

“They did the right thing,” Sen. Cale Case(R-SD25, Lander) said of his Senate colleagues. Case worked hard to defeat the bill, which he considers an affront to the Wyoming constitution.

The Senate action followed a House vote to approve the conference committee report on the bill. That vote similarly was very close with the minimum number of representatives – 31 – supporting the “compromise” reached by the House and Senate conference committees on Tuesday. And that majority was sealed only after Rep. Steve Harshman (R-HD37, Casper) changed his No vote to Aye.

The conference committee met four times to come up with a proposal they thought might be accepted. The committee proposal rejected a Senate amendment aimed at recognizing legal same-sex civil unions and took off a House amendment. The conference committee also narrowed the bill to add two new sub-paragraphs to existing law. Each of them said that marriages legally contracted in other states and countries “… are valid in this state, provided that such marriage contracts are between a male and a female person.”

Before the House vote, opponents of the conference report pointed to the Wyoming Constitution to argue against adopting such a discriminatory law. Rep. Pete Illoway, (R-HD42, Cheyenne) quoted Article 1, Section 2.

“Equality of all. In their inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are equal,” he read.

“People are equal whether you agree with their lifestyle or not,” Illoway said.

Other opponents trooped to the microphones in the House. Rep. Pat Childers (R-HD50) noted that in his childhood, “I was told we need to separate church and state.’’

“This isn’t right,” Childers said of HB 74. “We have to do the right thing for our constitution.”

Proponents made their appeals, too.

“There is no argument (whether) all are created equal,” said co-sponsor Bob Brechtel (R-HD38, Casper). “What we’re talking about here is a policy statement.” The statement simply affirms the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman for the purpose of bearing and raising children, Brechtel said.

House conference committee chairwoman Rep. Amy Edmonds (R-HD12, Cheyenne) said she would vote for the bill because doing so would “speak the will of the people.” Supporters have argued for years that the majority of Wyoming residents oppose same-sex marriages. A proposal to put a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages and civil unions on the 2012 election ballot failed this session.

The Senate offered no high oratory. The senators did not discuss the bill beyond the procedural challenges offered by Sen. Bruce Burns (R-SD21, Sheridan) and Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-SD9, Laramie).

After the vote to reject the conference committee report, Senate President Jim Anderson, SD 2, R-Glenrock told legislators he would not appoint a second conference committee to attempt to rework the bill. That decision killed the bill and ended weeks of emotional and sometimes heated debate.

The failure of the bill means that Wyoming’s courts are likely next to speak on the matter. A lesbian couple from Lusk has asked to the Wyoming Supreme Court to recognize their right to turn to state courts to hear their petition for divorce since they were legally married in Canada.

Here’s the Senate vote on the Joint conference committee version of the bill:
Ayes: Senator(s) Anderson, Barnard, Bebout, Cooper, Dockstader, Geis, Hicks, Jennings, Johnson, Meier, Nutting, Perkins, Peterson and Ross.

Nays: Senator(s) Burns, Case, Christensen, Coe, Driskill, Emerich, Esquibel, F., Hastert, Hines, Landen, Martin, Nicholas P, Rothfuss, Schiffer, Scott and Von Flatern.

Ayes 14 Nays 16 Excused 0 Absent 0 Conflicts 0

Here’s the House vote passing the conference committee version:

Ayes: Representative(s) Blikre, Botten, Brechtel, Buchanan, Burkhart, Campbell, Cannady, Davison, Edmonds, Eklund, Gay, Greear, Harshman, Harvey, Hunt, Jaggi, Kroeker, Krone, Lockhart, Loucks, Lubnau, Madden, McKim, Miller, Peasley, Petersen, Quarberg, Semlek, Shepperson, Stubson and Teeters.

Nays: Representative(s) Barbuto, Berger, Blake, Bonner, Brown, Byrd, Childers, Connolly, Craft, Esquibel, K., Freeman, Gingery, Goggles, Greene, Illoway, Kasperik, McOmie, Moniz, Nicholas B, Patton, Petroff, Roscoe, Steward, Throne, Vranish, Wallis, Zwonitzer, Dn. and Zwonitzer, Dv..

Excused: Representative(s) Pederson
Ayes 31 Nays 28 Excused 1 Absent 0 Conflicts 0

Photo: Wyoming Equality's Jeran Artery celebrates defeat of HB 74 with Sen. Cale Case.