Legislature wrapping up

Monday afternoon, State Representatives Nathan Winters and Wyatt Agar visited the Thermopolis Independent Record and spoke about this year’s Legislative session.

Winters said he, Agar and Mike Greer have developed an excellent working partnership that has been apparent on the floor of both the House and the Senate, particularly with the discussion of the bill concerning privatization of the Wyoming Pioneer Home and Wyoming Retirement Center.

“We had a real team effort with this bill,” Winters said. He and Agar put in the extra time to ensure both facilities had funding for the biennium (two years).

“Now we need to really start thinking about their future,” he added. “We have to get a community thought process going to determine how the Pioneer Home is going to function in the future because this is going to come up again. These two years give us a little time to put something into place.”

Agar added a tactical move from those driving the conversation was to start the bill on the Senate side, thinking they could walk over him because he was a freshman senator, but there were two members of Appropriations who voted against the bill before it started.

As a community, Agar said, there needs to be some planning so we are not at the whims of the Wyoming Health Department should the conversation come back. Agar noted the community really did well in reaching out to senators and explaining the impact to the Big Horn Basin.

Regarding the budget bill, Winters said, “There were multiple battles going on with the budget bill. Our delegation worked hard to create coalitions and teamwork in both the house and the senate, crossing party lines.”

It was Agar’s first budget session, though he pointed out it was not as hectic as last session because in that session they tried to jam a budget session and general session into one.

Agar also spoke to a bill he brought, SF92 regarding electronic logbook enforcements, and many people said it was preemptive. Though he didn’t expect the governor to sign it, he wanted to make a statement about how commerce is being affected. In the third reading, the Federal Motor Carriers Office in Washington, D.C. was listening to the live feed, and in the two days following the bill’s passing out of the Senate there were emergeny stakeholders meetings during which almost every exemption asked for in the bill was passed.

“What I learned from this session,” Agar said, “is it’s not necessarily the legislation you pass but the stand you takes that counts.”

Another bill that really draws the Big Horn Basin into it is the Ag ENDOW bill. When looking at the ENDOW bills, Agar said, there are some driven by market and others by specualtion. There is a huge demand for Wyoming products in in Taiwan and as soon as the Ag ENDOW bill passed, their trade ambassador was standing in the chambers stating he wanted to do business with Wyoming. The bill manily puts a trade representative in Taiwan to start looking at exporting more meats that direction.

“This really builds on our strength and allows it to blossom,” Winters said. “We can continue to build into the next century.”

Winters said there is no doubt Wyoming creates specialized products that countries around the world want, like cattle and sheep.

During discussion on the floor, there were representatives from various countries there, ready to begin talks on exports, provided things went well with the bill.

Within the Judiciary Committee, Winters said they managed to streamline the bond schedule for speeding fines and cleaned up a lot of verbiage.

In addition, they created a system of grants to help with the training of peace officers around the state.

Agar added there is a mandate for continual training, but the funding was lost for it, so this puts the funding stream back in.

Within the Senate, senators are allowed just three bills each session while in the House, representatives may have five bills each.

The Senate limits their individual discussion on the bills to just two-and a half minutes per senator, yet the House allows unlimited time from each representative for discussion of individual bills.

This year, Winters said they attempted to get a bill through in the House that would have been more in line with the Senate side after several long nights debating bills on the floor.

Unfortunately, they were not able to get the bill through the House.

Also in Judiciary, Winters noted there was a bill regarding custody in the best interest of the child.

“We heard a lot of testimony on the custody bill,” Winters said.

Not only did they hear testimony from parents, they had court opinions from a judge on what he has seen over the years.

“There were some very heartbreaking stories,” Winters said.

Even with a budget of $1.67 billion, there is still a need to find $7 million in reductions in the funding model for schools across the state this year and an additional $8 million in cuts for 2019. Hopefully things will level off by 2020, allowing school districts to work within their budgets.

The funding model has called for a three percent raise in funding each year for quite some time. Through the above reductions, that funding model has been cut in half.

Although some of the school funding bills have been amended some, there is still work being done on the capital construction bill which is used to build new facilities or upgrade existing schools.

“We have a $1 billion dollar deficit,” Winters said. “About two-thirds of that comes from spending on education – about $670 million. Wyoming’s spending on education is near the top of the nation, but how do we balance it all?”

Winters feels the schools are the ones who will make the best decisions for their students on a day to day basis.

“We are now bringing in less than a third of the revenue we have in the past,” he said. “We need good conversation. We need to bring everything and everyone to the table.

“It’s easy to think two to four years ahead. What we’re working on requires thinking two decades ahead.”