Equality State Watch

Royalties on school trust land minerals

2012-01-31T15:58:00.000-08:00

Land Board eyes new policy on flared gas royalties

This week we’ll again talk to the Board of Land Commissioners about getting the royalties the state should on minerals produced from school trust lands.
Once again, the board will rule on several lease extensions that again show the willingness of industry to pay higher royalties on these state-owned minerals. The Board of Land Commissioners meeting starts at 8 a.m. Feb. 2 in Room B63 in the Herschler Building.
The board also will consider a new policy regarding flaring of gas produced from wells on state lands. The Office of State Lands and Investments wants to reduce the amount of time that extractors and flare gas without paying royalties on that production. That proposed policy is the subject of a joint op-ed that the Equality State Policy Center, Wyoming PTA, and Wyoming Education Association have sent to Wyoming’s newspapers.

Here’s the op-ed:

Wyo should take its royalties on natural gas extracted from school trust lands

By Marguerite Herman, Dan Neal, and Ken Decaria

This week the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners can decide to close a large loophole in the collection of royalties on natural gas produced on school trust lands that is simply burned off as a nuisance. Under current policy, millions of cubic feet of gas go up in smoke free of the royalties that are due to the trust and Wyoming school children, who are the beneficiaries.
The proposed policy will be considered for a board vote on Feb. 2. The proposal declares that the state will collect royalties on gas produced from school trust leases beginning 15 days after completion of a well. If producers get permission from the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission or any other body to vent or flare natural gas for a longer period, they must pay royalties unless the Land Board determines that circumstances justify extending the royalty-free flaring, according to the proposed policy.

In addition, the policy provides for extensions of this royalty-free disposition for up to 180 extra days, so producers have time to determine how commercially productive the well is and to make long-term plans for capturing and selling the gas.

The Office of State Lands and Investment would make the final determination of when a well is “completed” and production begins. Producers must maintain records of the volume and composition of flared or vented gas. Royalties will be calculated based on a weighted average sales price received for like gas. Producers won’t get a free pass on royalties just because they have permission from the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to flare.

At stake are millions of royalty dollars the state should be collecting on production from school trust lands, the land that the State of Wyoming is managing for the support of public schools. This is the land that was transferred to Wyoming at statehood in 1890 to be held in trust for schools. Currently, there are 3.2 million of surface acres and 3.9 million acres of subsurface minerals in the trust. They generated revenues of about $300 million to the Common School Income Fund, Permanent Land Fund and Capital Construction Account in fiscal 2011. Most of that is from mineral royalties.

The state has a fiduciary duty to ensure school trust lands make money for the beneficiaries, and that means making sure it captures royalty revenue from gas production, whether that gas is vented or flared or put in a pipeline. As OSLI Director Ryan Lance noted, the state gets one shot at that gas stream and royalty revenue. Once it goes up the flare stack, it’s gone. To let it go without collecting royalties is a clear violation of the fiduciary duty.

Certainly the 180-day extension is a too-generous concession to the industry, especially since the greatest volumes of gas often flow in the first days and weeks of production.

The Equality State Policy Center thinks even the 15-day grace period is inappropriate and contends the Office of State Lands and Investments should be collecting royalties on all production, as the State of Texas does.

As Mike May, senior auditor of Financial Compliance in the Texas General Land Office told the ESPC: “Our leases have language to the effect of ‘anything produced.’ … Disposition of the gas does not matter, whether it goes into a pipe or is flared.”

The Wyoming policy change was first proposed last October. The current form represents a fair amount of discussion and negotiation among Lance’s staff and producers with school trust leases. Meanwhile, flaring has continued. We are particularly concerned about the amount of flaring being done on school trust leases in the development of oil shale wells in the Niobrara formation in southeastern Wyoming.

How much is there? The volume reported to the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission over the past two years from state land wells is about 412 million cubic feet. That reported flaring and venting conservatively is worth about $250,000 in royalties. Production is on the increase, and it’s time to approve a policy that will make sure the royalties that are due are paid.

Marguerite Herman is legislative chair for the Wyoming PTA. Ken Decaria serves the Wyoming Education Association as its governmental affairs director. Dan Neal is executive director of the Equality State Policy Center.

What consumers want in an insurance exchange

2012-01-23T11:11:00.000-08:00

Consumers want purchasing power

A Reality Check from Consumer Advocates: Project Healthcare

Our friends at Consumer Advocates: Project Healthcare offer the following guidelines and resources for consumers tracking the state's development of the insurance exchange required under the Affordable Care Act. The Governor's Office has scheduled a series of townhall meetings across the state to take comment on the exchange concept and on healthcare issues generally.
Meetings are set in three towns this week, including Gillette, Evansville, and Cheyenne. All meetings start at 6 p.m. and end at 8 p.m.

Jan. 23 in Gillette at the Gillette College Presidential Hall.
Jan. 24 in Evansville at the Community Center.
Jan. 25 in Cheyenne at Laramie County Community College's Centennial Room 130

CAPH's assessment on insurance exchanges:

Every dollar in the healthcare system comes from consumers’ pockets whether through premiums, direct payments to providers or income taxes that fund Medicare and Medicaid. But we consumers rarely have enough information to actively influence this sector of the economy.
The new federal healthcare law begins to change that. While some insurance reforms have already been implemented a major change will begin on Jan. 1, 2014, when every state must have a new health insurance marketplace where individuals and small businesses can buy insurance. A well-designed insurance exchange will give us access to the information we need to make discerning choices and that should motivate insurance companies to begin to actively compete for our business and loyalty.
Wyoming must decide whether to build its own exchange, partner with other states or partner with the federal government to operate our exchange, CAPH urges decision-makers to focus on consumers and maximize this opportunity to strengthen benefits and provide important protections for all Wyoming citizens.
Should the state establish its own exchange? CAPH believes the state should avoid putting into place a system designed by insurance companies. Let’s explore a federal /state partnership designed to deliver benefits of the exchange to citizens in a timely way with the ultimate goal of moving operations from the federal to the state level over time.
We support the ‘no wrong door’ approach. This allows people (individuals, families and small businesses) to find insurance no matter their income or where they start their search. A single application will determine eligibility for public programs, calculate subsidies for those making less than 400% of federal poverty level or determine if an individual is exempt from the mandate to buy coverage. Exchanges should create a seamless interface with Medicaid and plan for continuity of care for those individuals moving between private and public insurance as income fluctuates.
Essential benefits should be as robust as possible to protect individuals from being under-insured. Consumers just want insurance to work—to pay for the care we need when we need it and it should protect our assets, so we don’t lose our homes or savings if we get sick or injured. No tricks. No surprises. No gotchas. All insurance products sold in the exchange will provide a standard benefit package that provides comprehensive coverage. Deductibles and co-pays will vary but will be clearly labeled so consumers know exactly what part of healthcare costs are their responsibility. This standardization will make plans easier to compare and provide the security insurance was meant to provide.
Insurance rules must ensure transparency and accountability. Consumers should have access to all information that enables them to weigh the value of their plans such as how much of premiums are actually spent on medical claims vs. overhead, how often rate increases are requested, timeliness of claims payments and how often claims are denied and why. Consumer reviews and experiences should be easily accessible to all purchasers at the point of sale much like consumer reviews at internet travel sites.
Create and enforce strong private insurance rules and guard against adverse selection. The state can make sure the same quality standards apply to all insurance plans, whether in the exchange or not. This guards against the possibility that cheap, low- value plans will draw healthy people outside the exchange. An exchange with only sick people will cause prices to soar and undermine the success of the exchange.
Reserve the right for the exchange to serve as an active purchaser and not just accept all products offered for sale in the exchange. Exchange administrators in Wyoming should be able – if they choose – to negotiate prices on plans that meet quality and value standards. This may be challenging in such a small state, but we should make sure it’s an option. This will help maximize market clout for consumers.
Provide strong consumer advocates and ensure pro-consumer leadership. Many customers will need help navigating the exchange and understanding all the decisions to be made in buying insurance. People designing and operating the Wyoming exchange should continually evaluate consumer satisfaction and use consumer concerns to guide ongoing improvement of the system. Consumers want expert, pro-consumer leadership that can go toe-to-toe with insurers and industry representatives.
Exchanges should help to make healthcare in Wyoming more effective and efficient. Consumers expect to share in the overall goals of health reform: cost savings and improved quality of care.

For more information on health reform and exchanges, check out these websites and articles: Wyoprojecthealthcare.com - Consumers can share their own healthcare stories here
Community Catalyst - Exchanges: Top Ten Priorities for Consumer Advocates
http://www.communitycatalyst.org/doc_store/publications/Exchanges_Top_Ten.pdf

Kaiser Family Foundation --Explaining Healthcare Reform: what are insurance exchanges?
http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7908.pdf

Families USA—Benefits of Exchanges
http://familiesusa2.org/assets/pdfs/health-reform/Benefits-of-Exchanges.pdf
National Academy for State Health Policy—Health Insurance Exchange Basics
http://www.nashp.org/sites/default/files/health.insurance.exchange.basics.pdf

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities—An analysis of state exchange legislationhttp://www.cbpp.org/files/CBPP-Analysis-of-Exchange-Legislation-Establishment-and-Governance.pdf

Wyoming celebrates MLK/Equality Day

2012-01-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

Rez Action sets march, speeches in Riverton
Other events planned in Casper, Cheyenne, and Laramie

State residents will celebrate Martin Luther King Day with in communities across Wyoming including in Riverton where Rez Action, a group working with the Equality State Policy Center, plans a march and speeches by three leaders of the Wind River tribes.

“We invite all those who want to celebrate equality to march with us to honor the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” a news release from the organizers says. “We march in celebration of equality and Dr. King’s vision of ‘that all of us will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.’”

Other events are planned in Laramie and Casper.

Tribal members Micah Lott and Molly Holt are two of the Rez Action members staging Monday’s “Embrace Equality Celebrate Diversity” event in Riverton. Participants will rendezvous at 1 p.m. at City Park for the march to City Hall.

State Rep. Patrick Goggles, the House minority leader who represents HD33, will speak as well as former state representative Scott Ratliff, now an special assistant on Native American issues to U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, Northern Arapaho tribal liaison Gary Collins, and Riverton activist Cody Green.

For information, please contact Micah Lott at 307-851-1344 or micah.lott93@gmail.com. Rez Action members describe the group as an organization of “dedicated activists who fight social injustice, discrimination, and advocate for a healthy environment.”

The Casper NAACP will host the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day March and Rally starting at 11 a.m. at Casper’s City Park at Center and 7th streets. Marchers will walk to the United Methodist Church downtown. Eastern Shoshone Tribal elder Ivan Posey will speak. Members of the Wind River Unity Youth Council will participate as dancers with the Scout River Drum Group. Following a soup lunch at the church, the Unity group will conduct a workshop at 1 p.m.

In Casper, contact Nurieh Glasgow at 234-3428 or Janet de Vries at 268-2446 for more information.

A third march is planned on Jan. 16 in Laramie. Marchers will walk from the Albany County Courthouse to the University of Wyoming Student Union starting at 4 p.m. followed by a supper in the union ballroom. As part of its Martin Luther King Jr./Days of Dialogue, actor Hill Harper will speak at 1 pm. Jan 18 at the Wyoming College of Arts and Sciences auditorium. A full schedule of events is available here.

In Cheyenne, a march is planned at Noon from the old Union Pacific Railroad Depot up Capitol Avenue to the state Capitol. Gov. Matt Mead and Mayor Rick Kaysen will speak along with State Auditor Cynthia Cloud, and State Supt. of Public Instruction Cindy Hill. The march is being organized by the Love and Charity Club. Contact moderator Rita Watson at 307-632-2338 for more information.

Adrenne Vetter, Molly Holt, and L'Dawn Olsen prepare
banners for the "Embrace Equality" march in Riverton

Job quality standards needed in Wyo

2011-12-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

Let’s make good deals, not just give away millions

Economic Development Association pushes back on criticism of state business subsidy programs

Earlier this month, the Equality State Policy Center joined with Good Jobs First to jointly release a report that points out how Wyoming fails to ask for reasonable returns on its business incentives and subsidies aimed at bringing new business to the state. The report ranks Wyoming 49th among the states on job-creation and job-quality standards.

The state’s efforts to diversify the Wyoming economy are well-intentioned and the goal is laudable. But the Good Jobs First (GJF) report shows clearly that the four state programs analyzed can be improved by incorporating specific job creation and job quality standards. Job quality standards include requiring companies to pay middle class wages and to provide health care and other benefits.

Whenever we raise questions about state programs, we expect to get push-back and we did in this case, too. The Wyoming Economic Development Association complained recently but did not address the specific criticism. It claimed that “… all of these programs have job criteria.”

We disagree.

The Good Jobs First report analyzed four state programs:

Data Processing Center – sales/use tax exemption on computing equipment;
Film Industry Financial Incentive;
Sales and Use Tax Exemption for Purchases of Manufacturing Equipment;
Workforce Development Training Fund.

One, the Workforce training program, has a good incentive. It makes more money available to companies that pay the mean county hourly wage. But companies still can qualify for training subsidies even if they’re providing training for low-wage work. The program scored poorly in the GJF report because it is not structured to require training of a certain number of workers.

Still, the ESPC supports worker training so long as the program establishes benchmarks to evaluate its effectiveness and aims it at raising the economic lives of workers by requiring employers who take public funds – subsidies that help their business – to pay living wages and provide good benefits.

The programs that deserve greater scrutiny and that should be modified to include job creation and job quality standards are the tax expenditure programs. Granting certain businesses exemptions to certain taxes gives them a competitive advantage over other enterprises. When the state does this, it should not hesitate to impose job creation and job quality standards. We don’t find any job creation or quality standards in these programs.

Wyoming’s Manufacturing Sales Tax Exemption program is expensive and in at least some cases, has operated directly counter to the goal of the program – creating jobs. In the last three years, nearly $610 million in equipment purchases have been exempted from the tax – both the state sales tax and local option taxes – costing state and local government about $32.3 million.

Most of those purchases were made by the refining industry in Wyoming, which bought equipment to upgrade technology at existing refineries. What did we get for it?

Some will argue that we’ve protected jobs at those refineries. Maybe so, but you have to wonder about the HollyFrontier Refinery in Cheyenne. It has eliminated 40 positions in the last two years, according to news stories based on company-supplied information.

Companies in the manufacturing sector typically offer some of the best pay and benefits found in the economy. Good operators that want to tap public funds to invest in their factories certainly will not balk at job quality and creation standards.

Gov. Mead has asked the Legislature to appropriate another $15 million to attract data processing centers and other high-tech businesses. Now’s the time for legislators to figure out how to help ensure that we reach the goals of bringing more and better jobs to Wyoming. The governor apparently intends to grant these funds to communities to invest in infrastructure preparing local sites for these businesses. Legislators should take the simple step of requiring communities to make job creation and job quality standards part of their incentive packages.

It’s reasonable to demand a fair return on public investment in the private sector.

(Good Jobs First is a national resource center that promotes corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. You can read the GJF press release here.)

Will all state senators have to stand for election following redistricting?

2011-12-12T09:26:00.000-08:00

Rep. John Patton of Sheridan talks during the Joint Corporations
Committee meeting in Room 302 of the Capitol Dec. 6.

Redistricting Wyoming’s Legislature this month again revolved around defining communities of interest, ranging from fairly specific definitions to the open ended claim that “there’s a community of interest wherever you go in Wyoming.”

That generous idea was presented by state Sen. Curt Meier who found himself drawn out of his district by the committee’s proposed redistricting plan. He mounted a spirited argument for his ideas to amend the proposed boundaries to save his seat. Meier’s predicament forced a discussion of how the new boundaries affect sitting legislators, an issue the committee previously had avoided publicly.

It also served to focus attention on the effect of redistricting on sitting senators. Will the boundaries change enough to justify requiring senators who won four-year terms in 2010 to campaign again in 2012?

The Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee met Dec. 5 and 6 to put together a basic plan. It produced one that gives Campbell County five seats in the House. It also adopted new boundaries for House District 22, completely separating it from Teton and Lincoln counties. And it reversed a decision made in October to split Rawlins.

The process of reconfiguring the boundaries of legislative districts is known as “redistricting.” It is constitutionally mandated. The Legislature must redraw legislative district lines in the first budget session following completion of the decennial U.S. Census. Under the principle of “one person, one vote,” those districts must be nearly equal in population to ensure that each voter wields roughly equal power in legislative elections.

Population grew in some areas of the state and declined in others since the 2000 Census. Now legislative district boundaries must change to reflect those shifts. Campbell County saw the largest growth in population in the state in sheer numbers. Sublette County experienced the greatest percentage increase. Goshen and other northeastern counties and counties in the Big Horn Basin either suffered declines in population or saw such low growth that they now hold a lower share of the state’s total number of residents.

Once the committee adopted its plan for 60 House districts, it realigned four Senate districts in eastern Wyoming to accommodate the new boundaries of the House districts. (The Wyoming Legislature “nests” two House districts inside each of the 30 Senate districts.)

The committee still must determine whether it will require all 30 senators to run for election when the new districting plan takes effect in 2012. One of the committee’s co-chairmen, Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, vigorously argued to require only those senators whose terms are up in 2012 to run.

Redistricting aside, all senators serving even-numbered districts must stand for election in 2012. The question is whether the changes that have moved other communities into new Senate districts are significant enough to require all the senators to run. Most of those communities are small. Along with Sen. Meier’s LaGrange, among them are Atlantic City, Dubois, Big Piney and Marbleton, Farson, and Meeteetse.

The committee’s redistricting House and Senate plans are now up on the Legislature’s website. The joint committee will meet again Jan. 19 to consider the written version of the bill that will implement the boundaries agreed to in Cheyenne Dec. 6. Amendments to the plans can be offered at that time.

Final action will take place during the 2012 Legislature.

Wyoming Legislature

2011-12-04T21:19:00.000-08:00

Redistricting options proliferate
County clerks offer second statewide plan; other new options surface for Southwest Wyoming and Laramie County

       Wyoming’s legislative redistricting effort will take the stage again Monday with new plans added to the mix.
Three more plans have been posted on the Legislature's website, including a new plan drawn up by the County Clerks and a new alternative plan for Southwest Wyoming drafted by two senators from the region. Both these new plans would eliminate the gerrymandered district created in 2002 that combined most of Sublette County, northern Lincoln County, and Wilson and in Teton County. Officials from both Sublette and Teton counties dislike that combination and have pleaded with legislators that it be changed.
A third new plan for Laramie County also has been posted on the Legislative Service Office's website.
    The Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee will work tomorrow and Tuesday (Dec. 5 and 6) in Room 302 at the Capitol to finalize its proposal to the Legislature. The redistricting discussion is begins at 11 a.m., according to the committee's agenda.
       Redistricting – the process of periodically redrawing district lines to equalize district populations – takes place every 10 years following the federal census. The 2010 Census revealed considerable growth in the energy boom counties, particularly Campbell and Sublette counties, and in Teton County. Those numbers also found that population had declined in other counties, mostly in northeastern Wyoming and the Big Horn Basin.
       Districts must shift accordingly, though legislators have considerable discretion in doing so.

       House District 22 in western Wyoming
The committee has seen considerable tension around plans to redraw lines for what is now designated House District 22. Growth in Sublette County gives it more than enough residents to form a single House district within its boundaries. But Sublette County was involved in a “gerrymandering” imposed in 2002 when northern and eastern areas of the county, including Pinedale, were combined in a district extending from south Wilson in Teton County through northern Lincoln County, up the Hoback River to Bondurant and down the east side of the county.
Wilson and Pinedale residents have been clear that they don’t share a significant community of interest and want to be separated.
The latest proposal for the region posted on the LSO website again was developed by southwestern Wyoming Sens. Marty Martin, a Democrat, and Stan Cooper, a Republican. It severs Sublette County from Teton County to create the new House District 22. The plan combines Wilson with Afton in a new configuration of House District 21.

Eastern Wyoming
The new plan offered by the county clerks appears to carve a seat out of the eastern border counties and to give Campbell County five representatives (compared to four under the present system). One of those districts is combined with northern Converse County. (Analyst's caveat: The plan appears to do this but this is a cursory comparison with other plans.)

Co-Chairman Pete Illoway, a Cheyenne Republican, told the Associated Press that the committee could meet again in late December or January if does not finalize its work this week.

Redistricting plans enter last phase

2011-12-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

Corporations Committee readies two state plans

       Wyoming’s legislative redistricting effort will take the stage again next week in what could be the last meeting of the committee given the task of drawing new boundaries before the February session.
       Or it might not be the last meeting. But the Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee will work next Monday and Tuesday (Dec. 5 and 6) in Room302 at the Capitol to finalize its proposal to the Legislature.
       Redistricting – the process of periodically redrawing district lines to equalize district populations – takes place every 10 years following the federal census. The 2010 Census revealed considerable growth in the energy boom counties, particularly Campbell and Sublette counties, and in Teton County. Those numbers also found that population had declined in other counties, mostly in northeastern Wyoming and the Big Horn Basin.
       Districts must shift accordingly, though legislators have considerable discretion in doing so.
       As it did in 2001, the Legislature’s Management Council handed the job to the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee. In its first big decision, the committee voted in April to maintain the current structure of the Legislature with 60 House seats and 30 Senate seats. It also adopted guiding principles that include respecting county lines as much as possible, keeping districts contiguous and as compact as possible, and recognizing “communities of interest” – though the committee has not specifically defined that term.
       Over the summer, the committee held more than a dozen community meetings around the state. Those meetings largely were attended by sitting legislators, county clerks, and county commissioners. Using a web-based tool made available on the Legislature’s website, various regional plans have been developed redrawing the lines. Most of the state’s county clerks got together and drew up a full plan for the state that had been the only complete plan available. But at its last meeting the committee itself put together those regional proposals, then made a few adjustments of its own. Two working proposals resulted and can be seen on the LSO website.
       The ESPC attended many of the meetings intent on making sure the committee sticks to the principle of one person, one vote, and that it maintains a legislative district in Fremont County created in 2002 which holds a majority of Native Americans. The federal Voting Rights Act protects significant minority populations, in this case Native Americans, by prohibiting dilution of their vote by splitting them up among several districts. The committee has adhered to both principles.

       Gerrymander in western Wyoming
       But there still has been considerable tension. Growth in Sublette County gives it more than enough residents to form a single House district within its boundaries. But Sublette County was involved in a “gerrymandering” imposed in 2002 when northern and eastern areas of the county, including Pinedale, were combined in a district extending from south Wilson in Teton County through northern Lincoln County.
       The Wilson and Pinedale residents have been clear that they don’t share a significant community of interest and want to be separated. One proposal to do just that would have redrawn district lines in a way that left the House District 20 representative outside the district.
       A counter proposal was developed by southwestern Wyoming Sens. Marty Martin, a Democrat, and Stan Cooper, a Republican. It maintains the district combining Pinedale with Wilson. The Corporations committee favored the Martin-Cooper plan when it met in October.
       It appears to be impossible, or nearly so, to divide the population of northwestern Wyoming without splitting counties. The Teton plan that ended the Wilson-Pinedale gerrymander requires maintaining an existing district the combines Dubois and parts of northern Fremont County with Teton County. There’s a relatively strong community of interest argument, however, since both those local economies rely heavily on tourism and recreation.
       The committee heard at a Lander meeting that Dubois wants to be connected to the rest of Fremont County. Subsequently, other legislators say there’s a substantial number of Dubois residents who favor the link to Teton County.
        There’s also a struggle over redrawing lines in northeastern and eastern Wyoming. Campbell County grew enough to add another House seat. Population declined in relation to the rest of the state elsewhere in the region, meaning a seat will likely shift. The question is how this will be done. Will the Legislature allow Campbell County to be relatively self-contained like Albany, Laramie and Natrona counties? Or will the Campbell population be carved away to maintain something closer to the status quo?
       The two committee proposals on the LSO site show distinctly different approaches to resolving these shifts in eastern Wyoming.
       Each of the various plans will make some happy and others angry. Part of the problem is that roughly 70 percent of the Census blocks in Wyoming have no one living in them in them at all. (Redistricting rules allow dividing counties, cities, towns, and precincts but prohibit splitting a Census block.) As a result, a few districts, just as they are now, will be bigger than some eastern states. One district that encompasses a large part of Carbon County will be stretched across Sweetwater County to Farson to bring the district up to the necessary population level. There’s a lot of empty Red Desert between Rawlins and Eden.

