Representative Winter provides legislative wrap up

Chairman John R. Winter, House District 28 Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources Committee provided the following information on his views of the 2025 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Winter states, “The Wyoming House of Representatives, along with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, worked hard this year to support several bills that really affect the people of the State. This Session was one of the busiest and complicated mostly because of the Governor’s proposed $692 Million supplemental budget. After the House reduced and approved a budget, the Senate refused to vote on it so a budget was never passed.”

According to Winter, the leadership in the House made a real effort to involve everyone. House Speaker, Chip Neiman, and the House Leadership made extraordinary efforts to make sure that every House member had at least one bill entered into the process. “Through Speaker Neiman’s leadership we passed many bills but when they went to the Senate several bills of importance to the State and its citizens passed by the House were killed in the Senate such as HB0324 Privacy Protections for Purchasers of Firearms and Ammunition; HB 0134 Prohibit Taxpayer dollars from being used to fund drag shows,” states Winter.

Winter added, “Other bills, important to the citizens of Wyoming, passed in the House but met their demise in the Senate. Some of these include: Bills to strengthen Wyoming’s Voter ID law by requiring photo ID and removing student ID from the list of acceptable forms of Voter ID were both killed by the Senate, our bill to ban unattended ballot drop boxes was killed by Senate leadership, a bill to prohibit ballot harvesting was killed by Senate leadership, a bill to establish real property tax reform and end taxation of unrealized gains was killed by the Senate, our bill to repeal Wyoming’s carbon capture regulations was killed by the Senate and a common-sense bill to prohibit the Chinese Communist Party from buying Wyoming agricultural land was killed by the Senate.”

The Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources Committees (House and Senate), worked on several bills including the following:

-HB0061 State Land Lease Preference amendments - signed by the Governor

-HB0092 Wyoming Livestock Board memorandums of understanding - signed by the Governor

-SF0043 Temporary Water use agreements amendments - signed by the Governor

-HB0132 Annual Permits for Specified Commercial Loads - signed by the Governor

-SF0063 State Lands Fencing signed by the Governor

-SF0064 Wyoming Opposes Mandatory Electronic ID Devices, Livestock - signed by the Governor

-SF0080 Abandonment of Water Rights – Limitations - signed by the Governor

-SF0084 Country of Origin Label – USA Beef - signed by the Governor

-SF0120 Wyoming Prime Act became law without the Governor’s signature

-SF0147 Service Dogs-Training and Crimes - signed by the Governor

-SF0181 Eminent Domain – Energy Collection Systems - signed by the Governor

“As House Ag Committee Chairman, I was very pleased with the outcome of those agriculture committee bills as they will have a very positive effect on our ag industry here in the Big Horn Basin and throughout Wyoming,” said Winter.