       Plenty of action ahead
       The committee could finalize its redistricting bill at the coming meeting or schedule a final meeting prior to the session.
        And the session may bring other proposals. In a budget session, non-budget bills require a two-thirds vote of approval for introduction in either the House or the Senate. But that’s not true of redistricting bills. Any member can bring a proposal to apportion the Legislature and introduce it without a vote. Such bills likely will be referred to the Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee.

School Trust Lands and Gas Flaring

2011-11-10T23:19:00.000-08:00

Trust responsibilities spur state action on industry's gas burning

State Lands Office may impose royalty without sale of natural gas extracted from Trust lands

Flaring of natural gas extracted from new wells on state School Trust lands means the value of that gas and the royalty revenues it would generate to the Common School Fund are lost.

Worries about the losses prompted the Office of State Lands and Investments to propose limiting flaring from wells on its lands to 30 days beyond completion of a well before the company would have to begin paying royalties on gas it burned. Ryan Lance, the director of the Office of State Lands and Investments (OSLI), proposed the changes to the state Board of Land Commissioners last month. But the board postponed a decision and directed Lance to coordinate his regulatory planning with the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

The Equality State Policy Center has been tracking the handling of mineral extraction from School Trust lands and advocating for a higher royalty rate, one more in line with the market value of the minerals. The minerals are public property and the royalty revenues support Wyoming’s public schools. Decisions that affect those revenues, such as allowing flaring, should be made openly to enable the public to understand and evaluate the rationale used to justify them.

A quick primer on School Trust Lands

Marguerite Herman of Cheyenne is the president-elect of the Children’s Land Alliance Supporting Schools (CLASS), an organization that tracks how states manage their trust lands. Wyoming’s trust lands, Herman says, encompass 3.5 million surface acres and 4 million acres of subsurface mineral rights.

“As trustee, not owners, the Land Board is bound by its fiduciary responsibility to make money from the land and to have undivided loyalty to the beneficiaries,” she has written. The trust beneficiaries are the children of the state who attend its public schools.

This graphic from the CLASS website shows income generated for public schools from state land trusts.

Meeting at the OGCC in Casper

Acting as directed, Lance and his assistant director Harold Kemp met with Tom Doll, director of the OGCC. They set up a meeting of members of the commission, and representatives of the oil and gas industry Monday (Nov. 7) to discuss the issues around flaring and figure out some initial steps. (Lance also serves as a member of the OGCC.)

The meeting got the attention of the industry and media. The Wyoming Petroleum Association sent its top staff. Companies represented included Anadarko, BP, Chesapeake, Devon Energy, Double Eagle, Fidelity Exploration and Production Co., Marathon, Noble Oil, and Yates Petroleum. Both WyoFile and the Casper Star-Tribune reported the meeting.

Doll asked attendees to gather around a pair of long tables in the OGCC conference room to lay out their issues. He passed out a sheet that noted the state now allows companies to flare a total of 6.96 million cubic feet of gas per day. Of that total, Doll noted, 1.77 million cubic per day comes from state lands. He pointed out that North Dakota, where production is booming in the Williston basin, presently allows flaring of 207 million cubic feet of gas per day.

Many issues were raised at the table, including a fundamental question about how to define a well completion, especially in the active play in southeastern Wyoming where horizontal wells may be “fracked” several times to stimulate production. Bruce Hinchey of PAW said there are other variables, particularly testing, that add to the completion time. Some company representatives said that wells producing oil may generate enough value to justify flaring the gas.

That prompted Lance to point out that the Board of Land Commissioners has a fiduciary responsibility to the School Trust. The Trust does not “get another shot at this gas stream. I don’t want completion to go on forever,” he said.

The Trust can’t have high quality gas going to the flare “whether you can sell it or not,” Lance said. If the state continues to allow burning without assessing its royalties, Lance argued, producers may not see a shared interest to work together to finance the pipelines necessary to get gas to market.

OGCC obligated to prevent waste

The OGCC’s interest in the flaring is its statutory obligation to prevent waste of the state’s valuable natural resources. One of its high profile actions to prevent waste was taken years ago when it ordered the Exxon plant at LaBarge to end venting of CO2. The company, which had argued it had no place to sell the gas, subsequently developed a market and now supplies carbon dioxide that is used to force more oil out of a number of old Wyoming oil fields, including the famous Salt Creek Field at Midwest.

The commission regulates uncompensated disposition of resources. Commissioner Bruce Williams said that while there may be some question about when a well is completed, “after 15 days of flaring, you’d better have a permit.”

The OGCC wants to put an end to past practices of allowing multiple extensions of flaring permits. Doll said some companies file requests for permission to continue flaring well before the end of the initial period of 15 days the state allows following completion. It has allowed requests for subsequent periods of flaring, but requires companies to report the volumes of gas burned.

“We’re worried about continuing on and continuing on,” Doll said Monday. The OGCC now is “telling people we’re not going to go (and allow additional periods of flaring) that third and fourth time.”

To industry worries that an operator might have to wait weeks for a hearing before the full Board of Land Commissioners, Lance noted his office could seek permission to grant exceptions to allow continued flaring after 15 days until the matter came before the board. If the board ultimately determined that charging a royalty was in order, however, the company might be required to pay royalty retroactively, back to the day it got the OSLI exception, he said.

Lance promises a proposal

Before the group adjourned, Lance said he would put together a proposal for review that would include:

Working with OGCC to determine when completion has occurred;
After completion, requiring a company to request permission for royalty-free flaring;
Allowing administrative approval of continued flaring, a decision that would depend on “the functional parameters’ of each individual well;
Retaining a full range of options for OSLI including requiring payment of a full royalty, requiring the state statutory minimum royalty of 5 percent, or allowing royalty-free flaring of gas so long as the operator traps valuable liquids;
Recognizing the Board of Land Commissioners’ full control of its duty to the School Trust.

When the proposal goes to industry, Lance said he wants “an iterative process” that protects the trust asset both short- and long-term.

“We’ll go back, craft something up and we’ll circulate it,” he told the group.

Redistricting tensions build

2011-10-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

Committee ready to begin drawing lines

Redistricting will again have the full attention of the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee today (Oct. 20) and tomorrow as it meets in Casper.

The implications of the re-drawing of legislative district lines have become clearer as more legislators, some in conjunction with their local officials, some not, put together plans for the committee to consider and eventually meld into a statewide plan.

The committee will take care of some other business Thursday morning then is scheduled to take up redistricting by 3 p.m. Co-chairman Sen. Cale Case said the committee’s anxious to get moving so may take it up earlier in the afternoon.

The committee is meeting at the UW Outreach Building, 951 N. Poplar Street, across from the Casper Planetarium.

The ESPC has tracked the committee as it has held community meetings across the state. As we noted in July following meetings in Rock Springs and Pinedale and later in the Big Horn Basin, the committee hears again and again that people identify strongly with their counties and want to keep the county “as intact as possible.”

That means they want to avoid seeing their county lumped in with people from other counties. It’s also request that the committee cannot deliver on. Wyoming’s population grew over the past decade and not in a consistent manner. Gillette saw a huge increase residents and the gas boom in the Green River Basin led to a near doubling of Sublette County’s population.

Other areas saw population declines.

There are now a dozen plans posted on the Legislature’s website. Most are regional or county plans. They do not mesh, so the committee will have to figure out who makes the best argument for “community of interest” – a term the committee has declined to define.

The County Clerks put up a plan for the entire state. It has been roundly criticized. The most recent was put up in the past few days by Rep. Jeb Steward of Carbon County. Steward has seen proposals that would run his district from the eastern boundary of Carbon County far to the west, taking in a subdivision north of Rock Springs and brining in Farson.

Geographically, it would be the largest House district in the state. Steward’s own plan still might be. It would take in Rock River in Albany County, Alcova in Natrona County, Jeffrey City in Fremont County and still pick up Farson.

The discussions today and Friday should prove quite interesting. The committee will begin deciding which plans and lines to adopt. Although this is the last scheduled meeting of the committee, the chairmen have said previously that it may be necessary to meet again prior to the February budget session.

Revenue Committee eyes tax exemptions

2011-08-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

Better reporting needed on sales tax incentives

The Wyoming Legislature's Joint Revenue Interim Committee met last week in Buffalo. The agenda included wind taxation, taxation of ag lands, and possible adjustments to the formula used to calculate severance taxes owed by coal producers.

But a discussion at the end of the meeting went to the heart of an issue close to the heart of the ESPC: the use of tax exemptions (or tax expenditures) to provide incentives to spur economic development. We’ve argued for years the no one knows if they work and the Legislature tends to ignore evidence that they don’t work.

It’s also worth noting that with no corporate or personal income tax and low property taxes, Wyoming already presents a favorable tax environment for businesses looking for new sites. Businesses should pay their way when they move here and rely upon basic local services such as water, sewer, streets, and public safety.

At the end of Friday’s meeting of the Revenue Committee, Senate Chairman John Hines reminded the committee that its Priority #1 for the interim is "consideration of overall tax policies and tax initiatives which impact state economic development."

Put another way, the committee was directed to analyze tax breaks intended to spur the economy and create jobs. In Wyoming, this generally means giving an industry a sales tax exemption. For example, the sales tax exemption on purchases of manufacturing equipment is intended to encourage more manufacturing in Wyoming. No one knows if it works, but the exemption was extended again last session. The legislature already receives three reports on different exemptions each year, but according to Sen. Cale Case, the reports requested don't give the information needed.

"They're not useful to answer the question," he told the committee.

The reports, he said, don't demonstrate whether the tax exemption influences behavior to a degree that would not occur without the exemption.

Erin Taylor of the Wyoming Taxpayers Association told the committee that her organization has been part of a group, including Dan Noble, director of the Excise Tax Division in the Department of Revenue, and Buck McVeigh, the administrator of the Economic Analysis Division of the Department of Administration and Information, that has met to discuss the needed analysis of the data that has been collected. "Are we getting the bang for our buck?" she asked.

She noted the Wyoming Business Council (WBC) has $125,000 to conduct an analysis. But Case warned about "the fox in the henhouse thing," indicating the WBC has a conflict of interest.

The WBC long has advocated for various exemptions because they consider them necessary tools or “incentives” to attract companies to Wyoming.

Sen. Drew Perkins suggested the state should hire a respected national consultant to do the evaluation.

Dan Noble, head of the Department of Revenue’s Excise Tax Division, said he will contact other states to see what they have done to evaluate similar policies. He said that a recent report he has read notes that "sales tax holidays" (offered by some states prior to the opening of public schools or other reasons) are popular, but no one knows if they work.

He said that in internal consultations the department decided to answer two basic questions about tax exemptions:

What does the exemption cost the state (and local governments, which share in revenues)?
What do we get for it?

Chairman Hines asked Noble and Taylor to present a report at the committee's October meeting or as soon as possible otherwise.

Case jumped in to say, "This is a really important area. The Legislature has not done a good job of providing leadership on this."

The Joint Revenue Interim Committee has a budget of $35,000 for its work prior to February's budget session. Noble said the working group will determine the next steps and tell the committee if it needs more resources to do the work.

Casper forum will analyze Affordable Care Act

2011-08-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Just the Facts Please

By Barb Rea,
ESPC Health Issues Volunteer

As a member of the Wyoming Health Care Commission and now as a Consumer Representative for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, I’ve had the opportunity to hear high level presentations and discussions about healthcare reform from people who have devoted their careers to improving the healthcare system for the rest of us. These folks are mighty happy to that we finally have a law in place that addresses the healthcare system as a whole.

Nearly all agree it is not perfect, but gives us a place to start that did not exist before March 23, 2010, the date Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. We'll take an in-depth look at the ACA

While policy makers have known for decades that health reform was essential to the economic stability of the country it has been a long and difficult battle to get healthcare reform to the front burner. It’s hard to keep it there.

Admittedly, there is a lot of information for busy people and citizen legislators to learn, but it’s not impossible and there is a lot at stake. Sometimes I think Wyoming people and especially their policy-makers assume that we are so different from the rest of the country that what happens in Washington, D.C. won’t really change anything we do here. But in this case, we would be missing an opportunity to fix some Wyoming problems.

I have a friend who was told by the State Employees’ health insurance carrier, Great West, that the back surgery her doctor told her she needs is medically unnecessary. I also remember in the paper last year a couple was protesting in front of Blue Cross Blue Shield because the cancer drug that their doctor said the husband needed to keep him alive wasn’t in their formulary.

In both cases, there is no amount of consumer research that could have changed these stories. I’m sure they were never even given a chance to make a choice about what their insurance covered or didn’t cover. No one knows what kind of illness they may get and no one really knows the details of what their policy covers until they need it.

On the other hand, if providers are getting away with performing unnecessary surgeries or prescribing expensive new medicine that works no better than the previous version, we want to know that.

Our system should be more transparent, we should know that our providers are practicing evidence based medicine that works and that insurance will pay for the care we need. But in these cases, the patients and their families are suffering not only from their disease process but unnecessarily from a broken healthcare system.

Will health reform solve these problems and many others? Not without constant attention.

An educated public can:

help move the discussion from one that polarizes and paralyses to one that solves real problems;
help policy makers remain focused on the ultimate goal of health reform—security for our friends and neighbors in the form of guaranteed access to high quality affordable healthcare.

People shouldn’t have to worry that they will lose their healthcare if they get sick or change jobs. Insurance should work, there shouldn’t be any surprises. It should pay for the right care at the right time and it should protect us from bankruptcy.

September conference offers facts on ACA
Several agencies and organizations have come together as One Health Voice to provide a forum where people can hear directly from policy experts about why we need health reform and learn about what the Affordable Care Act can do to begin to transform our healthcare system.

Please join us on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011 in Casper for a one day symposium about healthcare reform and the Affordable Care Act, the new healthcare law.

T.R Reid, best- selling author of “The Healing of America, A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care, will keynote the event.

Policy experts from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, Consumers Union, the Colorado Center on Law and Policy and from Governor Mead’s office will provide overviews of the law, what role states will play in achieving the results they want and what consumers should expect in a reformed health care system.

The conference is open to everyone.

You can register on line at www.OneHealthVoice.com or contact LRosedahl@pubaffairsco.com.

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One Health Voice includes the Equality State Policy Center and these allies: AARP, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Children’s Action Alliance, Consumer Advocates:Project Healthcare, Department of Family Services-Adult Protection Services, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, CO-WY Chapter, Wyoming Center for Nursing and Healthcare Partnerships, Wyoming Epilepsy Association, Wyoming Health Care Access Network/PhRMA, Wyoming Hospital Association, Wyoming Primary Care Association.

Redistricting effort stirs local worries

2011-07-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

'One person, one vote' standard must drive redistricting of Wyo Legislature

Local plans reflect different definitions of 'community of interest' concept

If "Not in My Back Yard” is the battle-cry of people who occasionally venture into the realm of public land planning, then “Leave Us Alone” or “Keep Our County Whole” are the battle cries heard most often when people consider redistricting the Wyoming Legislature.

Elected officials in Natrona and Albany counties already have submitted plans that would enable them to place all or nearly all their residents in state Senate and House districts lying wholly within their county lines.

Legislators and other public officials in the Big Horn Basin took the idea a step further July 12, when they told the Legislature’s Joint Interim Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee that they can keep their “unique” basin whole – so long as the committee follows their draft plan that would pick off nearly 800 Fremont County residents, who live in the Shoshoni and Lysite voting districts (also known as precincts).

The process of reconfiguring the boundaries of legislative districts is known as “reapportionment” or “redistricting.” The Legislature must redraw legislative district lines in the first budget session following completion of the decennial U.S. Census. Under the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote,” those districts must be nearly equal in population to ensure that each voter wields roughly equal power in legislative elections.

Population growth in some areas of the state and decline in others since the 2000 Census mean legislative district boundaries must change to reflect those shifts. Determining exactly how to change the lines is a political process that in the U.S. traditionally has been used by the party in control of the legislature to solidify the ability of its members to get elected both to Congress and the state Legislature.

But in Wyoming, there is only one Congressional district for the entire state, so there’s no opportunity to gerrymander districts. And in the Legislature, the Republican Party’s huge majorities in both the state House and Senate mean shifting district lines largely will affect GOP members.

The Interim Corporations committee adopted seven principles to guide its redistricting efforts. The key principle, known as the “range of deviation,” aims to abide by the principle of “one person, one vote” by keeping the difference in population of the highest population district in the state and the lowest population district within 10 percent. Other principles include following county boundaries as much as possible, keeping the majority of a county’s population in one district, recognition of significant geographic features, compactness, and combining “communities of interest.”

Many people have seized on the term “community of interest” to justify placing lines here rather than there. Since it started its series of 10 public meetings around the state to hear local concerns and plans for redistricting, the committee has been presented numerous interpretations of the concept.

Some who testified to the committee see “communities of interest” in economic terms. Others see it as rural versus urban, or as achieving balance between intra- and inter-party political interests. Although some local residents may feel strongly about these criteria, none of them are likely to stand up in a court case.

County clerks will draft a plan

When the committee met in Lander on July 13, Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese told the committee that the state’s county clerks will meet in August to draft their own proposal. The clerks hope to minimize the splitting of voting precincts. Freese said those splits can lead to confusion at the polls. A voter could be given a ballot that lists elections the voter cannot legally vote in.

With more splitting of precincts, she said, it becomes more likely a voter will get the wrong ballot “and that is called fraud.”

Challenge the deviation standard?

Big Horn Basin legislators also argued that the committee should consider exempting the Basin from the 10 percent deviation standard because they know more people will move there soon. They said an expected boom in tertiary oil production based upon CO2 injection and development of a new irrigation project will swell the Basin’s population, and that will take care of any problems with districts with too-few residents.

With its endorsement of a 90-member Legislature with 30 seats in the Senate, the committee forced some basic arithmetic: divide the 2010 Census population of Wyoming by 30 to find the ideal population for a Senate district: 18,788 people. With 60 seats in the House, the ideal population for a House district is 9,394. No district can exceed those numbers or fall below them by more than 5 percent. The most populous Senate district cannot have more than 19,727 people residing in it. The least populous House district cannot include fewer than 8,924 people.

The ESPC supports the deviation standard and opposes any exceptions. We will work to ensure that all Wyoming citizens have equal representation.

Members of the committee warned that a lawsuit will assuredly be filed if the standard, established through substantial court precedent, is ignored. The committee voted in April to support the deviation standard. Sen. Cale Case, one of the co-chairmen of the joint committee, warned against exceptions when the committee met in Powell. If the committee granted an exception to the deviation standard in the Big Horn Basin, people in other areas of Wyoming will expect similar treatment, he said.

The ESPC will stand strongly for the “one person, one vote” principle during the redistricting process. We want to make sure that your vote counts as much as your neighbor’s.

Plans posted on LSO website

The Legislative Service Office is making an excellent effort to provide information about redistricting. Proposed plans will be made available on the site if they are sponsored by a legislator. Four plans had been posted by Saturday afternoon (July 16) for Albany, Laramie, Natrona and Teton counties. State Rep. Hans Hunt has roughed out a statewide plan that also is available.

Wyoming needs right return on its oil & gas

2011-06-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

State deserves higher royalty rate option
Public hearing June 10 in Cheyenne

Will state get Wyoming residents get what may be their last shot at pursuing a better deal on state oil and gas leases when the State Land Board considers a proposal to revise the state's standard lease form.

The office announced the meeting a week ago:

"A meeting by and between the Office of State Lands & Investments and the Petroleum
Association of Wyoming and other interested parties will be held Friday, June 10, 2011,
2:00-5:00 p.m. The meeting will convene in the Herschler Building, Room 1699 and is
open to the public. The purpose of the meeting is to review and finalize proposed revisions
to the State of Wyoming’s Oil & Gas Lease Form."

*****
Friday June 10 update
This meeting enables the public to hear and comment during the discussion between PAW and the State Lands Office. Even though the royalty rate adjustment has been dropped from the proposed revisions to the lease form, it makes other changes, including in what can be deducted from the costs of production before the royalty is assessed. Deductions mean the producer pays less to royalty holders - in this case, us, the people who live in Wyoming. This is why the industry is fighting this so hard here, even though other producing states are making changes to assure themselves a fair share of value of the oil and gas extracted. And remember:
Once it's gone, it's gone.
*****

The proposed revisions were offered last year, but were postponed after oil and gas industry leaders opposed a proposed increase in the potential state royalty rate, hiking it from 16.667 percent to 18.75 percent. It's important to note that would be the allowable rate, not a mandated rate.

Then Gov. Dave Freudenthal suggested in November that the proposed increase be postponed until Gov.-elect Matt Mead took office. He also said the four other members of the Board of Land Commissioners opposed proceeding with a vote scheduled last Dec. 9.

Secretary of State Max Maxfield opposed the increase. The Associated Press quoted him saying, "We're competitive within the region and I'm satisfied that we are both being fair to our fiduciary responsibilities and to the minerals industry."

Apparently taking the comments from industry and some of the state's top leaders seriously, the staff of the State Lands Office removed the proposed increase from the proposal. In its analysis prepared for the Board of Land Commissioners' June 2 meeting, the staff wrote:
"Notable in their absence in the lease form revision are the previously offered Pugh Clause and royalty rate increase. After considerable discussion with industry and others, those two (2) items were tabled, despite their potential to enhance returns to the state trust land beneficiaries, in the interest of securing timely Board consideration and support for the other necessary terms that are being moved forward in the current lease revision."

The Equality State Policy Center agrees with the slogan that 1966 gubernatorial candidate Ernest Wilkerson espoused: "Wyoming's Wealth for Wyoming People." Wilkerson's campaign argued for imposing a severance tax and is widely credited for creating the political climate that led to passage of the first Wyoming mineral severance tax in 1970, under the administration of Gov. Stan Hathaway.

State royalties largely go to support the public school system.

When the staff said it responded to concerns expressed by industry, it apparently meant the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. Other private royalty holders, who likewise may be considered part of the oil and gas industry, may have a different point of view. If the state sticks to a royalty rate of 16.667 percent, oil and gas producers can tell private mineral rights holders that there's no reason they should get a higher royalty rate, even if the mineral deposit in question is estimated to be of high value.

Oil and gas is a nonrenewable asset. Wyoming is not saving enough for the future when these resources will be depleted. Big Oil is reporting enormous profits and oil and gas is not becoming less valuable in the long run., The Office of State Lands and Investments should have the authority to negotiate a higher royalty rate when appropriate.

'One person, one vote' means change

2011-05-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

Tensions arise with first proposals for new district lines

Teton County proposal will ripple across southwest Wyo legislative districts

By Dan Neal

A proposal laying out new boundaries for Wyoming House District 22 would include all Teton County residents living west of the Snake River but no one living in Pinedale.
Teton County’s commissioners got together with a consultant using geographic information system maps and drew up the new district as part of a proposal offered to the Legislature’s Joint Interim Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee when the committee met Wednesday in Rock Springs and Pinedale. Those meetings were the first of 10 the committee plans to hold around the state to hear local concerns and proposals about redistricting the Wyoming Legislature.
The process of reconfiguring the boundaries of legislative districts is known as “redistricting.” It is constitutionally mandated. The Legislature must redraw legislative district lines in the first budget session following completion of the decennial U.S. Census. Under the principle of “one person, one vote,” those districts must be nearly equal in population to ensure that each voter wields roughly equal power in legislative elections.
Since population grew in some areas of the state and declined in others since the 2000 Census, legislative district boundaries must change to reflect those shifts. Determining exactly how is a political process traditionally used by the party in control of the legislature to solidify the ability of its members to get elected.
In Wyoming, the Republican Party’s huge majorities in both the state House and Senate mean shifting district lines will affect its own members. There are some places, like Cheyenne, where the party can redraw the lines to include voters more likely to vote Republican in specific Senate or House districts. But in most areas, moving district lines will affect seats held by Republicans.
Those new lines proposed for House District 22 are the first example. They would ripple through the rest of southwestern Wyoming, requiring significant changes in districts in Lincoln, Sweetwater, and Uinta counties.
The Teton County proposal knocks out a sitting legislator, HD20 Rep. Kathy Davison of Kemmerer, whose community would be absorbed into House District 19. Davison’s GOP colleague Rep. Owen Petersen of Mountain View holds the HD19 seat.
Tension over the Jackson-based proposal could be heard in side-conversations in the Pinedale meeting, which was in the Sublette County Library. The HD 22 seat is held by one of the nine Democrats in the 60-seat House, Jim Roscoe of Wilson.
The Teton County officials made the argument that both Sublette and Teton counties witnessed significant growth over the past decade and those changes require dividing the district.
Some Teton County residents believe House District 22, established in the 2001 redistricting process, was created to split the Wilson vote to dilute the power of voters seen as more liberal, particularly on conservation issues. As a result, House District 22 presently includes part of the Wilson area, goes south to cover Alpine and Etna, then extends east and south into Sublette County, taking in Bondurant, Cora Pinedale and Big Piney. Most of the residents in the southern end of the present district, an area booming with natural gas development, are believed to view conservation matters differently than the majority of residents of Teton Valley, the home of two national parks and an economy that thrives on nature-based tourism.
Teton County Commissioner Hank Phibbs said the proposal worked out in Teton County roughly “squared off” the south boundary of HD22 at Star Valley Ranches, extending it east to Daniel and Cora in Sublette County.
Sublette County’s population grew 73% over the decade to 10,247. Under the 2010 Census, the ideal population for a House district is 9,394. To meet “one person one vote” tolerances, Sen. Charles Scott, a Natrona County-based senator on the committee, said no House district can have more than 9,863 residents, or fewer than 8,925.
That means Sublette County cannot be wholly contained within a single district. Two Sublette County officials, County Clerk Mary Lankford, and Commissioner O.G. Wilson, said they want to keep Sublette County “as whole as we can.”
And Bondurant resident Mary Winney, whose husband Bill Winney ran for the HD22 seat in 2010 and lost to Roscoe, said she did not want to be included in a district oriented to Jackson. “I don’t belong in Jackson,” she said. “Bondurant needs to stay with Pinedale.”
Phibbs argued for the proposed new lines by noting that many residents of Alpine, Etna, and Star Valley ranches commute to work in Jackson. That connection means the residents of the HD 22 proposed by the Teton County group share a community of interest. And that means the proposal meets one of the redistricting principles guiding the joint committee’s redistricting work. (You can see the Principles of Interest on the Legislative Service Office website.)
Rep. Keith Gingery, HD23, R-Jackson, offered a fig leaf to those concerned about the Teton County proposal’s ripple effects in districts further south in Lincoln, Uinta, and Sweetwater counties. Gingery (seen at top during the 2011 session) noted it was necessary to “add numbers to HD22” after taking the west bank of the Snake River, so the lines were extended south to pick up Etna and Star Valley ranchers.
“We took House District 16 (represented by GOP Rep. Ruth Ann Petrov) … and shrank it to the town corporate limits of Jackson. We pulled 22 up (from Pinedale),” Gingery said.
“The rest of it south, I hope other people will come up with a better way,” he said, noting he does not like the boundary changes proposed for HD 20. But “the numbers drive it,” he said, noting some Sublette County have to be included in a district that crosses county lines.
Joint Corporations Committee member Rep. Alan Jaggi, HD18, R-Lyman, said people across the state want to see legislative district boundaries follow county lines as much as possible. But that is impossible to do and still meet the district population requirements of the “one person, one vote” principle.
“Rather than say, ‘Keep us whole,’ come up with a plan,” Jaggi said. “Everyone in the state says, ‘leave us alone.’”

For another report on this meeting, see the Jackson Hole Daily.

Medicaid is helpful and should be protected

2011-05-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

Put the bat away

By Barb Rea
ESPC health policy volunteer

Advocates and providers who work with low income seniors and families and individuals with disabilities should be aware of what went on at the Wyoming Legislature’s Join t Labor, Health and Social Services Committee meeting May 9-10in Evanston.
I am concerned about the ongoing attacks on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and the misguided belief that we can reform health care without the aid of a strong federal partner.
On the bright side, new committee members are getting intensive education from experts on health care and health reform.
Other aspects of the committee’s work were not so bright. Committee Co-Chairman Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper, felt the need to add his personal interpretation to almost every piece of information presented. He painted Medicaid as a perennial problem in the state, and assured the committee that the new federal health care law, which he dismissively terms “Obamacare,” will be repealed or at least defunded. He also continues to portray his pet project, Healthy Frontiers, as a viable program which could be used to replace both Medicaid and the benefits offered in the new legislation.
The truth is that Medicaid is an efficient way to provide health care to many low income, elderly, blind and disabled individuals in Wyoming. Like the promise we made to the elderly with Medicare, Medicaid is the promise we made as a nation to provide healthcare to the poor, disabled, blind and elderly. Individuals who qualify for this program are guaranteed the right to comprehensive healthcare.
We learned from the experts testifying at the meeting that the federal taxes we pay in Wyoming are essentially subsidizing low-income care in other states. Wyoming’s Medicaid program has always provided bare minimum services to the fewest people possible under federal law. Other states use the program to leverage more federal dollars into their healthcare systems and provide more health care for people who would otherwise depend on emergency rooms when they are ill or injured.
Our state leadership seems intent on making sure we provide fewer services and use more state money to do it, just to send a message to Washington that we can do this ourselves.
Senator Scott used every opportunity to imply, incorrectly, that Medicaid enrollees tend to overuse the system and are always trying to game the system to get more than their fair share—making Medicaid more expensive than private coverage. At one point he digressed at some length about rules which would hypothetically allow mothers to quit their jobs so their children can qualify for Medicaid. Then, Scott said, the mothers are able to go get their jobs back and their children go right on receiving health care, “and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Scott’s attitude was bolstered by the state’s new Director of the Department of Family Services, Steve Corsi, who made a stunning assertion that 30% to 40% of people who enroll in Medicaid in Wyoming, come dressed like he was (black suit and new haircut) and driving an Escalade, “and there is nothing we can do about it.”
Senator Scott let the committee’s disgust percolate until Wyoming’s Medicaid Director, Teri Green, was able to question the validity of Mr. Corsi’s numbers. Mr. Corsi later apologized for using an inflammatory example and a “guesstimate.”
Later we learned from another presenter, that nationally less than 10% of Medicaid payments are claimed fraudulently, and in Wyoming the figure is less than 6%. Moreover, research tells us most of the fraud by far (80%) is committed by providers (primarily medical-device and pharmaceutical companies). Less than 10% of the fraud is committed by patients. Click here to read Health Insurance Fraud: An Overview
National research verifies that Medicaid is far less expensive than private coverage, but Sen. Scott continues to cite numbers to the contrary, numbers that have never been publicly vetted and do not seem logical to the people who manage Medicaid. (See below for links to this research)
Rather than persistently portraying Medicaid as a problem, the committee should be looking at Medicaid as a key component to stabilizing the entire health care system. It will help ensure that everyone has insurance coverage. Complete coverage, in turn, is part of the solution to stabilizing the market by eliminating the cost shifting that occurs when the uninsured seek and receive emergency care.
Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid eligibility will be simplified and expanded so that it covers all low-income people who earn up to 133% of federal poverty level ($1207/month). The state will be responsible for part of the cost of care for about 6,000 Wyoming individuals who are currently eligible for Medicaid but have not applied. These people are probably not enrolled because they are healthy, so they are not expected to add a huge burden to the state budget. The expansion of the program to finally include all low-income adults will be almost entirely paid for by the federal government (100% till 2017 and dropping to 90% in 2020).
Does it really make sense to opt out so our tax dollars can go to other states?
Don’t we want our poor citizens and blind neighbors to have access to the healthcare they need when they need it?
If Medicaid were privatized, as Senator Scott seems to be advocating, those federal matching dollars would disappear, and the costs would be shifted to state and county budgets or to those who pay premiums for private insurance. We would be paying both federal taxes that don’t come back to Wyoming and higher premiums.
If we want to accept the federal match available under the Affordable Care Act, we will have to guarantee that we will provide a program in Wyoming that will be at least as strong as the Affordable Care Act. We will have to pass a law that provides comprehensive coverage to all our citizens. Would we be able to achieve this with a private insurance industry that has been pushing poor and sick people off their roles systematically for decades? This practice is the reason we had to develop Medicaid and Medicare in the first place. We need those public programs to make our system work, and we need them now more than ever.
If we want our Medicaid program to run more efficiently, we should just ask Tom Forslund, our new, capable Director of the Health Department, to make it so, not try to reinvent the wheel. Medicaid will be a big part of our state budget because it serves an important function for our friends and neighbors who need healthcare and for those who provide healthcare services. We should prepare for the larger numbers it will cover instead of pretending poor people’s healthcare needs can be legislated away.

Links to Medicaid vs. private insurance research
“Trends and Indicators in the Changing Health Care Market Place: Medicaid Payment per Enrollee by Acute and Long-Term Care, 2003 http://www.kff.org/insurance/7031/ti2004-1-15.cfm

“Trends and Indicators in the Changing Health Care Marketplace: National Prescription Drug Expenditures, Percent by Type of Payer, 1994-2004” Kaiser Family Foundation http://www.kff.org/insurance/7031/ti2004-1-16.cfm

“Comparison of Expenditures in Nongroup and Employer-Sponsored Insurance” Kaiser Family Foundation http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm111006oth.cfm

“MEPS Topics: Health Care Costs/Expenditures” Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_stats/MEPS_topics.jsp?topicid=5Z-1

“Comparing Public and Private Health Insurance for Children” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities http://www.cbpp.org/files/5-11-07health.pdf

“Medicaid, Private Health Insurance and the Uninsured” John Holahan, The Urban Institute http://aspe.hhs.gov/medicaid/jan/Holahan.pdf

“Expanding Medicaid a Less Costly Way to cover More Low-Income Uninsured Than Expanding Private Insurance” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=429

“Administrative costs on Health Plans: A systematic review of current studies” Deloitte Center for Health Solutions http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Industries/health-plans/1fdbe665e4e06210VgnVCM200000bb42f00aRCRD.htm

Editor's note: Barb Rea is an ESPC volunteer and represents the organization in the coalition Consumer Advocates: Project Healthcare.

Wyo’s “Healthy Frontiers” pilot program will never replace Medicaid

2011-05-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Gorin
ESPC health policy volunteer

Many Wyoming legislators derisively refer to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the federal health reforms) as “Obamacare.” This would be a humorous addition to the political debate if these same legislators had an alternative proposal, but at the moment the alternative appears to be “No Care.”

Much has been made of Wyoming’s pilot health care reform program, “Healthy Frontiers.” The program was initially funded by the 2010 Legislature, enrolled its first participants at the end of 2010, and received additional funding from the 2011 Legislature to expand to 200 participants.

Currently, Healthy Frontiers has enrolled just under 20 participants from the targeted pool – individuals participating in state job training programs, whose incomes are under 250% of the federal poverty level, and who live in Cheyenne or Casper (where selected medical providers have agreed to begin implementing the program).

Healthy Frontiers is a health care plan. It is important to understand that it is not health insurance. Healthy Frontiers emphasizes primary care and chronic disease management, with the goal of reducing medical costs over time by taking care of conditions before they develop into expensive crises. This logical approach is being implemented in many model programs across the country, and the ESPC has no quarrel with it.

But Healthy Frontiers also requires participants to pay into to a “personal health account” (not a health savings account for tax purposes), based on income. The ESPC has maintained from the beginning that the required contribution is unrealistically high, based on Wyoming’s Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Standard, which shows the incomes needed to support basic household expenses on a county-by-county basis.

The state also contributes to the personal health account as the client meets certain milestones in the program, such as establishing a relationship with a primary care provider and maintaining compliance with treatment regimens.

Further, the ESPC’s analysis shows that although program proponents hold out Healthy Frontiers as a cheaper alternative to Medicaid, it easily could cost the state more if fully implemented.

The rhetoric from some legislators and Governor Matt Mead about Healthy Frontiers is seriously overblown given the current status of the program. With only a handful of participants to date, and zero data on the workability of the financial requirements or on clinical outcomes, it is wildly premature to talk about this extraordinarily modest program as a substitute for anything.

The problem with the program is a microcosm of the larger health care issue. Americans have made a commitment to providing care to everyone, to not let their neighbors die in the street. But we haven’t yet figured out how to pay for that commitment.

The Affordable Care Act is the first step in that direction, trying to get everyone covered with public or private health insurance so they can pay for their care.

Healthy Frontiers clients earn a painfully low income. Since Healthy Frontiers is not health insurance, if its clients need care above and beyond what is provided by the program, the cost of that care will fall – unpaid – on Wyoming’s hospitals and private providers.

By contrast, Medicaid actually is insurance and pays providers for clients’ care. If you were a health care provider in Wyoming, which program would you like to see behind the consumers coming through the door?

Wyoming’s lawmakers need to lay aside political agendas and focus on solutions that will help our residents access quality health care when they need it and keep our state’s hospitals and providers solvent.

Microsoft carries the day with technology committee

2011-05-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Legislature's Select Committee on Legislative Technology and Process voted Wednesday morning to adopt Microsoft's Exchange to handle its email system.

The executive branch recently chose Google but Legislative Service Office staffers believe the Microsoft platform provides more security and better integration with other technology plans, including the use of SharePoint.

In a memo to the committee, the LSO staffer Jamie Schaub made this assessment:

"After the 2011 General Session, we analyzed the extent to which Google could be integrated with SharePoint, because seamless integration with email is critical to provide automated workflows for many legislative processes as part of the new system. We determined that there are many features within SharePoint that we will not be able to fully utilize if we choose Google. We also believe we would add risk and uncertainty to our SharePoint project by trying to integrate a non-Microsoft solution for our email environment. Finally, there are several executive branch policies in place that could limit the use of legislators’ mobile devices if we use the executive branch’s system.

"Based on this analysis, we recommend selecting Microsoft Exchange as the legislative branch’s new email platform. Please let me know if you have any questions. We are very excited about the potential to create more efficient and effective technology support for the legislative branch through these initiatives. "

Sen. Leland Christensen, R-SD17, Alta, questioned the security of Microsoft's Hotmail versus Google. But LSO staffers said several states, including California, decided against using Google because of security problems.

The select committee set its next meeting June 29 to discuss its interim topics, which include
reviewing and recommending rule and process changes to improve the "open and transparent operations of the Legislature."

Thinking about drilling in the Hoback drainage

2011-04-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

It shouldn't always boil down to the buck

Despite the industrialization of the Atlantic Rim, the Green River basin, and the Powder River Basin, I still find it hard to believe that this society will allow any company to go into a place like the Noble Basin and tear it up to produce natural gas.

But it does and we have to fight back. Think of Jim Bridger, Osborne Russell, the Muries, Tom Stroock and other lovers of wild lands spinning in their graves.

Citizens for the Wyoming Range continue to fight to protect this great part of Wyoming. Here's a note they're pushing. I hope others will join them.

Dan Smitherman of Citizens said this in a recent email:

Dear Citizens for the Wyoming Range Supporter,

As part of our campaign in the Upper Hoback, we have consistently highlighted the extraordinary wildlife values in this area and the recreational opportunities that exist for the public. Recently, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership announced a values mapping proposal that is intended to take input from hunters and create a GIS based database that agencies can use in wildlife management decisions.

Representatives from TRCP will be travelling throughout Wyoming during the summer months speaking to hunters and anglers, sporting groups, rod and gun clubs and conservation associations and asking for their input to help identify important hunting and fishing areas statewide. This is an opportunity for you to speak up for the wildlife values in the Upper Hoback.

Even if you do not hunt or fish in the Hoback, please attend one of the TRCP events and provide your input about conserving Wyoming’s important wildlife habitat.

The schedule for the first series of meetings is listed below. Additionally, TRCP contact information and more specifics are posted on the wyomingrange.org website. Here is the direct link:

http://www.wyomingrange.org/assets/files/TRCP%20hunting%20values%20project%201.pdf

TRCP is a wildlife focused conservation group that has supported our efforts to highlight the wildlife issues not adequately addressed by the current DEIS. I feel this is a worthwhile project by itself and will help further our campaign to protect the Upper Hoback.

Hunting values mapping project schedule

Rock Springs – Monday, April 18th at the Holiday Inn (1675 Sunset Drive), 7 pm – 9 pm.

Rawlins – Tuesday, April 19th at the Best Western Cottontree Inn (2221 West Spruce), 7 pm – 9 pm.

Laramie – Wednesday, April 20th at the Hilton Garden Inn (2229 Grand Avenue), 7 pm – 9 pm.

Cheyenne – Thursday, April 21st at the Holiday Inn (204 West Foxfarm Road), 7 pm – 9 pm.

The ESPC in Washington, DC

2011-03-31T04:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-02T18:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-02-28T23:59:00.000-08:00

The conference committee finds “marriage is hard”

We had expected the conference committee on House Bill 74 – Validity of marriage to present a report to the Senate and the House on Friday, saying there would be no compromise over civil unions.

But the conference report was never delivered to House Majority Leader Tom Lubnau. Members of the House conference committee were informed by Rep. Cathy Connolly (D-HD13, Laramie) that the compromise they approved last Thursday failed to include some essential wording changes.

Given the weekend, advocates and opponents alike ramped up their lobbying efforts. Rep. Edmonds lamented to the conference committee that the controversial effort to enable Wyoming to void same-sex marriages made legally in other states and countries “has been foisted on the six of us.”

The conference committee is comprised of Reps. Edmonds, Kendell Kroeker (R-HD35, Casper), and Jim Roscoe (D-HD22, Wilson) and Sens. Floyd Esquibel, (D-SD8, Cheyenne), Larry Hicks (R-SD11, Baggs) and Leslie Nutting (R-SD7, Cheyenne). Rep. Kroeker and Sens. Hicks and Nutting are co-sponsors of the bill.

Rep. Edmonds told the conference committee she decided to abandon her agreement to last week’s compromise, which stripped a House amendment to the bill and also took off a Senate amendment aimed at recognizing same-sex civil unions made in other states. Edmonds said she instead would take the position that the committee should endorse the bill in the form that it passed the House.

Sen. Leslie Nutting said that Edmonds new position “is to say the Senate has no say at all … I see that as a real problem.”

The conference committee went through a series of proposed amendments but each of them failed, leading Sen. Nutting to say, “Marriage is hard.” No doubt a legion of her constituents would agree.

The committee agreed to Sen. Nutting’s request to schedule one last meeting of this conference committee on Tuesday (March 1) at 12:15 p.m. Rep. Kroeker asked that the committee quickly call it quits if no one comes to the meeting with a proposal for a compromise.

If the committee fails to reach a compromise, the leadership of the House and the Senate could appoint a different conference committee to continue the effort to change the bill to make it acceptable to members of both chambers. The leadership also could simply decide not to appoint another conference committee and the measure would fail.

The later course is the ESPC’s preferred outcome.

Public meetings bill fails
The Senate on Monday killed HB 120 – Public meetings on third reading. The measure would have required public boards and commissions to provide 12 hours’ notice of a special meeting, announce the reason for executive sessions, and make audio recordings of executive sessions.

The ESPC supported the bill, which was part of a package of refinements to Wyoming’s Open Meetings and Public Records laws. House Bill 119 – Public records and meetings – court proceedings was killed in the House Judiciary Committee. The Senate voted down HB 121 – Public records in Committee of the whole last week.

Here’s the Feb. 28 vote on HB 120:
Ayes: Senator(s) Case, Christensen, Cooper, Dockstader, Esquibel, F., Hastert, Martin, Meier, Nutting, Perkins, Peterson, Ross, Scott and Von Flatern.
Nays: Senator(s) Anderson, Barnard, Bebout, Burns, Coe, Driskill, Emerich, Geis, Hicks, Hines, Jennings, Johnson, Landen, Nicholas P, Rothfuss and Schiffer.
Ayes 14 Nays 16 Excused 0 Absent 0 Conflicts 0 For a look at all the bills mentioned in this report, please go here.

Photo above shows the conference committee on HB 74 during its meeting Feb. 24.

Time runs out on two bad bills

2011-02-25T20:49:00.000-08:00

Amendment discriminating against GLBT minority expires in House

Repeal of state minimum wage dies on Senate General File

Friday was the last day to hear bills on General File. Bills not brought up for discussion in Committee of the Whole in either chamber by the end of the day die for the year.

We were pleased particularly to see time run out on two measures:

1. SJ5 – Defense of marriage – constitutional amendment. This proposal would have placed a constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot to make same-sex marriages and civil unions illegal in Wyoming.
2. HB 184 – Minimum wage statutes repeal. This bill would have eliminated laws imposing a state minimum wage and requiring wage data reporting of Wyoming businesses.

Many people worked hard to kill the proposed constitutional amendment. In committee testimony earlier this year, opponents of the anti-GLBT legislation worried that Wyoming would be subjected to a long, intense, and ugly campaign if the amendment proposal made it to the ballot. Majority Leader Tom Lubnau indicated earlier this week that supporters did not have the 40 votes needed for House passage (a proposed constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote from both houses).

Opponents of SJ5 drew up a slew of amendments and informed the House leadership they would push all of them to force a long and painful debate. House leaders obviously felt they had better things to do with the time.

One piece of anti-GLBT legislation remains in play. House Bill 74 – Validity of marriage, was approved by both the Senate and the House. The House refused to concur with a Senate amendment intended to give people in same-sex civil unions contracted in other states or countries access to Wyoming courts if the need arose. The amendment enabled the bill to win Senate approval by the narrowest of margins, 16-14.

In a conference committee Thursday, the Senate conferees agreed to drop the amendment. Opponents of the bill hope the change will prove unacceptable to the Senate.

The House likewise could reject the compromise, but that seems less likely. The conference version of the bill voids any existing marriage contracts or civil unions that Wyoming residents made legally in other states or countries, which was the main goal of the majority of representatives who voted for HB 74. However, the Senate also stripped a House amendment that the conference report did not restore, so some House members may switch their votes as a consequence.

If either chamber does not approve the conference committee report, the measure could be referred to a second conference committee, or legislative leaders could simply drop further efforts to achieve a compromise and let the bill die.

The ESPC continues to urge everyone to contact their legislators and urge them to vote NO on the conference committee report to stop this discriminatory legislation.

Public meetings

A bill supported by the ESPC, the Powder River Basin Resource Council, the League of Women Voters and the Wyoming Press Association got through second reading Friday, but only after approval of an amendment to delay implementation for a year.

The bill requires public boards and commissions to give 12 hours notice of a special meeting, to announce the purpose of any executive session and to make audio recordings of executive sessions. The Wyoming Association of Municipalities and the Wyoming County Commissioners Association oppose the bill.

Support for the bill is weak and it still must survive third reading Monday. Please ask your senator to vote for this bill, which establishes some reasonable requirements around the handling of the public’s business outside regularly scheduled meetings and in executive sessions.

A sister bill, HB 121 – Public documents, was killed Thursday when senators, as Sen. Michael Von Flatern said, began to hear things go bump in the night. The senators said it would be unfair to public servants to require a deadline to make requested public documents available. It was a strange debate in which the Senate lost sight of the public’s need for access to information in order to participate in the workings of government.
The Tea Party in Montana

A friend sent this list of bills under consideration in the Montana legislature this year. Several of these ideas were pushed in Wyoming as well this session.

Legalize hunting with hand-thrown spears (Senate Bill 112)
Create fully-armed militia in every town (House Bill 278)
Allow legislators to carry weapons in the Capitol (Senate Bill 279)
Create an 11 person panel with authority to nullify all federal laws (House Bill 382)
Allow guns in schools (House Bill 558)
Eliminate educational requirements for persons seeking job of State Superintendent of Schools (HB 154)
Lift nuclear ban for purpose of building a nuclear reactor in the Flathead Valley (House Bill 326)
Withdraw the United States of America from the United Nations (Senate Joint Resolution 2)
Omit Barack Obama's name from the 2012, ballot because his father was born outside of America (House Bill 205)(This guy was on CNN this week.)
Compulsory marriage counseling for people seeking a divorce (House Bill 438) (Had this one in Wyoming.)
Give sheriffs authority over the federal government in terror investigations (Senate Bill 114) (Similar proposal was floated in the Wyoming Senate Labor Committee.)
Legalize hunting with silencers (House Bill 174)
Lift the prohibition on carrying concealed weapons in bars, churches and banks (House Bill 384)
Eliminate law that requires landlords to install carbon monoxide detectors (House Bill 354)
Require the federal government to prove in court that the National Parks were lawfully acquired. (House Bill 506)
Officially designate the "Code of the West" as the "Code of Montana" (Senate Bill 216)

Photo above shows two House pages responding to a request from Rep. Cathy Connolly of Laramie.

Equality with an asterisk?

2011-02-24T22:55:00.001-08:00

The conference committee offers its “compromise” on equality

The conference committee on House Bill 74 – Validity of marriage will present a report to the Senate and the House on Friday that says there will be no compromise over civil unions.
Same-sex unions, regardless of whether they are legal in their state of origin, will NOT be recognized in Wyoming if the committee’s report is adopted.

The conference committee, which included Reps. Amy Edmonds (R-HD12, Cheyenne), Kendall Kroeker (R-HD 35, Casper) and Jim Roscoe (D-HD22, Wilson) and Sens. Floyd Esquibel, (D-SD8, Cheyenne), Larry Hicks (R-SD11, Baggs) and Leslie Nutting (R-SD7, Cheyenne), voted 4-2 to strip a Senate amendment aimed at recognizing same-sex civil unions made in other states. Roscoe and Esquibel opposed the committee proposal.

"We're just digging ourselves further into a quagmire," Esquibel said to explain his opposition to what he considers a bad bill.

Instead, the conference committee will ask the House and Senate to adopt an amendment that makes clear that Wyoming will recognize any marriage or civil union between two people legally made anywhere so long as those marriages and unions are between one man and one woman.
Here’s the Senate amendment the committee stripped from the bill. It would rest under statute number 20-1-111 Out of state marriages.:

"(c) Parties to a domestic or other legal civil union lawfully entered into in another state, commonwealth, territory, district or possession of the United States or a foreign nation, which are not recognized as a marriage under the laws of Wyoming, shall be entitled to access to the courts of the state for the purposes or resolving disputes that arise out of their domestic or other legal civil union.".

The committee instead proposes this language:

“(c) Parties to a marriage or other legal civil union lawfully entered into in another state, commonwealth, territory, district or possession of the United States or a foreign nation, which is recognized as a valid marriage or other legal civil union under subsections (a) or (b) of this section, shall be entitled access to the courts of the state of Wyoming for the purposes of resolving disputes that arise out of their marriage or other legal civil union.”

Both sections (a) and (b) stipulate that marriage contracts are valid “provided that such marriage contracts are between a male and a female person.”

Neither section refers to civil unions.

Since the Senate passed the bill relying upon the idea that state law would recognize legal civil unions made outside Wyoming, the conference committee recommendation may not win majority support in that chamber.

Please act now
The ESPC urges Wyomingites to write their state senators to vote to reject the conference committee report. The bill clearly discriminates against many people who live in Wyoming who have secured legal marriage contracts or civil unions in other states or countries. Please tell your senator to vote NO against the conference report.

While you’re at it, please contact your state representative and likewise ask them to reject this discriminatory legislation.

Wyoming should live up to its motto as the Equality State.

Participate
Citizens can register their opposition to HB 74 by using the “Online Hotline” or the telephone Hotline – 1-866-966-8683 or, in Cheyenne, 777-8683.

Note on the photo
That's the committee in the photo. From left, Sen. Floyd Esquibel, Rep. Kendall Kroeker, Co-Chairman Rep. Amy Edmonds, Co-Chairman Sen. Larry Hicks, Sen. Leslie Nutting, Rep. Jim Roscoe.

2011-02-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

Conference committee meets Thursday morning on GLBT discrimination

Wyoming’s decision on GLBT rights moves into the final stages Thursday morning when a conference committee will attempt to resolve differences between the House version of a bill voiding gay marriages made in other states and the Senate version of the bill.

The Wyoming House strongly rejected the Senate version of House Bill 74 –Validity of marriage when it voted Tuesday 7-50 to oppose concurring with Senate changes.

The bill will enable Wyoming to declare void same-sex marriages made in other states and countries. The House did not concur because supporters of the bill objected to a Senate amendment that declares the state will recognize civil unions made in other states, including same-sex civil unions.

Opponents likewise voted against concurrence, hoping ultimately to defeat the bill by demonstrating that there’s no final agreement on it.

Regardless of Senate or House amendments, HB 74 will discriminate against same-sex couples who have made valid marriage contracts in other states and countries. The ESPC believes such discrimination is contrary to the general philosophy of the Equality State that “all members of the human race are equal.”

The first conference committee will meet Thursday morning at 8:45 a.m. in Senate Room 1 to attempt to work out a deal. The committee is constrained by legislative rules that require it to work with the amendments made to the bill.

Legislative rules require that each chamber, the House and Senate, appoint three members to the conference committee. At least one member of the conference committee must have voted No on the legislation in dispute.

The House appointed Rep. Amy Edmonds (R-HD12, Cheyenne) and Rep. Kendall Kroeker (R-HD35, Casper), and an opponent, Rep. Jim Roscoe (D-HD22, Wilson) to the conference committee. Kroeker is a sponsor.

The Senate appointed sponsors Sen. Larry Hicks (R-SD11, Baggs) and Sen. Leslie Nutting (R-SD7, Cheyenne) to its committee. (Nutting is depicted in the photo above.)

The Senate leadership also appointed Sen. Floyd Esquibel (D-SD8, Cheyenne) who, like Roscoe, voted against the bill.

Speak out, please
The ESPC urges everyone to contact their legislators and ask them to vote against any proposed conference committee compromises on HB 74. Use email or telephones to record your opposition.
Citizens can register their opposition to HB 74 by using the “Online Hotline” or the telephone Hotline – 1-866-966-8683 or, in Cheyenne, 777-8683.

What’s next?
If the House or the Senate rejects the compromise proposed by the conference committee, both the House and Senate then can put together a second conference committee, know as a “free” committee. It can alter any aspects of the bill in an effort to achieve a consensus that both houses support.

Again, the ESPC opposes any effort to deny recognition of legal marriage contracts made in other states and countries. The state should extend full faith and credit to other states.

Please contact your legislator and tell them you oppose thise disciminatory legislation that will damage Wyoming's reputation and it's tourism industry.

Anti-GLBT bill goes to conference committeee

2011-02-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

Legislature agrees to disclosure on independent expenditures in Wyoming elections
Wyoming voters will have to live with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that allows corporations to spend freely from their treasuries in independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates for election, but these corporations will have to meet some basic disclosure rules under a law given final approval late Tuesday.

T he U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission leaves voters and potential candidates with the prospect of corporate interests pouring money into state and national elections. It doesn’t matter if you believe that the right to free speech was meant for people who breathe and bleed. The corporations are free to buy the biggest megaphone and to purchase the most speech through independent expenditures in elections that affect their corporate interests.

Nevertheless, the state still has the authority to force disclosure of who finances that megaphone and who buys the time. In its decision in January 2010, eight members of the high court supported the idea that organizations financing independent expenditures can be required to disclose where they get their money.

Senate File 3 – Campaign finance – organizations brings Wyoming campaign finance law into compliance with the Citizens United decision by expressly allowing corporations, unions and other organizations to make “independent expenditures” directly from their corporate funds. These expenditures can be made for or against candidates or ballot measures.

Under current Wyoming law, only candidates, political parties, candidate campaign committees, and political action committees (PACs) can spend money in elections. The ESPC believes corporate speech interests have been served by the ability to form a corporate PAC. These are quite different from the corporation spending allowed by the Citizens United decision because a PAC’s money comes from identifiable and publicly reported officers, directors and shareholders of the corporation.

The 2010 Supreme Court decision means that corporations can dip into their vast treasuries, which can include money earned elsewhere on the globe, far from Wyoming. They can use these funds to make campaign expenditures independent of individual candidates’ campaigns. The independent campaigns are prohibited from coordinating their effort with any candidate committee or party.

Because SF 3 originally required only a “paid for” line on advertising that could easily be used to disguise the actual parties behind an independent expenditure campaign, the ESPC pushed for greater disclosure. The Senate approved an amendment that would have required these campaigns to print the names of their top three donors or read those names when the advertising was provided via television, radio or internet.

House members, feeling pressure from the Wyoming Broadcasters Association, stripped that amendment and instead imposed a disclosure requirement similar to those imposed on PACs and individual candidate campaign committees. The amendment requires the independent expenditure campaign to register with the Secretary of State and to report contributions in excess of $1,000 and expenditures exceeding $500.

The Senate accepted the House amendments Tuesday and adopted the amended bill on concurrence 16-13. Some no votes likely represented some senators’ opposition to the idea of opening state and local elections to direct influence from corporations.

Here’s the roll call on concurrence:
Ayes: Senator(s) Anderson, Bebout, Burns, Case, Christensen, Coe, Cooper, Driskill, Geis, Hicks, Hines, Jennings, Landen, Nutting, Schiffer and Scott.
Nays: Senator(s) Barnard, Dockstader, Esquibel, F., Hastert, Johnson, Martin, Meier, Nicholas P, Perkins, Peterson, Ross, Rothfuss and Von Flatern.
Excused: Senator(s) Emerich

Is it possible HB 74 – Validity of marriage could fail passage?

The Wyoming House Tuesday voted 7-50 to oppose concurring with Senate changes to House Bill 74 –Validity of marriage. Supporters of the bill, which will enable Wyoming to void same-sex marriages made in other states and countries, objected to a Senate amendment that declares the state will recognize civil unions made in other states. Opponents likewise voted against concurrence, hoping ultimately to defeat the bill by demonstrating that there’s no final agreement on it.

A conference committee will now be appointed to attempt to work out the amended changes to the bill. Each chamber will appoint three members to serve on the committee. Rules require that each chamber appoint one member to the conference committee who opposed passage of the bill.

The House appointed two stalwart supporters of the bill, Rep. Amy Edmonds (R-HD12, Cheyenne) and Rep. Kendall Kroeker (R-HD35, Casper), and an opponent, Rep. Jim Roscoe (D-HD22, Wilson) to the conference committee. The Senate is expected to appoint its members to the conference committee Wednesday.

The ESPC’s stand
In any form, HB 74 will discriminate against same-sex couples who have made valid marriage contracts in other states and countries. The ESPC believes such discrimination is contrary to the general philosophy of the Equality State that “all members of the human race are equal.” We urge everyone to contact their legislators and ask them to vote against any proposed conference committee compromises on HB 74.

Interim studies on the agenda

Several House and Senate standing committees met jointly at noon Tuesday to consider possible topics for study during the interim period between the end of the general session and the 2012 budget session. The legislature’s Management Council will meet next week to review and make a final determination on which topics it will authorize for study.
The Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee will study reapportionment – the re-drawing of House and Senate district boundaries to keep those districts as nearly equal in population as possible.

Committee Co-Chairmen Sen. Cale Case and Rep. Pete Illoway announced their plans for a “two-track” process that calls for holding 10 or 11 information-gathering meetings around the state, beginning sometime in April after the committee has new population numbers from the 2010 Census.

All committee members will not be expected to attend all those meetings. But the committee also plans three or four two-day meetings at which it will discuss the reapportionment on one day, then deal with other committee interim topics on the second day.

Rep. John Patton (R-HD29, Sheridan) asked the committee to avoid imposing constraints on the public discussion of the redistricting options. He said that suggestions from the chairmen that the Legislature retain the same number of House and Senate seats (60 and 30 respectively), continue to “nest” two House districts within each Senate district, and to presume that districts will be single-member districts are inappropriate constraints on public discussion.
“It makes it convenient for us,” he said. “Let them (the public) speak first.”

Illoway told Patton and the committee that while a decision to end “nesting” is possible, physical constraints, such as the size of the House and Senate chambers, must be recognized. “It’s very difficult to put more people in this Capitol,” he said. (That's a photo of the Senate chambers above.)

Appointments
New Gov. Matt Mead released his list of proposed appointments to state boards and commissions Tuesday. The Senate has five days to approve or reject Gov. Mead’s chosen appointees.

Participate
Citizens can register their opinions on specific legislation by using the “Online Hotline” or the telephone Hotline – 1-866-966-8683 or, in Cheyenne, 777-8683.

Looking ahead on equality

2011-02-21T19:19:00.000-08:00

Take action – Urge legislators to vote NO on concurrence on HB 74

With House Bill 74 – Validity of marriage through the Senate by the slimmest of third-reading margins, advocates of equality now must turn their attention to concurrence with the House – and there is hope that changes to this legislation mean no one is happy with it and it can be defeated.

The ESPC and its allies in the GLBT and legal communities urge everyone to send an email to the legislator who represents them and others they know or have a relationship with. Urge them to vote No on concurrence.

If the House refuses to concur with the Senate changes to the bill, then a conference committee will be appointed to attempt to work out differences between the Senate and the House. Urge your legislators to vote No on any compromise produced in conference committee, too.

The dispute centers around amendments made to the original bill. The House adopted an amendment that sponsor Sen. Curt Meier (R-SD3, LaGrange) declared was “circular in nature” and would have unintended effects on other legal arrangements that GLBT couples make to protect their personal and property interests. (That is Sen. Meier at right in the photograph above. He is conferring over the engrossed copy of HB 74 with Sen. Phil Nicholas of Laramie.)

At Meier’s urging, the Senate removed the amendment. The senators ultimately attached a new amendment aimed at recognizing civil unions made in other states.

That amendment, proposed by Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-SD1, Devils Tower), is being attacked by anti-GLBT forces. They have launched a weekend email messaging campaign urging members of the House to resist concurrence in order to avoid, as they clearly state in their message, “… succumbing to the Homosexual Agenda.”

“We are asking/pleading with you that you DO NOT concur with the Senate version of HB0074. If the Senate version is allowed, you are allowing Wyoming to start down the ugly and eroding path that Civil Unions will have (and has [sic] had on other states that have allowed this) on not only our generation, but our children and grandchildren,” the advocates of discriminating against GLBT people assert. (Boldface type in original.)

They go on to attack the morality of the many friends and neighbors we have who happen to be homosexuals:

“We ask that you stick to your guns, and continue to uphold Wyoming in the moral fabric that founded this country and state,” the email says. (Boldface type in original.)

This session has resounded with people claiming certain religious views for the “founders” that enables them to provide a narrow idea of the American “moral fabric.”

Do they refer to the founding “moral fabric” that safely stitched slavery into the Constitution and prohibited anyone without property from voting? Do they mean the moral fabric that forbade interracial marriage? What about founder Thomas Jefferson’s sexual relationship with his enslaved housekeeper Sally Hemmings?

These advocates of discrimination against GLBT folk insist on a moral fabric in which they choose the pattern and color that the rest of us must live with or face penalty of law.

At best, they are denying the understanding that scientific observation produced in the 20th century that human sexuality is complex with many variations, not simply a dichotomy separating men from women. The world might be an easier place to navigate if Nature was so definitive. It is not.

Again, the ESPC asks everyone to email legislators and urge them to oppose concurrence in the House – obviously, for difference reasons than the anti-GLBT crowd – and then to oppose any compromises produced in subsequent conference committees in order to kill the bill.

Still looking waaay back: Nullification

The Senate Labor, Health and Social Services Committee provided an opportunity to reach back to the speech that Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis gave when he resigned from the U.S. Senate.

House Bill 35 – Health Care Choice and Protection Act declares that the new federal health care reform law known as the Affordable Care Act is “not authorized by the constitution of the United States and violate its meaning, intent and principles as given by the ratifiers [there are those founders again] … “ and “shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this state; …”

The theory of nullification and interposition, first used by the Jeffersonian Republican party to oppose the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, was fully developed by Sen. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina in the 1820s in opposition to high import duties imposed by the federal government.

The South Carolinians also feared that the greater federal authority asserted to impose the high tariff ultimately could be turned against the institution of slavery.1

When Davis resigned from the U.S. Senate in 1861, he made clear that when nullification fails, secession is the next step. (Editor's note: When Davis mentions "the agent," he means the federal government.)

“Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to apply with the Union, against the agent of the States. It is only to be justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligations, and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other states of the Union for a decision; but when the States themselves and when the people of the States have so acted as to convince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its practical application.”2

Taylor Haynes, a write-in candidate for governor in 2010, supported HB 35 and told the committee the Wyoming legislature has the authority “to protect us” from the federal government. “They run over us,” Haynes said. “They steal from us.”

Tim Summers, lobbyist for AARP, told the committee that some difficult questions would need to be answered if the bill passes. He noted that the ACA provides funding for a state program to inform seniors of their options regarding health insurance. Summers asked if passage of House Bill 35 would mean a state employee would violate the law if he or she gave out such information.

Time ran out on the committee hearing Friday. Chairman Charles Scott (R-SD30, Casper) laid the bill back and said he would discuss with committee members what they want to do next with the bill.

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1 Paul S. Boyer, editor in chief, “The Oxford Companion to United States History” 2001.
2 Jefferson Davis’s Farewell to the U.S. Senate, Jan. 21, 1861; sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/davisexit.html
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Protesting the benefits of bigotry

2011-02-16T23:11:00.001-08:00

Wyomingites stand up for equal rights

Shred marriage licenses in statement of solidarity with Wyoming's gays and lesbians

As the state Senate prepared to open the debate of House Bill 74 - Equality of marriage, Equality State advocates rallied in front of the Capitol under a bright sun and in a brisk Wyoming wind to declare their support for their gay and lesbian neighbors' right to expect equal treatment under the law.

Rodger McDaniel, a former legislator, state official, and local pastor, told the crowd that a local Jewish rabbi recently discussed the human propensity to discriminate against fellow humans in order to lift their own self esteem. Quoting the Biblical story of Moses and Pharoah, the rabbi noted that discrimination is a natural behavior because it makes people feel better about themselves and superior to others.

McDaniel termed this effect "the benefit of bigotry." With the state planning to void same-sex marriage contracts from other states that it now recognizes by passing HB 74, McDaniel and his wife Pat produced their own heterosexual marriage contract that provides them many legal and social benefits. It gives them benefits the state wants to deny same-sex marriages.

As the material symbol of the benefits the state will give heterosexual couples and, by discriminating, deny to same-sex couples, McDaniel and his wife said they would shred their contract.

"We don't intend to quietly accept the benefits of bigotry," he said.

Speaking in front of the statue of Esther Hobart Morris which memorializes Wyoming as the Equality State for being the first government in the world to recognize women's right to vote, McDaniel and other speakers, including state Reps. Joe Barbuto, Stan Blake, Cathy Connolly and Sen. Cale Case urged the crowd to keep up their fight to defeat HB 74.

"We can do this," Case said, though he warned the enthusiastic crowd that a vote to kill the bill was unlikely Wednesday. He predicted the bill can be killed if people work hard to convince wavering senators that Wyoming people want them to honor its constitution that guarantees equal treatment of all.

He was right. The Senate engaged in a lively debate in which Sen. Phil Nicholas challenged proponents to explain what the bill will really do and Sen. Floyd Esquibel asked them to explain how the state benefits by passage of the bill. The bill was approved in a standing vote of 17-12 with the chairman not voting.

The bill will be considered again on second reading today. An amendment to modify the bill's outright ban of civil unions is expected to be offered.

The ESPC opposes HB 74 and urges everyone to ask their senator to vote NO to stop its passage.

Video and still photography courtesy Ron Sniffin.

Protest today on Capitol steps

2011-02-16T08:07:00.000-08:00

Full Senate ready to take up bill voiding same-sex marriage contracts

Majority Leader Tony Ross is ready to bring to the Senate floor the debate to determine whether the state will move to void existing same-sex marriage contracts in Wyoming.

House Bill 74 – Validity of marriage will bring Wyoming under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to ignore valid marriage contracts made in other states and countries if those marriages are not between a man and a woman. The bill also bars same sex civil unions.

Ross told Wyoming Public Radio yesterday that an amendment may be needed to open the possibility of same sex civil unions.

"The question would be should there be an amendment to the bill to at least adjudicate or allow access to our courts so that those who may have a civil union from another state and not force them to go back to another state to have their rights adjudicated," Ross told WNPR,

Opponents of the bill have been working tirelessly to move senators to oppose the bill. They’re focusing on the bill’s essential discrimination against homosexual people and have pointed out that much of the impetus for the bills is coming from fundamentalist churches pushing their religious views on all Wyoming residents.

Here’s an excerpt from an email Wyoming Equality President Joe Corrigan sent to one senator:

HOuse Bill 74 " ... is not about fairness. It gives rights to one group that it denies to another. The groups promoting this bill construe scripture to inflict a narrow view of God on the rest of us. Then they narrow the view even more by not only denying marriage, but also denying civil unions. It is wrong to use scripture to divide God’s people, and it is wrong to use the law to create an unfair playing field. The groups promoting this bill are trying to use the law to practice exclusion, intolerance, and discrimination.

“I have always felt strongly in separation of church and state. If we take a few churches out of this argument, one sees no reason to pass this bill. On the other hand if we insist on keeping churches in the argument, why are we ignoring churches like the Episcopalians, The United Church of Christ, The Unitarian Universalists, and many Lutherans? These churches are the religious communities of this state working to stop this bill?”

A protest has been organized today by Rodger McDaniel, a former agency head under retired Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a pastor, and a former state legislator. Here are the details:

* * * SUPPORT MARRIAGE EQUALITY! * * *
Demonstration by hetero-married couples on the Capitol steps
in Cheyenne -- 1pm, Wednesday, Feb. 16. Bring a copy of your
marriage certificate to burn. ALL ARE INVITED to show
support for basic decency & equality.

For more info: http://blowinginthewyomingwind.blogspot.com/

We hope to see you there.

Public meetings
The Senate Travel Recreation and Wildlife Committee on Tuesday morning approved HB 120 – Public meetings. The bill will require the more than 500 state, local, and special district elected and appointed boards to handle their meetings to assure the public’s ability to track and participate in them as appropriate. The boards must:

Give at least 12 hours notice of any special meeting;
Announce the purpose of all executive sessions;
Make and retain audio recordings of executive sessions.

Holly Dabb, publisher of the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner, told the committee that the Sweetwater County Commission last year conducted more than 60 special meetings giving only 10 minutes notice of their plans to convene. The public simply had no opportunity to participate and observe as significant decisions were made.

The committee approved the bill on a 4-1 vote with only Chairman Bruce Burns (R-SD21, Sheridan) opposed. Sens. Leland Christensen (R-SD17, Alta), Dan Dockstader (R-SD16, Afton), Ogden Driskill (R-SD1, Devils Tower) and Floyd Esquibel (D-SD8, Cheyenne) voted AYE on the bill.

A look at death penalty issues sponsored by ACLU and UW law students

People in southeast Wyoming may want to attend public screening of a documentary film about a death penalty case involving a young woman who aged out of foster care. The film presentation is sponsored by the Wyoming Chapter of the ACLU and the Wyoming Law Students for Equal Justice. Here’s the announcement:

NO TOMORROW, A Documentary by Public Policy Productions
Who: Free showing; open to the public
When: Thursday, February 24, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Where: University of Wyoming Law School, Room 186
Moderated discussion by Tina Kerin, Appellate Counsel for the Wyoming State Public Defender
AND dessert to follow

NO TOMORROW investigates the murder of Risa Bejarano, the principal subject of the film, AGING OUT, about teenagers leaving foster care. NO TOMORROW explores how the film about Risa’s last year of life unexpectedly became the centerpiece of a chilling death penalty trial. The film covers the trial’s most dramatic moments in Judge Lance Ito’s courtroom, including a heated debate over the prosecutor’s use of AGING OUT to persuade the jury to impose the death penalty. While the trial focuses on whether Risa’s murderer deserves to die, several leading death penalty experts address the broader question of whether the state deserves to kill him.

Equality in the Equality State

2011-02-13T20:53:00.000-08:00

House may not bring up anti-equality amendment
Medicaid studies backed by House Labor, Health committee

By Sarah Gorin
ESPC researcher and lobbyist

The House leadership reportedly is considering the option of not bringing up SJ5 - Defense of marriage – constitutional amendment, for debate. SJ 5 proposes amending the Wyoming Constitution to say that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in Wyoming.

A proposed constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote, and apparently proponents do not have close to the 40 votes required to get the measure through the 60-member House. A debate will take hours, hours that will kill other bills waiting to be heard, and could well be futile if the votes are not there.

There are reports that the House leadership also does not want to add to the state’s fame on national television:

YouTube - Rachel Maddow- Wyoming anti-abortion bill advances

The House already has approved HB 74 – Validity of marriage, which recognizes marriage as a contract only between a male person and a female person, and not involving more than two parties. The bill also prohibits recognition of marriages or civil unions contracted in another state, if the relationship does not meet the above criteria.

HB 74 is awaiting debate in the Senate. We encourage readers to contact their Senators. Send a gentle, polite email message outlining your reasons for opposing the bill. The legislature’s Hotline enables you to leave a message asking your senator to vote no on HB 74. Be sure to leave your name and a telephone number for the senator to call you back should he or she be so inclined.

Health care still chronically ill …

ON Friday, the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee heard and approved two bills relating to the Medicaid expansion contemplated by the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Medicaid currently provides health care coverage for people in four categories, all low-income: the aged, blind and disabled; children; pregnant women; and caretaker adults. Under the ACA, Medicaid will be expanded to include everyone with incomes under 133% of the federal poverty level.

Those who already have insurance will be able to keep it. Everyone else with incomes above 133% of poverty will have the opportunity to purchase private health care coverage under state health insurance exchanges, which are supposed to provide transparency for the consumer. The federal government will provide subsidies to help pay premiums to those with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level.

The two bills considered and approved by the committee today look at two different aspects of the Medicaid expansion. SF 50 - Medicaid options study, will examine alternatives to Medicaid – e.g., can it be provided more cheaply in a different format?

SF 102 - Medicaid cost study, will look at the costs of the Medicaid expansion in its current form.

The committee discussion revealed a great deal of misinformation about the ACA, along with a fair amount of hostility. This seems to be spawned, at least in part, by frustration with the current Medicaid program, where costs continue to rise just like other health care costs.

The dense interconnectedness of health care costs will require some sustained attention from legislators. For example, Medicaid is undeniably a substantial source of funding to our state’s health institutions, nursing homes, county hospitals, pharmacies, and private medical providers.

While this is not justification for simply throwing money at all these entities, any significant reduction in Medicaid spending will adversely affect them and consequently the availability of medical care to Wyoming residents.

The Equality State Policy Center is a member of Consumer Advocates: Project Healthcare (CAPH), which is working to educate the public and decision-makers about the ACA and other health care proposals from the consumers’ point of view.

On February 22, CAPH will host an informational meeting for any and all interested parties about the new federal insurance pool for people with pre-existing conditions who have not been able to obtain coverage. Premiums for the Pre-existing Conditions Insurance Pool (PCIP) are significantly less than those for the state’s high-risk pool.

The meeting will be held from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Laramie County Public Library in Cheyenne.

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Elections law

2011-02-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

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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Future wind projects will pay sales tax

2011-02-09T20:24:00.000-08:00

House drives stake through wind taxation bill

A reconsideration vote Wednesday failed to revive HB 191 – Wind power taxation.

The House killed the bill on a tie vote on third reading Tuesday, 29-29. An effort to revive it found a definite majority in opposition when the bill was again killed 27-32.

Opponents again argued the legislation would not provide local governments with the money they need to deal with the social and infrastructure impacts of big wind farm projects.

The ESPC supported defeating the measure, which essentially put the state in the position of financing sales tax for new wind projects (existing projects enjoyed a sales tax exemption). Without HB 191, the law passed by the 2010 Legislature will stay in effect, which imposes a $1/megawatt-hour excise tax three years after the turbine begins generating electricity. Moreover, the sales tax exemption will expire, and the sales tax revenues will help local governments deal with the impacts of wind projects.

Here’s the vote on reconsideration of HB 191 – Wind power taxation:

Ayes: Representative(s) Berger, Blake, Bonner, Buchanan, Burkhart, Byrd, Childers, Eklund, Freeman, Greear, Harvey, Illoway, Kasperik, Krone, Lockhart, Loucks, Lubnau, Nicholas B, Patton, Pederson, Petroff, Stubson, Teeters, Throne, Vranish, Wallis and Zwonitzer, Dn..

Nays: Representative(s) Barbuto, Blikre, Botten, Brechtel, Brown, Campbell, Cannady, Connolly, Craft, Davison, Edmonds, Esquibel, K., Gay, Gingery, Goggles, Greene, Harshman, Hunt, Jaggi, Kroeker, Madden, McKim, McOmie, Miller, Moniz, Peasley, Petersen, Quarberg, Roscoe, Semlek, Steward and Zwonitzer, Dv..
Excused: Representative(s) Shepperson
Ayes 27 Nays 32 Excused 1 Absent 0 Conflicts 0

Campaign finance - changes to disclosure of independent disclosures

SF 3- Campaign finance – organizations cleared the House Committee of the Whole with a new amendment from Rep. John Patton (R-HD29, Sheridan). The House Corporations committee stripped a Senate amendment requiring independent expenditure campaigns to list the names of their top three contributors in print ads and to speak those names in broadcast ads.

The committee instead adopted a disclosure amendment requiring reporting of contributors, similar to the reporting now required of candidate committees and PACs. The bill will be on second reading Thursday.

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Equality in the Equality State

2011-02-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

Opponents fear gay marriage amendment will produce “ugly” media campaign in 2012 elections

With notes on campaign spending and taxing wind

The campaigning around a proposed state constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage in Wyoming will be a media circus that will put intolerable pressure on the state’s gay residents and harm the state’s economy, opponents of the amendment said Tuesday.

The House Judiciary Committee took testimony for about an hour Tuesday morning on SJ 5: Defense of marriage – constitutional amendment, then approved sending it to the House floor on a 6-3 vote.

Gov. Matt Mead joined the debate as well when his legislative liaison, Chris Boswell, presented a proposed amendment to the House Judiciary Committee that would involve placing two amendment propositions on the 2012 ballot. However, Boswell brought only a few copies of the proposal and these were distributed to the committee members, so we all are still in the dark about the exact wording.

Committee Chairman Kermit Brown (R-HD14, Laramie) told Boswell the Governor’s amendment should be brought on the House floor.

Proponents again argued that proposal “simply allows people to vote” on their idea that Wyoming must protect the exclusivity of marriage to one man and one woman. They contend the measure is necessary because gay marriage somehow threatens heterosexual marriage, which serves as a pillar of society, furthers procreation, and provides the optimal environment for children with both the father and mother present.

Proponents discounted assertions that the amendment takes away rights, saying that gay couples can seek other legal solutions to achieve the same protections that marriages provide. That more difficult process is fair, they contend, because homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, not an inherent part of a person’s makeup.

Opponents refuted those arguments and warned that the campaigns to urge votes for and against the amendment will flood the 2012 election with demonizations of homosexuals and others who don’t fit into society’s favored gender roles.

Laramie attorney John D. Rawls predicted that if placed on the ballot in 2012, “there will be convulsions across Wyoming” prompted by campaign advertising placed by people who do not understand the traditional “live and let live” culture of the state, and instead stirs fear and loathing among neighbors.

Joe Corrigan, president of Wyoming Equality, a nonprofit that advocates for gay and lesbian rights, predicted the amendment campaign would deteriorate to the level of what were described as “vile” email messages sent to legislators, reviling some legislators for voting to support equality this session.

Some gay and lesbian people will not be able to withstand the pressure of such a campaign and will not survive it, he said. Instead, he urged legislators to assure the equality of gays and lesbians. “I believe there is room at the table for all of us,” he said.

Rep. Mary Throne (D-HD11, Cheyenne) said she has three young sons, all who would be in their teens in 2012. She said she does not wish to see them subjected to campaign that will spread an ugly tone across the state. “That’s not good for my boys,” she said.

Throne said a 2012 campaign season focused on a gay marriage amendment could harm the state’s economy. Tourists coming to the state would encounter billboards urging them to ‘Stand up against hate’ or to ‘Support family values’ or they would see other messages, none of which would tend to promote the state and the resources that attract tourists.

Rep. Joe Barbuto (D-HD48, Rock Springs) voted against the resolution, asking, “Do we need something in our Constitution that has so much negative effect on one small part of the population?”

The third vote against the proposed amendment was cast by Rep. Matt Greene (R-HD45, Laramie) who said he sees no need for it since state statutes already declare that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Chairman Brown, citing a desire to see the measure debated on the House floor, voted for it, along with Reps. Brechtold, Cannaday, Krone, B. Nicholas and Peasley.

SF 3 – Unlimited corporate spending

As we’ve described in earlier blogs, the Citizens United v. FEC case decided in January 2010 potentially changes the face of Wyoming elections by allowing unlimited independent expenditures directly from corporate treasuries. Check out the Citizens United page on our website for detailed background information.

Wyoming law currently allows only candidates, candidate committees, political parties, and political action committees (PACs) to spend money opposing or supporting candidates or ballot measures. SF 3 changes this law to comply with Citizens United.

The ESPC respectfully disagrees with the Court’s decision holding that previous campaign finance laws restricted corporate free speech. Nonetheless, the court decision is the law of the land, so the ESPC has argued that SF 3 should include effective disclosure requirements so that Wyoming voters can identify the sources of independent expenditures.
The House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee today stripped a Senate amendment requiring independent expenditure campaigns to list the names of their top three contributors in print ads and to speak those names in broadcast ads.

The committee instead unanimously adopted a disclosure amendment requiring reporting of contributors, similar to the reporting now required of candidate committees and PACs.

HB 191 – Taxing Wyoming wind

The House on today killed HB 191 – Wind power taxation on third reading, 29-29. Opponents argued the legislation would not provide local governments with the money they need to deal with the social and infrastructure impacts of big wind farm projects.

The ESPC supported defeating the measure, which essentially put the state in the position of financing sales tax for new wind projects (existing projects enjoyed a sales tax exemption). Without HB 191, the law passed by the 2010 Legislature will stay in effect, which imposes a $1/megawatt-hour excise tax three years after the turbine begins generating electricity. Moreover, the sales tax exemption will expire, and the sales tax revenues will help local governments deal with the impacts of wind projects.

At the end of business today, however, a request for reconsideration of the vote was announced, and this will be held tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if someone changes their vote - or if one of the excused legislators returns to change the House decision. Here's the vote:

Ayes: Representative(s) Berger, Blake, Blikre, Bonner, Buchanan, Burkhart, Byrd, Childers, Craft, Eklund, Freeman, Gay, Greear, Harvey, Hunt, Illoway, Kasperik, Krone, Lockhart, Loucks, Lubnau, Nicholas B, Patton, Peasley, Petroff, Stubson, Throne, Vranish and Zwonitzer, Dn..

Nays: Representative(s) Barbuto, Botten, Brechtel, Brown, Campbell, Cannady, Connolly, Davison, Edmonds, Esquibel, K., Gingery, Goggles, Greene, Harshman, Jaggi, Kroeker, Madden, McKim, McOmie, Miller, Moniz, Petersen, Quarberg, Roscoe, Semlek, Steward, Teeters, Wallis and Zwonitzer, Dv..

Excused: Representative(s) Pederson and Shepperson.

Ayes 29 Nays 29 Excused 2 Absent 0 Conflicts 0

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Extended unemployment benefits? Not in Wyoming

2011-02-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

Out of work? Too bad, pal

House flushes $38 million in federal funds, turns back on Wyoming unemployed

Wyomingites who lost their jobs in the Great Recession were told by a majority of Wyoming House members today to find work. The House rejected House Bill 244 – Unemployment insurance amendments on a 25-34 vote.

The House majority sent this message despite seven straight quarters of decline in new business formation in Wyoming. Moreover, from June 2008 to June 2010, Wyoming lost 15,200 jobs, according to Wyoming Department of Employment statistics.

The defeat of HB 244 means Wyoming will not see close to $38 million in available federal funds circulate through our economy. Instead, workers who fall into poverty when their benefits run out will be forced to turn to programs such as Medicaid and food stamps to take care of their families – programs whose growth disturbs many of the same legislators who voted against HB 244.

The bill would have brought about $24 million in extended unemployment insurance benefits for 13 weeks to workers who exhaust their ordinary unemployment benefits between March 15, 2011 and Jan. 1, 2012. Sponsor Rep. Cathy Connolly (D-HD13, Laramie) said the measure, funded fully by the federal government following Congress’ December decision to again fund extended benefits, would help 7,500 workers survive the recession after losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

Take a look at the arithmetic: $24 million divided by 7,500 workers divided by 13 weeks of extended benefits means the average check for a worker getting these benefits would be less than $250 per week, hardly a gravy train. It’s difficult to provide food and housing for a single person on that income; supporting a family of four would not be possible in Wyoming.

The bill also would have changed state unemployment insurance law to enable the state to tap another $14.2 million in American Restoration and Recovery Act funds. About $5 million of that money would have financed the expansion of the base period used to calculate eligibility for the insurance. More workers would have been eligible.

Another $9.2 million would have been available to pay for benefits to unemployed workers who enrolled in state-approved training programs that would give them the skills needed to move into other occupations where the state has projected jobs will be available in the future.

A legislator who owns a coffee shop admitted she formerly was a critic of people receiving unemployment benefits, but she now gets 100 applicants when she advertises a single position, showing that there are a lot of people out there looking for work.

But the argument that the program is “a hand up, not a hand out” for people who want to work carried no weight.

Instead, the House resounded with tales of fraud and little sympathy for the unemployed, saying that unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to look for work.

Private contractors and construction union lobbyists joined forces to advocate for the bill as a way to address unemployment in the construction sector, which is hovering near 20%, but to no avail.

Here’s the roll call vote in today’s House vote on HB 244. Take a close look:

Ayes: Representative(s) Barbuto, Berger, Blake, Blikre, Botten, Burkhart, Byrd, Campbell, Connolly, Craft, Esquibel, K., Freeman, Goggles, Greear, Greene, Harshman, Krone, McOmie, Patton, Petroff, Roscoe, Steward, Throne, Vranish and Zwonitzer, Dn..

Nays: Representative(s) Bonner, Brechtel, Brown, Buchanan, Cannady, Childers, Davison, Edmonds, Eklund, Gay, Gingery, Harvey, Hunt, Illoway, Jaggi, Kasperik, Kroeker, Lockhart, Loucks, Lubnau, Madden, McKim, Miller, Moniz, Nicholas B, Peasley, Pederson, Petersen, Quarberg, Semlek, Stubson, Teeters, Wallis and Zwonitzer, Dv..

Excused: Representative(s) Shepperson
Ayes 25 Nays 34 Excused 1 Absent 0 Conflicts 0

Saturday roundup

2011-02-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

Labor, industry back changes in unemployment insurance that make re-training an option

Bill taps millions in federal funding to help those seeking work

By Dan Neal and Sarah Gorin

Unemployed Wyoming workers who want training in skills that could open doors to other jobs will get a boost if a bill to extend long-term unemployment benefits becomes law. Both industry and labor support the bill.

Rep. Cathy Connolly (D-HD13, Laramie) sponsored HB 244 – Unemployment insurance amendments.
It will change state statutes to enable Wyoming to take advantage of the extension of long-term unemployment benefits approved by Congress in December. The extension will allow currently unemployed workers to qualify for 13 more weeks of benefits through January 12, 2012. Connolly thinks up to 7,500 unemployed workers could benefit from that extension.

The bill also allows the state to tap $14.2 million in federal funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In order to qualify, the state would change its law to allow unemployed workers in approved training programs to continue to receive their unemployment insurance checks.
It also would change the base period to allow more workers to qualify for unemployment insurance benefits.

Wyoming Contractors Association Executive Director Jonathon Downing testified in favor of the bill, calling it “a hand up, not a hand-out.” The Contractors Association offers training to people to get them into other trades. Union locals also offer training.

The training is intense, however, and unemployed workers in nearly every situation would have to forgo unemployment insurance benefits because they do not have time to look for work. The system can force a worker to choose between the benefits needed to feed and clothe his or her family or the training that could open a door to another job or career.

AFL-CIO Executive Secretary Kim Floyd said the change to allow people to receive benefits while training “is an incredible option.” He noted that while Wyoming’s overall employment rate stands at more than 6.5%, unemployment in the construction trades stands at about 21%. “We’ve got a lot of people sitting on the bench.” (Quick aside: This is one of the reasons that the unions and the contractors association have joined forces to push legislation that could mean more state work for resident contractors who hire resident workers. Most state-funded highway and capital construction contracts have gone to contractors from outside the state, Floyd says.)

Joan Evans, director of the Department of Workforce Services, noted the simple extension of benefits will help people who have not been able to find work. “There are some people in desperate situations right now,” she told the committee.

Evans noted the ARRA funds offer important help to the department because they include $1 million for reprogramming to upgrade state administrative systems to handle changes in the law, such as the change in the base period of work used to calculate benefits. When she noted the state system currently uses COBOL programming, a buzz rippled around the committee room. Downing said later it has been many years since he heard of anyone using COBOL.

Addressing committee member concerns about continuing costs to the state after the ARRA funds are used, Downing said the legislature might have to repeal the changes later. Connolly asked the committee to consider the bill as a “pilot project” that will enable the state to use federal funds to evaluate the value of the changes.

The House Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee amended the bill to delete several pages, including a section that would have allowed payment of benefits when a worker loses a job because his or her spouse’s job requires a change in location. At the urging of Rep. Dan Zwonitzer (R-HD43, Cheyenne) the committee also approved an amendment requiring the department to report on the costs and effects of the changes in by Nov. 15.

“That way we can fix our computer system and see if we want to change the law back,” Zwonitzer said.

House leadership referred the bill to be heard by the House Appropriations Committee Monday. The bill must be heard in the House Committee of the Whole by the end of the day Monday or it dies for the year. If that happens, the state loses the opportunity to tap the ARRA funds. States have until Aug. 22, 2011 to submit their applications to the U.S. Department of Labor to certify that they comply with the specific provisions of the ARRA’s incentive funding program.

“Validity” of Marriage

HB 74 – Validity of marriage was heard by the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Cultural Resources Committee. Opponents argued that the bill violates Equal Protection rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, voids legal contracts, and puts in doubt the status of legally married same-sex couples and their children.

House Majority Floor Leader Tom Lubnau pooh-poohed the criticism of the bill so loudly heard while it made its way through the House. “I don’t see this as a monumental civil rights battle,” he said.

Kiefer Partridge, a UW student and member of the WyWatch Political Action Committee, supported the bill, saying that state law should be biblically sound. According to Partridge, the concept of separation of church and state was meant to protect churches from the state, not to exclude churches from advocating for religiously-derived policy.

That’s a long stretch from the idea that separation of church and state prevents the adherents of one church or religion from using the state to impose their credo on the faithful of another belief or on people who follow no religion.

Tax on Wind Power Whirling Around
HB 191 – Wind power taxation narrowly passed Committee of the Whole, 28-24. Opponents said it takes too long – 20 years – to phase-in the $3 per megawatt hour (MWH) tax on power generated by wind farms already constructed in the state. They also claimed the bill is not ready, since sponsors said they would have to bring major amendments in subsequent readings.

The ESPC supports the existing wind tax structure, which imposes both sales tax and a MWH tax (although the MWH tax could be higher!). HB 191 “finances” sales tax via a higher MWH tax, which places some risk on the state if anticipated wind power development does not actually happen. Moreover, the sloooowwww phase-in of the MWH tax on existing projects is unjustified, as these projects never paid sales tax due to an exemption that expired at the end of 2010.

Data Not Needed

The bill extending an existing sales and use tax exemption for purchases of manufacturing equipment, HB 143 - Manufacturing tax exemption, passed the Senate Revenue Committee 4-1 last Thursday.

As in the House, economic development organizations and manufacturers lined up to say how much they like the tax exemption, and asserted that new taxes generated by development make up for the loss in sales and use tax collections: $53 million and growing since the exemption was enacted six years ago.

The ESPC, which opposed the tax exemption from the beginning and advocated successfully for the first follow-up reporting on a tax exemption, went through this year’s report on the exemption. It shows that the percentage of manufacturing jobs in Wyoming has gone down slightly since the tax exemption began, and that the absolute number of manufacturing jobs went up only slightly, but went down with the recession.

The report also shows while manufacturing wages are higher than in other economic sectors, part-time employees in manufacturing receive fewer benefits than part-time employees in other sectors.

Finally, the report notes that most of the benefit of the tax exemption has gone to a handful of manufacturers, principally the state’s two major refineries, Frontier Refining in Cheyenne and the Sinclair refinery. The ESPC collected data from the Laramie and Carbon county assessors to show that property tax data did not support the assertion that the sales tax exemption was made up for by increases in other tax revenues.

Senator Case asked most of the proponents why manufacturing should get a sales and use tax exemption but not other types of businesses. This question was raised in the ESPC’s testimony as well, a particularly pertinent one given the complete absence of any concrete documentation of the exemption’s benefits.

Chairman John Hines (R-S23, Gillette) and Senators Paul Barnard (R-S15, Evanston), Fred Emerich (R-S5, Cheyenne) and Drew Perkins (S-29, Casper) voted for the bill; Senator Cale Case (R-S25, Lander) cast the dissenting vote.

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Child care and the state

2011-02-03T00:18:00.001-08:00

Wyoming people want basic regulation of child care

State oversight of home child care providers protects children, more than a dozen child care providers and the people who need their services told the House Labor Health and Social Services Committee hearing Wednesday evening.

The witnesses, including child care providers from Cheyenne, Douglas, and Powell, opposed a proposed bill that would have exempted some home child care providers from state certification.

The legislation, House Bill 239 – Child caring facilities-certification, exempted home child care operations from state certification requirements if they do not accept any state subsidies for providing the care. Sponsor Rep. Lorraine Quarberg (R-HD28, Thermpolis) said she introduced the measure after a Big Horn basin family violated state law that says home care providers can not care for more than two unrelated children unless their business is certified by the state.

Quarberg said there are trustworthy people who can provide such care without certification by the state.

But advocates of child care regulation said the state certification and licensing processes assure parents that at least minimal safety rules would be met. Opponents argued that providers who choose to operate unlicensed would not have central registry background checks or criminal history background checks.

Those background checks are performed by the state Department of Family Services. Several witnesses at the hearing noted that most parents do not have access to the tools needed to check the background of a potential care giver for their children. Mike McGrady, a Cheyenne attorney, said he had access to investigatory tools as he considered child care providers. “But I didn’t know what questions to ask,” he said. Home care providers are “still a business,” he said, and it makes sense to require them to meet basic standards.

Committee member Rep. Frank Peasley (R-HD3, Douglas) asked several opponents if there is any statistical proof that regulation has reduced problems surrounding child care.

“Did abuse go down?” he asked. It seems, he said, that “the more we regulate, the more problems we have.”

He noted his wife put him through school by “baby sitting” and she did so before the state licensed care.

When Cheyenne police detective Joe Hickerson said background checks would keep people clearly unsuited because of a record of violence against children out of the child care business, Rep. Peasley asked him, “Do you want the state more involved in parenting?”

“Common sense would tell you,” Hickerson replied, that basic background checks will protect children.

“If people have a loophole to go through,” Hickerson told Peasley, “… they will take advantage of that.”

Other providers noted the ease of going through the full licensing process in Wyoming. Licensing, one noted, is a breeze compared to the challenges and difficulties of caring for children.

In her closing comments, HB 239 sponsor Quarberg said she was pleased to hear that licensing is not difficult for people who want to operate a child care business. She said people should be more trusting of neighbors who want to offer care to children.

“We can do background checks, but we can’t check for violent tendencies,” she said. Once regulations are adopted, she said, “It is difficult to go backwards. It’s difficult to say we’re not all monsters.”

The committee voted to kill the bill 3-6.

Nay votes were cast by Reps. Joe Barbuto (D-HD48, Rock Springs), Rep. Bernadine Craft (D-HD17, Rock Springs), Gerald Gay (R-HD36, Casper), Keith Gingery (R-HD23, Jackson), Matt Greene (R-HD45, Laramie), and Hans Hunt (R-HD2, Newcastle).

Chairman Elaine Harvey (R-HD26, Lovell) joined Reps. David Miller (R-HD55, Riverton) and Peasley in voting YES for the bill.

Taxing the wind power industry

Taxing the wind power industry to assure that the industry pays it way and that counties have the resources needed to deal with the impacts of wind farm industrialization was considered by the House Revenue Committee Wednesday morning and again in the afternoon.

Rep. Tim Stubson (R-HD56, Casper) and Sen. Drew Perkins (R-SD29, Casper) offered a taxing scheme that would permanently exempt wind projects from the sales tax but impose a $3 per mega-watt-hour tax on power generated by wind turbines. As they presented HB 191 – Wind power taxation, the sponsors suggested a major amendment substantially changing the scheme to finance an impact fund as it generates revenues for the state and counties. Their plan , they said, eliminates potential state sales tax revenues now but ultimately generates greater revenues to the state.

That prospect provided little solace for Carbon County Commissioners Terry Weikum and Jerry Paxton. They said the county’s quality of life has been harmed by wind projects there that have been built recently under state laws that exempt those projects from the sales tax. Without the tax, the county does not have the resources needed to deal with damages to roads, demands for more law enforcement, and increased drug problems in rural communities like Medicine Bow, according to Paxton and Weikum.

The commissioners said existing law, which will lift the sales tax exemption on wind farm construction Jan. 1, 2012 and impose a $1 per mwh power generation tax, would provide resources to deal with the expected impacts of projects now on the drawing boards. The projects would be subject to local-option sales taxes. They worry that the Stubson-Perkins proposal may not leave them in as good a position to deal with new wind power construction projects.

The ESPC noted that other energy industries pay property, sales and severance taxes. The wind power industry should pay property, sales and MWH taxes.

The vote:

The committee approved HB191, as amended with regard to distribution of the tax revenues.
Ayes: Chairman Pat Childers (R-H50, Cody); Representatives Greg Blikre (R-H53, Gillette), Patrick Goggles (D-H33, Ethete), Owen Petersen (R-H19, Mountain View), Clarence Vranish (R-H49, Evanston).
Noes: Representatives Rita Campbell (R-H34, Shoshoni), David Miller (R-H55, Riverton), Mark Semlek (R-H1, Moorcroft)
Excused: Rep. Mike Madden (R-H40, Buffalo)

Elsewhere Wednesday

The House Labor Committee also approved a bill that advocates contend will require the Workers’ Compensation Division to use a guide to rating physical impairments that is more fair to injured workers than the guide now used by the division. (House Bill 232 – Workers’ Compensation impairment ratings)

In Committee of the Whole, the House killed HB131 – Tip sharing. Opponents said the bill unfairly required employees to surrender tips to a pool that then could be used by employers to meet the legal requirement to bring other tipped employees up to the federally required minimum wage of $7.25 hour from the tipped minimum wage of $2.13/hr.

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Gay anti-discrimination bill fails

2011-02-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

Apparently it’s the “Equality” part of “Equality State” that many representatives don't understand

By Sarah Gorin and Dan Neal
ESPC lobbyists

Last week, we asked “What part of ‘Equality State’ don’t legislators understand?”
After today’s vote on House Bill 142 - Discrimination, we think it must be the “Equality” part.

HB 142 simply added “sexual orientation or gender identity” to several places in Wyoming statutes that already prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, national identity, religion/religious belief, sex, age, economic status, pregnancy, political affiliation, disability, ethnic background, ancestry, or inability to pay.

This bill provided an opportunity for those voting against recognition of gay marriages to leave that issue behind and go on record as opposing discrimination in such areas as employment, choosing juries, schools, and public accommodations (doesn’t that ring a bell, baby boomers?).

It’s little wonder that stories continue to emerge about students bullying their GLBT peers in schools and cyberspace, when their adult role models are so clearly sending the message that sexual orientation is adequate cause for demoting individuals to second-class status.

Please thank the representatives who voted for HB 142, and question the ones who didn’t.

Ayes: Representatives Barbuto, Blake, Bonner, Brown, Byrd, Campbell, Childers, Connolly, Craft, Esquibel (Ken), Freeman, Gingery, Goggles, Greene, Illoway, Kasperik, McOmie, Petroff, Roscoe, Shepperson, Steward, Throne, Wallis, Zwonitzer (Dan), Zwonitzer (Dave)

Nays: Representatives: Berger, Blikre, Botten, Brechtel, Buchanan, Burkhart, Cannady, Davison, Edmonds, Eklund, Gay, Greear, Harshman, Harvey, Hunt, Jaggi, Kroeker, Krone, Loucks, Lubnau, Madden, McKim, Miller, Moniz, Nicholas (Bob), Patton, Peasley, Petersen, Quarberg, Semlek, Stubson, Teeters, Vranish

Excused: Representative(s): Lockhart, Pedersen

For some funny and pointed observations on this subject, click on the link below to Mary Kettl’s column in the January 30 Casper Star-Tribune.

"The things we conceal and carry" by Mary Kettl

And While We’re Back in Time ….

Remember when southern politicians invoked “nullification” to preserve segregation in the face of federal civil rights laws? We’re back in time again, bringing “nullification” to bear on federal health care reforms.

Tomorrow, SJ 2 and HB 35 will be on final reading in the Senate and House, respectively. SJ 2 proposes to amend the Wyoming Constitution to say that Wyoming residents cannot be compelled to participate in any particular health care system or penalized for refusing to participate.

HB 35 began by criminalizing activity by any public servant to implement the Affordable Care Act, but now has been amended to a political tirade. It offers nothing in the way of health care.

While no one would argue that the Affordable Care Act is a perfect piece of legislation, it at least attempts to find solutions to the critical problems of uncompensated care, massive cost-shifting, cost containment, and the lack of transparency and accountability on the part of insurers.

Its initial implementation already has brought better health care to many Wyomingites, such as the previously uninsured who now can obtain affordable coverage through the federal high-risk pool, for young adults who can be covered on their parents’ policies, and to small businesses which are looking into utilizing the tax credit to purchase coverage for their employees.

The sponsors of these bills have not offered any ideas on how to keep our hospitals and nursing homes afloat or keep medical providers in our communities. Please use the HOTLINE information below to let your legislators know that it’s time to dump the politics and focus on actual health care.

Tipped workers

Two bills heard in committees Monday aimed to make changes in laws regulating pay for tipped workers.

HB131 – Tip sharing allows employers to require tipped employees to contribute to a pool shared by other tipped workers. Federal law limits the sharing to 15% of tips earned above the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour. Advocates say it enables a fairer distribution of tips among all of a businesses tipped workers.

The measure was approved unanimously by the House Minerals, Business & Economic Development Committee after it adopted an amendment that makes plain that the employer cannot be paid from the pool.

Late Friday evening Rep. Cathy Connolly (D-HD13, Laramie) presented HB181 – Wage rates – penalties to the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee as a “small step” needed to make sure that tipped workers, particularly those working in restaurants, are paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour for each hour worked. The bill provided tipped workers an opportunity to request a confidential investigation by the state Department of Employment if they could show that an employer was not paying the “tip offset.”

Tipped workers can be paid a minimum wage of just $2.13 per hour. If they don’t make the equivalent of $5.12 in tips for each hour worked in a week, the employer must make up the difference. Connolly’s bill also provided that if an employer failed to pay the difference, the employee could file a civil action to recover three times the amount due or $100, whichever was greater.

The committee defeated the bill, however, amid concerns from Rep. Keith Gingery (R-HD23, Jackson) that it did not provide for an appeal process for employers. Connolly tried to counter that worry with a promise to bring a floor amendment but the committee voted 4-5 to kill the bill.

League of Women Voters Lobbyist Marguerite Herman said the committee could address all its worries simply by dropping the exemption that allows employers to pay tipped workers a direct wage of just $2.13 per hour.

Herman's proposal is the real solution to the whole problem for tipped workers.Removing the exemption eliminate all the bookkeeping required to make certain a workers wages and tips bring the worker to $7.25 an hour.

But the legislature has refused to consider raising the tipped minimum and that's why Rep. Connolly offered this much smaller step address some of the issues surrounding the system. Many workers fear to complain when they're cheated out of wages, fearing retribution that could cost them their job.

Chairman Elaine Harvey, Rep. Joe Barbuto (D-HD48, Rock Springs), Rep. Bernadine Craft (D-HD17, Rock Springs) and co-sponsor Rep. Matt Greene (R-HD45-Laramie) voted for the bill.

Reps. Gerald Gay (R-HD36, Casper), Gingery, Hans Hunt (R-HD2, Newcastle), David Miller (R-HD55, Riverton) and Frank Peasley (R-HD3, Douglas) voted Nay and killed the bill.

Editor's note: As we post this, the LSO server is busy and we cannot provide the links to these bills. We will update the blog later with those links.

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Discriminating against gays and lesbians

2011-01-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

Gay marriage amendment squeaks through Senate

“The people of Wyoming want to vote on this,” Sen. Curt Meier asserted Thursday as he called for the Senate to endorse his bill putting a proposed constitutional amendment voiding the marriage contracts of same-sex couples living in or traveling through Wyoming.

The amendment, proposed to Article 1, Section 38 of the Wyoming Constitution would state:

“Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in Wyoming. The legislature may define the benefits and obligations of marriage which may be different than the benefits and obligations afforded to all other civil relationships.”

Approval of the resolution, SF5 -Defense of marriage - constitutional amendment, required a two-thirds vote from the Senate, and it got just that, passing on the slimmest margin of 20-10.

Sen. Cale Case (R-SD25, Lander) termed the decision to amend Article 1 of the state constitution the “greatest irony of all” because it is the document’s “Declaration of Rights.” Section 2 of Article 1 states, “Equality of all. In their inherent right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, all members of the human race are equal.” (Bold face type in original)

“You’re going to take this beautiful list and you’re going to deny rights in this same section” of the constitution, Case said.

Sen. Drew Perkins (R-SD29, Casper) countered that voting for the proposed amendment merely gives the citizens of Wyoming the right to vote on the idea. “This isn’t the law,” he said, and noted that opponents did not trust the same neighbors they rely on to sit on juries to address the idea of further limiting the rights of gay and lesbian couples.

“It either passes or it fails,” he said. “It’s not our decision.”

But Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-SD9, Laramie) said those defending their votes as merely giving the public a chance to vote were denying the Senate’s essential role as defined by the people who wrote the state constitution. The founders put in a requirement of a two-thirds vote to place amendments before the voters as a first check to prevent “the opportunity for the majority to overwhelm” the rights of the minority.

He said senators could easily think of many policies that the majority of voters would favor at the expense of various minorities and pass them. A church could be singled out for discrimination. But he noted doing so “… won’t be right and it won’t be equitable.”
He said senators should vote yes or no because they favor the intent of the amendment, not to somehow empower the public at large. “You’re on the hot seat.”

Sen. Meier closed the debate saying, “This is a vote on public policy.”

Here’s how the vote is reported on the bill digest:
Ayes: Senator(s) Anderson, Barnard, Bebout, Coe, Cooper, Dockstader, Driskill, Emerich, Geis, Hicks, Hines, Jennings, Johnson, Landen, Meier, Nutting, Perkins, Peterson, Ross and Scott.

Nays: Senator(s) Burns, Case, Christensen, Esquibel, F., Hastert, Martin, Nicholas P, Rothfuss, Schiffer and Von Flatern.

Ayes 20 Nays 10

The proposed amendment now goes to the House where opponents believe they have a chance of preventing it receiving the 40 votes needed for final passage.

Health litigation fund whacked

The House Appropriations Committee Thursday morning cut the appropriation for a special fund to finance state litigation that proponents say will enable the state to “push back” against the Affordable Care Act, the major health care reform bill passed by Congress last year.

The Joint Interim Labor, Health and Social Services Committee approved the HB 39 - Health litigation fund with a $2 million appropriation. That’s down from the $10 million - $20 million interim Chairmen Sen. Charles Scott (R-SD30, Casper) and now-retired Rep. Jack Landon of Sheridan originally considered necessary, House Labor Chairman Elaine Harvey (R-HD26, Lovell) told the committee.

“We need the ability to fight it. We need the ability to fight back,” Harvey said of the implementation of the new federal law.

Chris Boswell, the new head of the Department of Administration and Information, told the committee the fund would be used to develop the expertise necessary to implement the ACA. “This has to do with where Wyoming wants to take this,” Boswell said of the ACA.

The ESPC has opposed the litigation fund, arguing the money could be put to better use helping to fund the education of the doctors, dentists, and other health care providers the state needs. The bill calls for state involvement in lawsuits against the ACA brought by private citizens under certain circumstances. The ESPC believes state involvement in private lawsuits is poor public policy.

But the discussion that the fund could be used to develop state expertise that might aid in implementation of the act (or in litigating against it) was a new tack by proponents.

The committee decided to cut the appropriation by 75 percent to $500,000. That size of fund is similar to other state funds set up to represent state issues in water disputes and natural resources litigation.

The bill now goes to the House floor.

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Citizens can register their opinions on specific legislation by using the “Online Hotline” or the telephone Hotline – 1-866-966-8683 or, in Cheyenne, 777-8683.

A new campaign finance resource

2011-01-26T22:45:00.000-08:00

ESPC offers analyses of Citizens United v. FEC

Senate ponders resolution to require constitutional instruction

With the legislature nearly certain to pass legislation to bring state statutes into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision allowing corporations to finance independent expenditure campaigns, future Wyoming election campaigns could look and sound much different.
In the case Citizens United v. FEC, the court cleared the way for corporations to engage in independent spending to support or oppose candidates in elections at all levels – from the town council to the U.S. Presidency.

The ESPC laid out its criticism of the court’s decision earlier this month in a debate with the Wyoming Liberty Group at the University of Wyoming College of Law. Preparation for that debate prompted a decision to put together a page on the ESPC web site to present the majority and dissenting opinions of the High Court and offer other analyses from independent sources. It includes a link to a humorous but on-point assessment from comedian Stephen Colbert.

You can access the page under the Projects tab and clicking on Campaign Finance. Or you can click here to go directly to the page.

We hope this page will inform Wyoming citizens about the potential impact on elections of the Supreme Court decision and the need to press for broader disclosure of the corporations or other interests behind any independent expenditure campaign. We’re also taking suggestions for links to other helpful resources.

Be It Resolved
Thursday will be a lively day for considering resolutions if the committees get to all their scheduled bills.

The Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee will consider a resolution and a bill calling for a constitutional amendment requiring that any elected official or other person required by law to take an oath to uphold the U.S. or state constitutions receive no less than three hours of constitutional instruction. Both are sponsored by Sen. Kit Jennings (R-SD28, Casper) and Rep. Bob Brechtel (R-HD38, Casper).

The instruction “shall teach the fundamental principals (sic) of the United States and Wyoming constitutions without interpretation and consistent with the plain meaning of the constitutional language drafted by the founding fathers.”

The idea begs a few questions, not the least of which is how the instruction should handle the amendments passed since the founders left this mortal plane and whether the instructions should include full explication of the U.S. Constitution’s handling of slavery and slaves.

Meanwhile, in the House Judiciary Committee, HJ 3 - Resolution to Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court tackles the mandates flowing from Washington that the sponsors believe violate the 10th Amendment. The resolution calls for an amendment to the 10th Amendment and an amendment specifically limiting the use of the Commerce Clause (Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) to extend federal authority into the states.

Prohibiting gay marriage
Unfortunately, what may be the most serious of these constitutional amendment proposals is SF 5 – Defense of marriage – constitutional amendment. It will be considered on third reading in the Senate Thursday (Jan. 27). This bill would enshrine in the state constitution the idea that gays, lesbians, and transgendered people are second-class citizens who don’t deserve even the option of a civil union. The ESPC believes the idea is unconstitutional because it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause … but what do we know?

We expect a close vote. It is possible the Senate could muster 11 “nay” votes, thus blocking the two-thirds majority required to place a constitutional amendment on the Wyoming election ballot in 2012. Social justice advocates have been working hard to find those 11 senators.

Sexual orientation and anti-discrimination law

2011-01-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

Sexual orientation deserves legal protection

During its first two weeks of the session, much of the legislature’s attention focused on marriage and whether the state should recognize gay and lesbian marriages legally made outside Wyoming. Tuesday morning, Rep. Cathy Connolly shepherded a bill through the House Judiciary Committee that will make it illegal in Wyoming to discriminate against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I consider this bill simple yet profound,” Connolly (D-HD13, Laramie) told the committee. House Bill 142 - Discrimination adds the words “sexual orientation or gender identity in all state laws that have anti-discrimination clauses.

For example, Wyoming statute 19-14-107 creases the veterans’ commission and outlines its composition and terms of commissioners.

“Appointments shall be made without regard to political affiliation, sex, religion or ethnic background,” the statute now reads. Connolly’s bill will insert the words “sexual orientation or gender identify” between the words sex and religion in that statute.

Connolly noted she did not propose adding the anti-discrimination clause anywhere one does not already exist, a decision that gives the measure a Goldilocks sheen. “It’s not too much and it’s not too little. It’s just right.”

She also noted the bill is necessary because gays, lesbians and transgendered people “have been and are the victims of discrimination” and these days often are the primary targets of “vicious bigotry.”

University of Wyoming Provost Myron Allen spoke in favor of the bill. He said the university long ago adopted an anti-discrimination policy that encompasses sexual orientation and political beliefs. The policy is critical to recruitment efforts at UW, he reported. He pointed out of the top 25 institutions of higher learning in the U.S., only one – Notre Dame – does not have a policy protecting sexual orientation. Similarly, of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies, only one does not bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Linda Burt of the Wyoming Chapter of the ACLU said her offices takes many complaints each year from people who believe they lost a job or were denied a promotion because of sexual orientation. Without specific state protection, she said, “Generally, what we can do is nothing.”

The committee approved the bill on a 6-3 vote:
Ayes: Representative(s) Barbuto, Brown, Cannady, Greene, Krone and Throne
Nayes: Representative(s) Brechtel, Nicholas B and Peasley

Political party registration

The Senate Corporations Committee killed a measure aimed at blocking voters from switching parties to vote in primaries. Sen. Kit Jennings (R-SD28, Casper) sponsored SF13 – Change of political party affiliation to stop what he termed meddling in one party’s primary by voters temporarily switching registration. He said some 10,000 people changed registration to vote in the Republican primary last August, when Matt Mead won the GOP nomination by fewer than 800 votes.

“That’s meddling,” he said. “The primary is about parties.”

The committee did not agree with his argument and voted 0-5 to kill the bill.

Open primary - The committee took up freshman Sen. Chris Rothfuss’ proposal to establish an open primary under which a voter in a state primary could request a ballot for any party. He said SF96 – Open primaries particularly would show respect for Independent voters who sometimes feel compelled to register as a Republican or Democrat in order to have choices in the primary.

“It increases the freedom of the voters to choose people we want,” Rothfuss (D-SD9, Laramie) said. He noted that even prominent members of a party, such as the members of the committee would be allowed to take the other party’s ballot in a primary and know that their choice would not become public.

The committee likewise killed Rothfuss’ bill, though on a narrow 3-2 vote. Sens. John Hines (R-SD23, Gillette,) Wayne Johnson (R-SD6, Cheyenne) and Marty Martin (D-SD12, Superior) voted against the bill. Sen. Charles Scott (R-SD30, Casper) and committee Chairman Cale Case (R-SD25, Lander) voted for the bill.

A day at the legislative races

2011-01-24T23:29:00.000-08:00

Arizona copy cat bill fails

Minerals committee refuses to move ALEC-motivated measure

In a session dominated by discriminatory legislation, justice advocates registered a significant victory Monday when the House Minerals Committee refused to put a troubling immigration bill up for discussion.

Members of the House Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee killed a bill modeled after Arizona’s controversial SB1070 by simply refusing even to offer a motion for passage. There was significant Establishment opposition to the bill, House Bill 94 – Illegal Immigration, including from the Wyoming Lodging and Restaurant Lodging Association.

The ESPC and its allies believed the bill would lead to racial profiling, split up families that include documented and undocumented people living in the state, would hamper police, who would have to devote resources to enforcing federal immigration law, and could spawn national protests that would adversely affect Wyoming’s tourism industry.

The bill was modeled closely on Arizona's SB1070. Reports by National Public Radio last fall tied the bill to the American Legislative Exchange Congress (ALEC) and the private prison industry in the U.S.

Chesie Lee, the lobbyist for ESPC-member group the Wyoming Association of Churches celebrated the victory with this message:

“Good News! ... After a lengthy hearing before the House Minerals Committee with many raising significant problems with HB 94 for Wyoming from diverse points of view, no one on the House Minerals Committee was willing to move the bill, so it died in committee being indefinitely postponed following some discussion.
“I believe the voice of the Wyoming Association of Churches on this issue was good and made a difference. … The room was packed with many having to stand in the hallway. Only a couple other than sponsors spoke in favor of the bill, but no one representing any organization spoke for it.”

Lee notes that some students plan a rally for 11:30 am on Thursday at the State Capitol to celebrate.
This is a great victory, especially considering the socially conservative tenor of this legislature. We all winced Monday when House Bill 74 – Validity of Marriage passed the House. The measure makes gay and lesbian marriage illegal in Wyoming, including existing marriages made legally in other states.

Advocates managed to narrow the number of representatives who favored the measure in earlier votes, but in the end fell still needed to swing three more legislators when the House voted 32-27 to pass the bill. (House Minority Leader Patrick Goggles was excused from the vote. Goggles is working his way through some significant family matters.)

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee killed one of three bills aimed at refining Wyoming’s Open Meetings and Public Records laws. The committee amended but approved a bill, House Bill 120 – Public meetings, requiring public entities to inform interested media outlets and others 24 hours in advance of special meetings. Those entities, such as city councils, boards, commissions, and conservation districts, still could schedule emergency meetings without the 24-hour notice when circumstances demand immediate action.

A provision that would have required audio recordings of all executive sessions held by public boards and entities was stripped from the bill via an amendment proposed by Rep. Bob Nicholas (R-HD 8, Cheyenne). Supporters, including the Wyoming Coalition for Open Government, the Wyoming Press Association, the League of Women Voters, and the ESPC hope to see that provision restored.

Reps. Sam Krone (R-HD24, Cody) joined Rep. Nicholas in voting against the measure.

The Judiciary Committee also approved HB 121, which seeks to impose a deadline, initially within three days, to ensure fulfillment of a request for public documents. Opposition from the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and the Wyoming County Commissioners Association led the committee to adopt an amendment aimed at giving a public board or agency more time to respond to complicated requests or requests for voluminous amounts of material.

The proponents had hoped to limit severely the ability of public agencies to charge exorbitant amounts for producing and providing copies of public documents, noting that taxpayers already pay for the initial creation of the documents.

Again, agencies opposing the measure convinced the committee they need the ability to recover costs of obeying state public records law intended to assure public access to government records. The committee stripped out a clause prohibiting charging labor costs associated with producing a public document. They also successfully amended the bill to allow agencies to charge for the costs of redacting information from documents that could jeopardize a police investigation or expose other information that is entitled to protection.

Proponents said such charges represent a “hidden tax” on members of the public.

Meanwhile, the committee killed HB119 – Public records and meetings – court proceedings. Committee member objected to provisions that made challenges of denial of access to meetings and public records the top priority in Wyoming courts. Supporters said the priority designation was essential to ensuring timely access to information essential to the public as it considers public policy decision-making by its elected and appointed leaders.

Quicker hits

Marriage law: The House Labor, Health and Social Service Committee narrowly defeated HB65 - Marital counseling and approved HB39 – Health Litigation Fund. The first bill would have required couples seeking to get married or divorced to get three hours of counseling before a marriage license or a divorce could be obtained.

Suing the feds: The ESPC opposed HB 39, which appropriates $2 million to support litigation to challenge the new federal health care reform law, suggested the funds could be better spent to train doctors, dentists, physicians assistants and/or other providers who deliver care in Wyoming communities that lack practitioners.

Chairman Elaine Harvey (HD26, Lovell) said the funding will support state efforts to challenge what many see as the federal government acting unconstitutionally and usurping states rights. The litigation fund will demonstrate to the federal government that “we’re … prepared to do what we need to do to push back on this legislation.”

Rep. Frank Peasley (HD3, Douglas) reiterated the states rights argument. “Our pushback has more to do with general states rights. If they can do this to us,” he said of the Affordable Care Act, “they can do anything to us.” Peasley conceded Rep. Keith Gingery’s point that potential travel costs laid out in the bill are exorbitant if the state simply intends to file friend-of-the-court briefs as it joins lawsuits conducted by other states against the new law.

Reps. Gerald Gay (HD36, Casper), Matt Greene (R-HD45, Laramie), Hans Hunt (HD2, Newcastle), David Miller (HD55, Riverton) joined Peasley and Harvey in supporting the bill.

Reps. Craft, Barbuto and Gingery opposed the measure, which passed on a 6-3 vote.

Campaign finance: The Senate on Monday defeated on a 15-15 tie vote an effort to strip disclosure amendments made to Senate File 3 – Campaign Finance – organizations. This is the bill that will change state law to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allows corporations to funnel unlimited amounts of money into independent expenditure campaigns to support or oppose candidates for election. The measure ultimately won final passage by the Senate on a 28-2 vote.

The Insurance Industry and the Affordable Care Act:

2011-01-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

What consumers need to know

By Barb Rea
ESPC health issues volunteer

The insurance industry poured $80 million into lobbying what is now known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the nation’s new health care law. The industry succeeded in reaching its main objectives, killing the public option and ensuring the inclusion of an insurance mandate—a requirement that people buy health care—that will bring them millions of new customers.

Many healthcare policy analysts believe that efforts to repeal the ACA will not be successful because the powerful insurance industry wants the provision that will tax people who fail to buy insurance to remain intact.

In exchange for the mandate that will bring the industry tens of millions of new customers, the industry agreed to comply with new rules and regulations. The new rules and regs will profoundly affect the way the companies compete, and will at the same time provide new security for millions of Americans. The industry is now spending millions of our premium dollars to influence the people in charge of writing the new rules and regulations.

Instead of fighting for repeal of the law, our representatives both in Congress and the Wyoming Legislature should be working to ensure Wyoming has a way to enforce compliance with these new consumer protections.

This is especially important in Wyoming, where representatives of the insurance industry are the default experts on all insurance questions. We have very little experience with or expertise in insurance regulation—the state has, for example, no authority to review rates unless it declares a particular insurance market is not competitive.

And the state declined to apply for $1 million in federal grant money that the ACA made available to all states to help them beef up their insurance oversight. Wyoming Blue Cross/Blue Shield currently operates with an excessive surplus, one of the highest in the nation, and continues to file for rate hikes, which our Insurance Commissioner has no authority to deny.

Wendell Potter, a former public relations executive for Cigna, one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S., reveals in his new book, Deadly Spin, how the industry works systematically to increase profits at the expense of consumers and pours millions of dollars into PR campaigns created to spread disinformation.

Mr. Potter resigned after he began to see that his industry was contributing daily to the growing numbers of un- and underinsured. The industry was part of the problem—and its promise to support health reform efforts under President Obama was disingenuous.

He explains the relationship between health care and how the industry works to maintain its profit margin. Currently, insurance companies compete on risk selection-- companies (for-profit and non-profit alike[1]) try, in a variety of ways, to select healthy customers and dump sick ones to avoid having to pay claims.

These are some of the tactics:

denying people coverage or charging them more because of some pre-existing health condition;
excluding or limiting coverage of certain conditions;
“rescinding”— canceling—a policy when a person gets sick;
more subtle tricks like discontinuing coverage of certain medications or changing the amount the customer must pay for them; and
changing the network of providers available to the customer to exclude certain types of specialists —or maybe your specialist.

From the consumer’s perspective these tactics are genuine “gotchas,”and we have come to assume that this is just the way the business works. Few of us anywhere in the nation file complaints. The process is very intimidating, and those who do file are rarely able to overturn the insurance company’s decision.[2]

The new federal healthcare law addresses these problems and establishes new rules to eliminate “gotchas.” The ACA is designed to move the industry from one that competes on risk selection to one that competes on risk management.

Many of these rules have already gone into effect. Insurers, for example, can no longer cancel a policy if a person gets sick, or deny coverage to children with preexisting conditions. [3]

Starting this year, thanks to the ACA, we will be able to see what proportion of our premiums is used to pay for medical care and what proportion goes into marketing, other overhead—and profit. If companies don’t spend 80 to 85% of our premiums on our claims, they will have to pay us a rebate.

If the new law drives insurers who are taking a larger bite out of our premiums out of business, they shouldn’t be missed. That will be a good thing for consumers. These companies now are collecting premiums without paying claims. And insurance customers, under the new law, are guaranteed the right to an external appeal if companies fail to pay as promised.

The law also allows for the establishment of a set of “essential benefits” so all insurance companies have to cover the same set of benefits, making policies easier to compare and spreading the risk of the total cost of health care in our state across as many people as possible.

This is important in Wyoming, because the federal guidelines for establishing these benefits are broadly defined and states will have the authority to make consumer protections stronger if they want to. We could make Wyoming citizens much safer by making these standards as broad as possible. We could guarantee that patients in Wyoming will never be put in a situation where the doctor tells them they need something but their insurance doesn’t cover it.

With the establishment of insurance exchanges in 2014, insurers will have to begin to compete by adding value to their products, like providing great customer service, or patient education, or by offering coverage for popular elective procedures over and above the essential benefit package.

The mandate to buy insurance is the key to spreading the risk. Without a mandate the likelihood is greater that people would only buy insurance when they got sick.

The ACA puts us on the path to near total coverage in several different ways:

Most people in Wyoming will continue to get their health insurance through their employer.
Forty thousand will find coverage through the new insurance exchange where people and small business can shop for insurance. This coverage will be made more affordable with the application of federal subsidies for anyone making less than 400% of Federal Poverty Level (approx. $80,000 for a family of 4).
Thirty thousand will become eligible for Medicaid, a public insurance program, with the federal government picking up most of the tab and at a cost savings to the state, according to a report prepared for the Wyoming Department of Health.

Most of us agree that the system is broken but many do not understand how the federal law can help us create a Wyoming solution. Insurance should pay for what is medically necessary and people should easily be able to predict how much they will have to pay out of pocket for premiums, deductibles and co-pays.

But if we are unwilling to regulate this industry at the state level we should let the federal government do it for us.

Wyoming has made many attempts at state-wide health care reform over the last 25 years but has never had the political will to do all that is necessary. We need the federal framework provided by the ACA to achieve real reform, and we need to be wary of allowing industry representatives to do the job for us.

A Wyoming solution has to be a real solution to the failure of our health care system to meet the health care needs of all our citizens, not perpetuate the practices that got us here.

[1]“…Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming had only one hundred thousand members in 2007, but CEO Timothy Crilly collected a salary of $471,000, or $4.71 per member, the highest per capita rate in the nation.” Potter, Deadly Spin.
[2] Assessing State External Review Programs and the Effect on Pending Federal Patient s Rights Legislation. Pollitz, Lucia, Bangit. Kaiser Family Foundation, May 2002.
[3] This rule hasn’t stopped the industry from gaming the system for children as many plans stopped offering child only policies. “How States Are Making Sure Coverage is Available to Children. Families USA, 2010.

Barb Rea, pictured above, serves as a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Second week ends on low note

2011-01-21T18:46:00.000-08:00

What part of “Equality State” don’t legislators understand?

The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved SJ 5 - Defense of marriage – constitutional amendment. The proposal would amend the Wyoming Constitution as follows: “A marriage between a man and a woman shall be the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”

Testimony on the bill, which opened Wednesday and was continued this morning, was similar to that presented just days ago in the House Education Committee on HB 74 - Validity of Marriages.

HB 74 specifically provides that marriages between more than two parties are void (e.g., polygamy). This topic also came up in today’s discussion of SJ 5, when three senators, Bruce Burns (R-SD21, Sheridan), Larry Hicks (R-SD11, Baggs) and Chairman Drew Perkins (R-SD29, Casper) wondered aloud why opponents of the proposed amendment talked only about same-sex marriages and not polygamy.

Linda Burt, executive director and lobbyist for the Wyoming Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (an ESPC member group), explained that the proposed amendment violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. She said the proposed law restricts the right of two people of the same gender to marry; however, state law does not burden the rights of two people entering marriages involving a man and a woman.

The prohibition against polygamy applies to everyone, regardless of whether a plural marriage is composed of men and women, only women, or only men. Since it is applied evenly, the prohibition against polygamy does not violate the Equal Protection clause, Burt said.

The committee adopted an amendment proposed by Sen. Leland Christensen (R-S17, Alta) who said he hoped to give some latitude when it comes to property owned by a gay or lesbian person.

The bill originally said:

"A marriage between a man and a woman shall be the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state."

The Christensen amendment substitutes the following language:

"Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in Wyoming. Any other relationship shall not be valid or recognized as a marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof by the state or any of its political subdivisions."

The ESPC intends to check with several attorneys to see if the language does provide the latitude Sen. Christensen intended. One attorney consulted in the Capitol said he did not see how, since the language explicitly prohibits any political subdivision, which would include the courts, from acknowledging a homosexual couple's relationship as a legal civil union or other legal construct.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Perkins, Sen. Hicks, and Sen. Christensen voted for SJ 5. Sen. Burns and Floyd Esquibel (D-S8, Cheyenne) voted against it.

More Equality next Monday …

The House Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee will take up HB 94 - Illegal immigration, at 7:30 am. The bill mirrors Arizona’s controversial measure.

Tax exemption, anyone? No data required …

The House Revenue Committee today took up HB 143 - Manufacturing tax exemption. The bill continues a sales and use tax exemption for purchases of manufacturing equipment that was originally enacted in 2004 over opposition from the ESPC.

The exemption was set to sunset at the end of 2010, but was extended for a year by the 2010 Legislature in order to study how the exemption might be changed to better accomplish its original purpose of encouraging the creation of manufacturing jobs.

Although the ESPC was not successful in blocking passage of the exemption in 2004, we successfully advocated for the first annual reporting on the costs of a tax exemption. The 2010 report shows:

manufacturing jobs as a percent of total Wyoming employment has declined since passage of the exemption;
the absolute number of jobs ticked up only slightly and then contracted significantly with the recession;
the benefits offered to full-time employees in the manufacturing sector are comparable to those in other sectors of the Wyoming economy, but the benefits offered to part-time employees are less than in other sectors; and
the exemption primarily has benefited the state’s refineries, which upgraded equipment and claimed the exemption. In 2010, for example, a refiner claimed $128 million in exempt purchases, and $138 million the previous year.

The total lost tax revenue from this exemption is approximately $53 million, or about $10 million a year since it was enacted.

The Wyoming Business Council, Cheyenne LEADS/Wyoming Economic Development Association, and several manufacturers spoke in favor of retaining the tax exemption. None of them provided any concrete data about jobs created or sustained for this $53 million investment.

Proponents repeatedly stated that the tax exemption is needed as a recruiting tool for economic development, although why Wyoming, without personal or corporate income taxes, also needs a manufacturing tax exemption to compete with other states remains a mystery.

In addition to going over the report, the ESPC questioned the fairness of a tax policy that provides a sales and use tax exemption for one sector but not another, especially in the absence of any additional revenues from economic development the exemption was supposed to generate.

Rep. Mike Madden (R-H40, Buffalo) successfully amended the bill to apply only to purchases of equipment to manufacture a new product line or expand capacity. A further amendment by Rep. Dave Miller (R-H55, Riverton) included equipment to “lower emissions.” Pollution control equipment already is exempt from property tax so, if ultimately passed, this provision will mean that pollution control equipment – an ordinary part of doing business in this day and age – will not be taxed at all.

The bill passed the committee on a 6-2 vote. Chairman Pat Childers (R-H50, Cody) and Representatives Greg Blikre (R-H53, Gillette), Rita Campbell (R-H34, Shoshoni), Miller, Owen Petersen (R-H19, Mountain View), and Clarence Vranish (R-H49, Evanston) voted yes. Representatives Madden and Mark Semlek (R-H1, Moorcroft) voted no. Rep. Pat Goggles (D-H33, Ethete) was excused.

Speaking of the Affordable Care Act ...

2011-01-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

House Labor rehabilitates HB 35

The House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee worked hard – and late – on a nullification act that challenges the Affordable Care Act. It is sponsored by Rep. Bob Brechtel R-HD38, Casper) and a dozen other legislators, at least a few of them itching to prove their anti-federalism credentials.

House Bill 35 – Health care choice and protection act proclaims the ACA unconstitutional and thus null and void in Wyoming. As drafted, the bill imposed a $5,000 fine and a felony conviction on any state employee, official, or public servant found to be enforcing the ACA.

But the sponsors ran into a storm of criticism from a wide variety of interest groups. Wyoming Public Employees Association lobbyist Bob Kuchera expressed worries that the bill puts state employees at risk of committing a felony if they simply went about their work of implementing the new federal law.

Sheila Bush of the Wyoming Medical Society said her members are divided in their opinion of the ACA. Nevertheless, she noted that some doctors in the state are making significant investments in health information technology with the assistance of incentives in the ACA.

“What does it say to our providers … if we say they are breaking the law by doing so?” Bush asked.

Lobbyist Tom Jones of the Wyoming Health Care Association said he believed the bill as proposed could make it legal for a Wyoming resident to refuse to pay taxes that fund Medicaid. And he said the legislative assertion in the bill that the ACA is unconstitutional is meaningless. He noted the Supreme Court reserved the right to rule on the constitutionality of all laws in the early 19th century.

The legislature’s opinion of the ACA “ … doesn’t matter in the end,” Jones said.

Lobbyists for the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society noted the ACA brings many health benefits to people. Jason Mincer of the ACS asked, “What is (HB35)’s intent toward cancer survivors?”

Proponents said the act mirrored the Firearms Freedom Act approved last year. Rep. Keith Gingery, (R-HD 23, Jackson) pushed the committee to amend the bill to more closely mirror that bill. He offered successful amendments to change the felony crime to a misdemeanor carrying a $2,000 fine and made a number of other significant changes.

Rep. Frank Peasley (R-HD 3, Douglas) called the objections to the bill, especially fears of prosecution, “a lot of hooey.”

“We need to make a stand or we don’t make a stand,” he said. When it became clear there was no consensus on the committee over the meaning of some of its sections, Peasley later commented, “I guess we have to pass this bill before we know what’s in it.”

That remark sparked a few guffaws in the committee room and a retort from Chairman Elaine Harvey, who said Congress passes bills it does not understand, not the Wyoming legislature.

“I read this bill as the state is not going to go out and participate,” co-sponsor Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, (R-HD28, Thermopolis) said, and would refuse to allow state employees to enforce the bill. She argued that it does not say doctors cannot take grant money available because of the ACA without committing a crime.

That comment prompted Harvey (R-HD26, Lovell) to note that the state also cannot stop the IRS from impounding property to enforce the IRS code. Quarberg replied that the state needs to stand up to the federal government.

“This is a gutsy move,” replied Quarberg. “You dig down deep.”

Gingery pushed his amendments through, including one that pared down the list of those specifically in position to be accused of a felony. He trimmed wording that said “Any official, agent, employee or public servant of the state of Wyoming” would be found guilty of a felony if they attempted to enforce compliance with “this article.”

As the bill left the committee it said simply “Any public servant” who tried to enforce compliance with the ACA as defined in HB35 would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Though he took some heat, Peasley may be right that at least some of the committee members did not understand the effect of what they did until they review the amendment on the House floor.

The bill was narrowly approved on a 5-4 vote. Rep Gerald Gay (R-HD36, Casper), Rep. Matt Green (R-HD45, Laramie) and Rep. Hans Hunt (R-HD2, Newcastle) joined Peasley and Gingery in supporting the bill.

Rep. Joe Barbuto (D-HD48, Green River), Rep. Bernadine Craft (D-HD17, Rock Springs), and Rep. David Miller (R-HD55, Riverton), joined Harvey in opposing the bill.

Quick notes on Wednesday action on bills of interest –

Senate File 3 – Campaign finance – organizations was approved in the Senate’s Committee of the Whole with a disclosure amendment that will require corporations and other organizations engaging in independent expenditure campaigns to name their top three donors in the advertisements they buy. The Senate seemed a little uneasy about how it will work, so we’re watching for amendments that might ease disclosure needed to keep elections honest.

Senate File 14 – Counties – election districts likewise made it through first reading. We still have fears that the “flexibility” in the bill allows counties to establish a combination of at-large and single-member districts is subject to mischief. At worst, in counties with a substantial minority population, it could lead to a “political quarantine” of the minority group. Sen. Wayne Johnson, R-SD 6, Cheyenne, mentioned similar concerns in comments on the floor.

Health Care Freedom resolutions – The legislature is determined to send a message to Washington, D.C. and the rest of the country that it intends to resist the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress last year. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a heavily amended version of SJ 2 which would place a constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot that asserts the federal government has never been granted the power to make decisions regarding lawful healthcare services. That power is reserved to the state of Wyoming and its people, the amended version says. It says the attorney general may assist any state resident in litigation to protect the right to make those decisions. The committee included several sections lifted from SJ 3, a similar but less strident proposal. Those sections denote the Legislature’s intention to continue its own authority to mandate care under Workers’ Compensation, at the state’s prisons, and at other institutions.

Contract validity?

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard more than an hour of testimony on SJF 5 – Defense of Marriage – constitutional amendment. Proponents argued the amendment is necessary to somehow protect the institution of marriage from gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. Opponents said they’re merely seeking the same legal protections that society extends to heterosexual couples.

Jason Marsden of the Matthew Shepard Foundation said the proposal will void valid existing contracts, something the Legislature simply would not allow to happen to existing business contracts.

The Supreme Court, Citizens United and Wyoming

2011-01-18T19:36:00.000-08:00

Senate committee shows commitment to honest elections

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission means we’re stuck with the prospect of corporate interests pouring money into state and national elections. It doesn’t matter if you believe that the right to free speech was meant for people who breathe and bleed. The corporations are free to use the biggest megaphone and can buy the most speech through independent expenditures in elections that affect their corporate interests.

Nevertheless, the state still has the authority to force disclosure of who finances that megaphone and who buys the time.

Today, the Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee amended SF 3: Campaign finance – organizations, to help ensure that voters and candidates will know who paid for campaign literature and advertising.

The Senate bill brings state campaign finance law into compliance with the Citizens United decision by expressly allowing corporations, unions and other organizations to make “independent expenditures” directly from their treasuries. These expenditures can be made for or against candidates or ballot measures.

Under current Wyoming law, only candidates, political parties, candidate campaign committees, and political action committees (PACs) can spend money in elections. A corporate PAC is different from the corporation spending corporate funds because a PAC’s money comes from identifiable and publicly disclosed officers, directors and shareholders of the corporation.

The ESPC feared that SF3 would allow organizations to create fake front groups whose names would be put on campaign mailings and advertisements, leaving voters and candidates in the dark about who is paying for the independent expenditure campaign.

The committee approved an amendment offered by Sen. John Hines (R-S23, Gillette) to require that campaign literature or advertising made and paid for by independent expenditures carry the names and telephone numbers of the three largest contributors to the organization making the expenditure. The amendment was modeled after Arizona’s law.

While the requirement is not as complete as the reporting required of political parties or candidate campaign committees, its advantage is that it immediately informs the public of the main interests behind an ad paid for by independent expenditures. Voters then can interpret that information as they see fit.

The dangers of hybrids - election districts, that is

Following the discussion of election spending, the committee took up Senate File 14: Counties – election districts. The ESPC opposed this bill and it barely cleared the committee on a 3-2 vote.

Currently, when creating districts for the purpose of electing county commissioners, Wyoming law allows only the creation of single-member districts. SF 14 allows the creation of “hybrid” districts, meaning there may be a combination of single-member and at-large districts.

Only one county – Fremont – has districting for election of county commissioners, as the result of a Voting Rights Act lawsuit brought by members of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Last spring, a federal district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who argued that the at-large system of electing county commissioners was discriminatory because it illegally diluted the Native American vote.

Committee Chairman Cale Case (R-SD25, Lander), consistently has argued the bill is not meant to address the situation in Fremont County, because it would apply to all counties, and no new system can go into effect before 2012 in any case. He noted Fremont County was holding a special election today, in compliance with the federal court order, to elect county commissioners.

The ESPC opposed the bill because when it was discussed in the 2010 interim, proponents of the hybrid system suggested that a county could create one district that would give a minority population or other population of interest a good chance to elect one of its own members as a commissioner, but then elect all other commissioners at-large – and not let the residents of the single-member district vote in the at-large district.

Such an approach would serve only to further isolate a minority population from the rest of the county’s residents. The ESPC believes the community should follow a process that allows everyone to move forward together, without what could be termed a “political quarantine” of the minority group.

Sen. Wayne Johnson (R-SD 6, Cheyenne) commented in the committee meeting that human nature would lead ultimately to discriminatory use of the hybrid districting alternatives. Johnson and Sen. Marty Martin (D-SD 12, Superior) opposed the bill.

Chairman Case, Sen. John Hines (R-SD 23, Gillette), and Sen. Charles Scott (R-SD 30, Casper) voted for the bill.

House Education panel passes DOMA bill

2011-01-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

Back of the bus for Equality State gays

The House Education Committee Monday night approved a bill that would clear the way for Wyoming to deny the validity of same-sex marriages legally made in other states or countries.

The committee voted 7-2 to send the bill to the House floor with a do-pass recommendation after opponents of the measure noted the irony of approving legislation limiting the legal rights of the state's gay residents on Martin Luther King Wyoming Equality Day.

Earlier in the day Gov. Matt Mead had addressed celebrants who honored Dr. King's memory by marching to the Capitol at noon.

“In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, King spoke of his audacious belief that peoples everywhere could have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds," the new governor said, "And dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

“Food for the body, mind and soul are not things to be taken for granted. Not everyone has enough of it and we must continue to strive to provide it for all of our citizens. The work is not done,” the governor said.

But the Education Committee did not get the message. Advocates for the bill stayed on message, asserting that the legislation, House Bill 74 - Validity of marriage will protect the integrity of marriage. The law declares that marriages "other than of a male and a female person are void."

How gay relationships threaten heterosexual marriage was not made clear.

Lead sponsor Rep. Owen Petersen, R-HD19, Mountain View, (pictured above) said legislators must protect traditional heterosexual marriage as one of the key building blocks of society. The federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) allows states to void legal marriage contracts made in other jurisdictions even though the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution generally requires states to recognize legal contracts made in others.

Jason Marsden, formerly a lobbyist for Wyoming Conservation Voters and now executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation in Denver, attended the hearing to remind legislators that they really do not know the people the legislation will affect both legally and economically. He said later that most legislators certainly would go out of their way to understand how a change in water policy would affect a few irrigators or a small community.

They don't bring that same concern to members of the gay and lesbian community, he noted.

Rep. Cathy Connolly, D-HD13, Laramie, laid out a long list of arguments against the bill. She warned that adopting the bill threatens economic development by making the state less attractive to skilled professional couples who happen to be gay. But she also noted the personal affront to her as a lesbian who raised a son in a deeply committed relationship.

Connolly and Rep. John Freeman, D-HD60, Green River, cast the two no votes against HB 74.

Reps. Bob Brechtel, R-HD38, Casper, Donald Burkhart, R-HD15, Rawlins, Rep. Kendell Kroeker, R-HD35, Casper, Sam Krone, R-HD24. Cody, Carl "Bunky" Loucks, R-HD59, Casper, and Michael Madden, R-HD40, Buffalo, and Chairman Matt Teeters, R-HD5, Lingle, voted to pass the bill.

Short takes

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony for two hours on SJ2 - Health Care Freedom and SJ3 - Health Care Freedom (2). Both challenge the Affordable Care Act. SJ2 is a nullification bill likely in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S.Constitution. That has not stopped its advocates who include lead sponsor Sen. Leslie Nutting, R-SD 7, Cheyenne, and the Wyoming Liberty Group. Testimony resumes Wednesday at 7 a.m.
The Senate Corporations Committee Tuesday morning will consider SF3 - Campaign finance - organizations. The proposed bill brings state campaign finance law into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision that corporations can spend directly and freely through independent expenditure campaigns attacking or supporting specific candidates. The ESPC is advocating comprehensive disclosure laws so Wyoming voters can identify the sources of funding for those independent expenditures.
Senate File 14 - Counties - election districts also will be heard by Senate Corporations. The bill allows a county to set up commission voting district that would allow some commissioners to be elected at-large in part of a county and by district in others. The ESPC fears the state is simply erecting another racist structure in the wake of federal court's dismantling of an existing one. Last spring, U.S. Distrct Court Judge Alan Johnson ordered Fremont County to end its system of at-large commission elections because they diluted the Native American vote. That dilution made it virtually impossible for a member of that large minority group to win a commission election.

Citizens United and campaign spending

2011-01-14T12:22:00.000-08:00

The Legislature is rolling and we've been trying to get up to pace. Our first significant hearing was Thursday morning when the Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee considered Senate File 3 Campaign finance - organizations.

The measure will bring state law into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. FEC. The decision opened the door to allow corporations to tap their treasuries for independent expenditure campaigns deployed to attack or support individual candidates. We're pressing for amendments SF3 to improve disclosure requirements.

Business brings annual attack on co-employee immunity laws

On Friday, Jan. 14, the Senate Labor Committee heard final testimony on Senate File 61 - Co-employee immunity. The measure blocks liability lawsuits when people are injured at work due to wanton, willful actions of a fellow worker or supervisor. Under current law, if a supervisor orders a worker into an area known to be unsafe and in violation of safety rules and the worker gets hurt, he or she can sue the co-employee. Wyoming's Workers Compensation law prevents a worker from suing his or her employee in those cases.

The AFL-CIO, the Wyoming Trial Lawyers Association and others opposed it.

Despite dramatic testimony Friday from a Pine Bluffs man whose son was killed on the job due to "wanton and willful" negligence, the committee approved the bill and sent it to the House floor. The measure is supported by mining, oil and gas, trucking and other interests.

Meanwhile, there's more information about Citizens United on the home page of our website: equalitystate.org. Here's an excerpt:

Corporate spending threatens integrity of elections

Few U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the past 20 years have opened the door for sweeping change in the basics of our democracy as the Citizens United decision of last winter.

In Citizens United, the Court cleared the way for corporations to engage in independent spending to support or oppose candidates in elections at all levels – from the town council to the U.S. Presidency.

Senate File 3--Campaign finance-organizations would amend Wyoming’s statutes to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision is under consideration. In testimony to the Senate’s Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee on Thursday, January 13, 2011, the ESPC provided a brief analysis of the decision and its implications for state elections. The ESPC also suggested a series of amendments to the bill to require expansive disclosure of independent expenditures by corporations, unions, and other professional organizations. The amendments also would prohibit spending by corporations based on foreign soil.

Eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices supported disclosure. In order for voters to make informed judgments about what they see in campaign advertisements and literature, they need to know who paid for them.

We're developing more information on Citizens United that will be posted on the website.

One person, one vote

2010-11-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

Joint Corporations panel eyes redistricting

Fremont County seeks ability to manipulate voting power

By Sarah Gorin

ESPC researcher

I’ve often characterized the ESPC’s work by using the title of a regular feature in The Week news magazine, called “Boring but Important.” The drawing of lines for election districts definitely falls into this category. In fact, it may take the prize for most important action that gets the least public attention.

This week the Legislature’s Joint Interim Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee (“Corporations Committee”) met to discuss, among other things, county districting and the legislative redistricting that will follow receipt of the final 2010 census numbers.

Every ten years following the decennial census, election districts – congressional districts, legislative districts, city wards - are redrawn to recognize population changes. Each election district is supposed to contain approximately the same number of people to incorporate the principle of “one person, one vote.”

The advent of geographical information systems (GIS) has made drawing districts a relatively simple mapping exercise. However, the politics that go into it are anything but simple.

One complication is the mandate that we as a democratic society have imposed on the process via the federal Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act prohibits dilution of the voting power of “communities of interest” – primarily racial or ethnic populations – by carving them up in separate districts.

We saw the Voting Rights Act applied here in Wyoming recently when several tribal plaintiffs successfully sued Fremont County to force creation of districts for county commissioner elections. The tribal plaintiffs pointed out that their votes were drowned in the current practice of electing county commissioners at-large (that is, county-wide).

The federal district court decision was scathing in its description of pervasive racism in Fremont County and ordered the drawing of five single-member districts for election of the five county commissioners. This process is now moving forward with a special primary election scheduled for Nov. 16 and a special general election for Jan.18.

Although these special elections are moving forward, the Fremont County Commission has appealed the federal district court decision to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of having it overturned.

A court-ordered apportionment always results in single-member districts, and existing state law currently provides no other options. However, a number of Fremont County officials have been advocating for changes in state laws to allow “hybrid” districting where some county commissioners could be elected from single-member districts and some elected at-large.

Put simply, it appears the officials are looking for the next best thing to the old at-large system: a new system that gives the tribes “their” district and then virtually guarantees that a Native American candidate won’t have a chance anywhere else.

The ESPC commends the members of the Corporations Committee for heeding warnings from the tribal plaintiffs’ attorney that the Fremont County Commissioners saw the proposed county districting bill as helpful to their appeal. The committee added language delaying the use of hybrid districting until January 1, 2012, but then approved the bill (the committee vote is provided below).

The committee’s bill will be offered for consideration in the 2011 Legislature. If passed, it would apply to all counties, not just Fremont County. However, since Fremont County currently is the only one with county commissioner districts, it’s difficult to view the bill in any light other than providing the county a means to once again manipulate voting power.

Legislative redistricting looms

The Corporations committee members also heard an update on preparation for legislative redistricting, which will take place in the 2012 legislative session. Final census figures will be received next spring, and depending on whether they reflect the downturn in the state’s economy that took place in 2009, significant changes in districts may be in store.

Because legislative redistricting takes place only every ten years and therefore the institutional memory is limited, the ESPC presented background information on the original legislative apportionment in 1992 and the first reapportionment in 2002.

The ESPC’s preference is to maintain the single-member district system as the one most easily understood by voters and also providing them with the highest level of accountability.

Committee vote on the hybrid county districting bill:

For: Senators Cale Case (R-S25, Lander, committee co-chair), Charles Scott (R-S30, Casper), Stan Cooper (R-S14, Kemmerer); Representatives Kermit Brown (R-H14, Laramie), Pete Illoway (R-H42, Cheyenne, committee co-chair), Tom Lubnau (R-H31, Gillette), Dave Miller (R-H55, Riverton), Tim Stubson (R-H56, Casper), Dan Zwonitzer (R-H43, Cheyenne)

Against: Senators John Hastert (D-S13, Green River), Wayne Johnson (R-S6, Cheyenne); retiring Representatives Ross Diercks (D-H2, Lusk), Mary Hales (D-H36, Casper)

What's next for Wyoming?

2010-11-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

GOP landslide brings questions about future course

The GOP landslide on election day leaves observers wondering how major issues facing the state will be addressed. Wyoming Republicans pushed Democrats to the lowest point in years in the state legislature and swept all five statewide offices, including, as expected, the governorship.

Governor-elect Matt Mead, the former U.S. attorney for Wyoming under President George W. Bush, won the open seat with 72% of the vote.

Mead has promised to join the states suing to overturn the Affordable Care Act. On the campaign trail, he referred to a state pilot program as Wyoming’s answer to questions about covering the uninsured and holding down costs – even though the pilot (which is a health care plan, not health insurance) has yet to be implemented, much less evaluated. Wyoming residents will be looking for Mead’s ideas on keeping community hospitals and nursing homes solvent, meeting the state’s need for primary care providers and addressing rising premiums for Wyomingites fortunate enough to have insurance.

Mead has said he will resist increases in the state’s minimum wage, which stands now at just $5.15 per hour for workers not covered by the federal minimum wage. He has expressed support for sealing the border to stop illegal immigration, while also stating that legal immigration makes our country better. At the state budget level, it is unclear how Mead’s administration will address funding for infrastructure needs in communities around the state, or deal with fluctuations in state revenues.

Republicans captured 50 of 60 seats in the Wyoming House, taking nine seats that had been held by Democrats the past two years. In the Wyoming Senate, the GOP won 13 of 15 seats, reducing the number of Democrats to four out of 30 members. Senate Minority Leader Katherine Sessions was defeated by Leslie Nutting, an opponent of health care reform and reproductive rights. Nutting will be the only woman in the Senate. The small number of Democrats raises questions about committee assignments.

Although Wyoming legislators perennially campaign against over-regulation, past efforts to overhaul or “streamline” regulations have resulted in only minor tweaks as lawmakers and citizens come to realize how regulations protect the state’s communities and natural resource base as the mineral industries boom and bust. With new developments such as the near-disappearance of the mule deer herd on the Pinedale Anticline and possible contamination of groundwater near Pavillion by fracking, Wyoming residents probably will be cautious about giving energy extractors a freer hand.

Historically, Wyomingites also have been reticent to intrude into each other’s private lives, as evidenced by the defeat of a ballot initiative banning abortions and, more recently, the defeat of efforts to amend the Wyoming Constitution to prohibit gay marriage or civil unions. Bills on these topics may be offered in the 2011 session, even though they seem at odds with conservative views on keeping government out of private decisions.

The election results point toward opportunities to test reality against rhetoric. Just as support for the Affordable Care Act has gone up as people begin to experience its benefits, it may well be that support for budget cuts or intrusive legislation will go down as people see such proposals play out.

Insurance companies battle health care reform regs

2010-10-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

By Barb Rea

Editor's note: Barb Rea is Wyoming's consumer advocate to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). She is attending the NAIC quarterly meeting in Orlando, Fla. She also is volunteering on behalf of Consumer Advocates: Project Healthcare, a group of Wyoming advocates raising the consumer's voice in health care reform. The NAIC is crafting rules that will guide implementation of the the Affordable Care Act.

Health reform is not going to happen magically. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) established the framework for changing the system and now people are working hard to write the rules and regulations that will make it happen.

When you look at the details and the intent of the law, each piece is designed to move the insurance industry to change the way it does business. In exchange the industry will get more customers.

We are trying to move the insurance industry from making its money off risk selection (providing coverage only to healthy people) to one that competes on providing better value to its customers.

But it won’t be easy. For instance, one of the early reforms scheduled to begin Jan. 1, 2011, requires that insurance companies to spend more of your premium dollar on health care (80% in the individual market and 85% in the group market) and less on profit. This calculation is known as the Medical Loss Ratio.

And the companies have to prove they’re meeting the Medical Loss Ratio requirement. If they don’t reach this ratio, they have to give the money back to consumers in the form of a rebate. The law is requiring public transparency and accountability—new concepts in the insurance world.

The goal of this reform is not so much to get money back from the insurance company but rather to force the companies to price their products correctly.

Over the last 5 months the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has brought together consumer representatives, insurance commissioners and insurance company representatives to craft rules and regulations on the Medical Loss Ratio, as assigned to them through the new federal healthcare law. They have been conferencing sometimes daily to decide what numbers have to be reported and create a way to collect and report this information.

This week at NAIC’s quarterly meeting in Orlando, the final decisions on this topic will be made. As you can expect there has been considerable wrangling, with the industry trying to include as many items as possible in the medical expense side of the equation and as few as possible on the overhead side. The consumers won a good number of those battles but not all.

Now just days before this final vote, the industry is pushing for several last minute changes in the calculation of the Medical Loss Ratio. The changes essentially mean many companies would never have to pay a rebate (or change their pricing).

Here are the changes they seek:

They want brokers’ commissions excluded from the equation;

They want companies who sell in several states to be allowed to aggregate their numbers nationally, which would enable them to disguise high profits in one state by combining loss ratios from those states with loss ratios from other states where they may charge lower prices or pay higher health care costs;

The industry also wants to change the actuarial formula previously adopted by the drafting group for evaluating compliance with the Medical Loss Ratio standard. Known as the “credibility adjustment,” the industry wants a change that favors insurance companies over consumers.

The implications are stunning. The industry can appear to be helping to transform the system but continues to try to get away with as much as possible to maintain “business as usual.” This is how they have made their fortunes and there is no reason to believe they won’t continue to behave that way.

Transparency and oversight are provided for in the ACA. To get this to work, we must be vigilant in monitoring the transformation of the health care system. If we don’t have citizens willing to take this job we are not going to move this to the finish line.

A problem of improper framing

2010-06-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

AmericaSpeaks puts safety net on the chopping block
Minimizes or ignores other options

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has developed a devastating critique of the AmericaSpeaks guidebook prepared for meetings across the nation Saturday.

The meetings are intended to assess public opinion on how the U.S. should address its budget deficit.

The AmericaSpeaks process has a good reputation for helping communities of all sizes resolve thorny public issues. It has conducted meetings to help New Yorkers figure out how to re-build Ground Zero and in New Orleans, AmericaSpeaks conducted a discussion of recovery plans and efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

The guidebooks prepared for its meetings frame the discussion presented to participants.

And that’s the problem. The guidebook for this weekend’s deficit-reduction meetings essentially leaves out many policy options that would favor lower- and middle-class Americans. (You can download the guidebook here. Click on the Federal Budget 101 button in the right-hand column.)

For example, as it projects the deficit for 2025, the guidebook fails to account for expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts for high earners. Those cuts will expire this year. According to CEPR, “This implies an interest burden that … is $40-50 billion less than what is assumed in the guide.”

I hope people attending any of these meetings will read Dean Baker’s column which dissects the guidebook and points out its many short-comings. There are
many options that should be considered as the country considers deficit reduction.

Unfortunately, the discussion as framed by AmericaSpeaks puts the social safety net on the chopping block while minimizing or completely ignoring many other options.

A closer look at the discussion materials for the Town Hall meetings, CEPR's Nicole Woo notes, shows that Saturday's game will be played with a stacked deck. The guidebook authors claim to include input from a broad range of view points in order to frame an intelligent discussion of the nation's long-term budget problems. But, as CEPR's analyses of their Federal Budget 101 and Options Workbook detail, their guides "do not live up to their hype," Woo said.

Please share this information with anyone you know who plans to participate in these important meetings.

The meeting in Casper will be staged in the Casper Events Center. It begins at 9:30 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m.

The AmericaSpeaks Town Meeting sites:

Large-scale sites:

Albuquerque, NM
Chicago, IL
Columbia, SC
Dallas, TX
Philadelphia, PA
Portland, OR

Small-scale sites:

Augusta, ME
Casper, WY
Des Moines, IA
Detroit, MI
Grand Forks, ND
Jackson, MS
Los Angeles, CA
Overland Park, KS
Louisville, KY
Missoula, MT
Portsmouth, NH
Richmond, VA
San Jose, CA

Wyoming needs complete lobbyist reporting

2010-05-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

Public deserves more information about influence

By Dan Neal

Politics and public policy-making often come down to money and who has it to spend on candidates or on lobbyists that can help a interest group get what it wants.

In Wyoming, candidates for public office must report the contributions they receive and the expenditures they make. But lobbyists don't have to report many of their expenditures nor details about their funding resources. With Wyoming's lax lobbyist disclosure law, it's as if lobbyists simply appear in the Capitol without anyone spending any money to get them there.

On May 12, the Equality State Policy Center asked the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee to require professional lobbyists working in Wyoming as well as the companies and people who hire them to make public how much money they spend to influence state legislators and other policy-makers.

The request, by the way, implies no improper behavior. Lobbying done well with integrity fills a necessary role in a democracy.

Here’s the basic argument the ESPC made to the Joint Corporations Committee when it met earlier this month in Lander:

Why is reporting necessary?

It demonstrates the importance of the work the Legislature does. A full accounting of lobbyist spending will show the general public how invested various interests are in the decisions made by the Legislature.

Since individual state legislators do not have paid staff, lobbyists in Wyoming fulfill a particularly important role of providing citizen legislators with information. It is the presence of lobbyists that makes a difference. The public deserves to know what it takes to post a presence when the Legislature meets – in Cheyenne or during the interim.

It is an important part of bringing the process of making state policy fully into the sunshine. People deserve to know what the oil industry, the coal companies, the railroads, and nonprofit organizations spend to influence their representatives and government officials.

About 350 lobbyists registered in 2010. Existing law required only a very few to file reports, mostly to report receptions held for legislators. Many who file anyway report zero expenditures.

What is needed:

People paid to lobby, including attorneys, should be required to report what they were paid and they should report their expenses.

Employers of lobbyists should report how much they paid lobbyists and how much they spent on other activities intended to influence legislators, other officials, and the public to support or oppose legislation. (Current law requires reporting by the employers of lobbyists.)

The law should cover both legislative and administrative lobbying.

Lobbyists should file quarterly. (This provides a timely accounting.)

Lobbyists should list clients, and how much each pays.

They should list what bills and governmental actions were lobbied and for which client.

Lobbyist reports should be subject to some form of enforcement mechanism.

The ESPC asked the Joint Corporations Committee that the reporting ultimately be made available in a searchable database available electronically via the Secretary of State’s website.

The committee showed considerable interest in the idea. Several, including Co-Chairman Cale Case, R-SD25, Lander and Rep. Kermit Brown, R-HD14, Laramie, asked pointed questions about lobbying by public interests, such as the University of Wyoming and other agencies.

The ESPC supports broad disclosure by all interests lobbying the Legislature. Even if they’re simply providing information at a committee meeting, state agencies and other public agencies certainly could be directed to report the cost of doing so.

When Sen. Case asked if the committee should entertain a motion to draft a bill, Sen. Charles Scott, R-SD30, Casper, objected, noting that the topic was not “noticed” on the committee agenda.

Instead, Sen. John Hastert, D-SD-13, Green River, made a request for the Legislative Service Office to research lobbyist disclosure in neighboring states and tell the committee how Wyoming’s disclosure requirements compare.

The topic is likely to appear on the agenda of the joint committee’s Sept. 28 - 29 in Casper.

A side note: Sen. Scott expressed considerable interest in determining who supports the ESPC and similar groups, saying he finds it difficult to determine who exactly they represent. He indicated he prefers disclosure legislation that would enable him to know the names of individuals who contribute to the ESPC and similar groups.

The ESPC does not provide that information, though people who do contribute funds to the ESPC certainly can make their support public. Still, the U.S. Constitution protects the right of people to associate freely. The ESPC told the committee that the right to maintain the privacy of contributor and membership lists was affirmed in a 1958 U.S. Supreme Court case, State of Alabama v. the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

But what the ESPC is, certainly is not a secret. The ESPC told the committee that the organizations that belong to its coalition are listed on the internet, along with brief biographies of the ESPC board officers and ESPC staff.

Sen. Scott asked the Legislative Service Office to research the law regarding protection of membership lists.

Health reform implementation

2010-04-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Health insurance reform moves to state policy arenas

The passage of health insurance reform certainly has stirred emotions here in Wyoming, where statewide candidates seem to be in a contest to see who can come up with the most frightening descriptions of it to justify their calls for repeal.

We see it as a major victory for Wyoming children and families.

The new law advances the financial security and personal health of Wyoming citizens. It delivers reliable coverage that won't disappear if they get sick or lose a job.

One of the chief advantages of the new law is the intent to cover everyone. The law prohibits insurers from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions and it enables families to keep their children on their policies through age 26.

The requirement that insurance companies spend at least 85% of their revenues on the health care of their customers likewise is positive and is representative of the law's intent to bring some sunshine into a system that for too long has been, shall we say, less than transparent. More transparency is critical to controlling costs and improving the quality of care.

Barb Rea, the ESPC's part-time development director, served on the Wyoming Healthcare Commission for several years as an appointee of Gov. Dave Freudenthal. That service and her own studies have given her a broad knowledge of the issues involved in reforming health care. We asked her to represent the ESPC on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ consumer liaison committee. The NAIC will be instrumental in designing the rules under which the states will implement the new health insurance reform legislation.

Rea recently attended the NAIC meeting in Denver and offered the following observations:

I have just returned from the spring meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) as one of several new consumer representatives serving on consumer liaison committee. This organization and this committee will play an important role as we begin implementation of health reform legislation.

Wendell Potter, posts an excellent summary of this meeting and the role of the NAIC in the Huffington Post which you can read here.

The short version is that the states will be responsible for much of the work of implementing the new health reform bill. The law requires that many new regulations be written to govern the way health insurers do business. This work will fall to not only to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services but also to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).

The NAIC exists to help state insurance regulators achieve five primary goals:

protect the public interest;
promote competitive markets;
facilitate the fair and equitable treatment of insurance consumers;
promote the reliability, solvency and financial solidity of insurance institutions;
and support and improve the state regulation of insurance.

So, the NAIC will play an important role in developing standards that both protect consumers and promote uniformity throughout the industry. Many of these laws, regulations and/or rules developed on the federal level will then be modified and adopted at the state level to give states the authority to enforce them.

There is no time to waste – many need to be in place within the next 6-12 months. So much of our time was spent determining how to ensure that the consumer perspective was going to be represented as the NAIC moves forward.

The NAIC executive committee stated its intention to utilize its existing committees to complete these responsibilities. The role the consumer liaison committee will play is still not clear. The consumer liaison committee specifically asked the NAIC:

to create a publicly accessible “plan of action” developed with input from consumer representatives;
to fully incorporate consumer advocates into the NAIC health reform work plan;
to prioritize their tasks based on the needs of the consumers;
and to significantly expand consumer participation at the NAIC proceedings.

While we await a response from the governing board of the NAIC, the consumer liaison committee will begin immediately to assess our resources and organize into work groups around the most urgent issues:

High risk pools;
Grants for establishing ombudsmen offices to assist consumers in every state;
Medical Loss Ratio (MLR);
Rate reviews;
New insurance policy requirements (e.g.) pre existing conditions, keeping young adults on parent policies, first dollar coverage for prevention.

Next steps for Wyoming and the ESPC
It was humbling to be among such knowledgeable and effective colleagues, many of whom have been working on reform for most of their careers. We certainly have a lot to gain as this process will provide both context and product for much of the decision-making that will fall to our legislature. It should make their job easier.

But, it soon became clear to me that the process of implementing anything at a state level here (or in any other state already fighting the intent of this law) was going to be more complicated than cutting and pasting good ideas into Wyoming law. Our first task will be to cut through the rhetoric and talk about how the new law addresses the health care access problems people are facing.