Members of Wyoming’s Senate during the legislative session on March 19, 2021. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile)

CHEYENNE – Dead bills are a fact of life in the Wyoming Legislature.

According to years of data on the Legislature’s voting records, roughly one quarter of committee-sponsored bills and nearly two-thirds of individual-sponsored bills die each session. Many never even receive a hearing.

The 2021 Legislative session has been no different. According to a WyoFile analysis of this year’s voting records, the Wyoming House of Representatives allowed 155 out of 280 pieces of legislation (55%) to die without a hearing prior to this week’s crossover deadline — the day when bills must be voted out of their chamber of origin or perish — while voting to defeat 14 more of those bills on the floor.

In contrast, the Senate killed just 38 of its 161 bills (23.6%) without a hearing, while an additional 19 were voted down after floor debate.

Some of those bills were contentious or “not ready for prime time,” as lawmakers say of unvetted bills, while others were popular with members of the public, lobbyists and even lawmakers.  Here are a few of the notable casualties. 

Shield law

Many journalists were disappointed in the March 19 defeat of House Bill 103 – Journalists-privileged communications by a 3-2 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee after it passed the House of Representatives earlier in the month.  

Commonly known as a “shield law,” the bill would have prevented journalists from being subpoenaed for their anonymous sources, offering a level of protection for whistleblowers.

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Though an individual’s claim to the privilege would need to be supported in a court of law, both the House of Representatives and the Senate wrestled with concerns over who was qualified to be a “journalist” or what was considered legitimate “news.” That led Senate Judiciary Committee members to raise concerns about the potential for bad actors to abuse the privilege under the law.

Sen. Ed Cooper (R-Ten Sleep). (Wyoming Legislature)

“I don’t see a definition of journalist in here,” Sen. Ed Cooper (R-Ten Sleep), a Senate Judiciary member, said in the March 19 hearing on the bill. “I don’t see a definition of news. And I think these are critical to what we’re trying to do here to protect the legitimate journalists out there. There are too many groups out there floating around that could claim that, that put perceptions out there that are incorrect.”

Abortion

Though the Wyoming Legislature has advanced several abortion-related bills this session, some of the most controversial pieces of anti-abortion legislation failed to gain momentum.

House Bill 70 – Abortion-informed consent, which would require abortion providers to provide certain information to prospective patients about the procedure, failed to meet a key procedural deadline this week alongside House Bill 134 – Human heartbeat protection act, which critics considered an unconstitutional restriction on abortions.

The most restrictive abortion bill on the docket – Rep. Chip Neiman’s (R-Hulett) House Bill 235 – Human life protection act – was never even assigned to a committee. That bill would have created a de facto ban on all abortions in Wyoming.

Taxes

Beyond the Senate’s passage of a bill to raise revenues for WYDOT by imposing tolls on Interstate 80 and a handful of fee increases throughout various state agencies, the Wyoming Legislature has largely avoided debate of significant revenue-generating measures this session.

Notable casualties this year that never got a hearing on the floor included:

Rep. Mike Yin (D-Jackson) (Wyoming Legislature)

The Legislature was also reluctant to cut taxes this year, defeating a number of tax and fee exemptions that include:

Lawmakers also declined to give a hearing to Rep. Chuck Gray’s (R-Casper) House Bill 110 – Wyoming business council-promotion of low taxes, which would require the Wyoming Business Council to promote the state’s tax climate in its recruitment efforts.

Rep. Chuck Gray (R-Casper) at his desk on the House floor. (Mike Vanata/WyoFile)

Public health laws 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been front and center in this year’s legislative session. Entering the in-person part of the session early in March, lawmakers had just under a dozen bills on the docket to address various aspects of the public health emergency, including whether the Legislature itself should be given more oversight over the actions of the state health officer.

Ultimately, legislators favored House Speaker Eric Barlow’s (R-Gillette) House Bill 127 – Public health amendments, which limits the duration of unilateral emergency health orders to 10 days.

The Legislature is also still considering Senate File 30 – Pandemic response review task force, which would establish a task force to look at the state’s pandemic response in retrospect and determine best practices for future pandemics. Sen. Troy McKeown’s (R-Gillette) Senate File 80 – Public health orders-local and legislative oversight also remains alive as of this writing.

Speaker of the House Rep. Eric Barlow, R-Gillette, speaks to members of the House March 11, 2021, in the House chamber inside the state Capitol. (Michael Cummo/Wyoming Tribune Eagle/Wyoming News Exchange)

Marijuana

After House Speaker Barlow said that 2021 was the year to start a conversation about legalized marijuana, the Wyoming House of Representatives committee of the whole dodged the discussion completely, killing both a recreational marijuana bill and a medical marijuana bill without a hearing. 

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  1. So, as I’m reading through the former comments and just now read the ground rules I see that the one about discriminatory language has been almost completely ignored. Hmmmm.
    I will go ahead and take a chance at writing my comment without any personal attacks, descriminatory language, etc.
    I am appalled that several bills failed that would have made the lives of the babies in the wombs of their mothers much safer. I don’t disagree that a woman has “a right” to decide what she will or won’t do with her body……..EXCEPT when it comes to ridding her body of a human life growing within her. I believe abortion is akin to infanticide. It’s not a glob of tissue being killed within the womb whose remains are extracted and trashed. It’s a human being whose life is being ended in the most barbaric manner devised by adults, and its heart is beating loudly enough to know it is alive. I truly hope, and will definitely pray, that our legislators will be more proactive in the next session in guarding the lives of our future human beings. Aren’t they fortunate their mothers didn’t consign them while in her womb to an abortionist?

    1. I know of no law that compels a woman to have an abortion in the U.S. What you’re suggesting is to me, a willingness to dictate to women who do not share your viewpoint, which I find appalling. And all of it on behalf of fetuses, who have no say in the matter because they are NOT yet functional humans. The term, mind your own business, comes to mind.

  2. If anything the only thing the media has during the last year is shown it is definitely not worthy of shield laws from subpoenas to testify.

  3. Word on the street is that the Wyoming legislature is so appreciative of receiving over a Billion dollars from the President that they intend, with the enthusiastic support from the Governor, to send the President a sincere letter of appreciation for the money in Wyoming’s hard times. And the rumor is that our former President from Florida intends to send matching funds to us also since we voted so highly for him!
    This means of course, with all the money Wyoming has received, and will be getting much more shortly from Florida, that the Legislature can now stay in session forever and pass every nutty bill they have ever proposed. Is this a great state or what?

    1. It’s nice we a getting funds from the Federal Government considering all three of out congressional representatives in Washington voted consistently against it. But believe it we a going to get one penny from or ex president in Mar a Largo is just delusional thinking. He got lots of bills to pay and loans to pay and probably lots of lawyers that he will have. To pay in a attempt to try to stay out of jail!

  4. The GQP have gone off the deep end, their blatant attack on democracy is right out of the fascist handbook, they are consolidating corporate power to the point of George Orwell’s novel 1984, it isn’t democrats destroying this country!!

  5. Most of those pieces of legislation deserved to “die on the vine”. They were nothing but the work of fascists out of control.

    Wyoming should have had a shield law long ago, and abortion should NOT even be an issue. The latter should be a woman’s right, not something to be played with by ignorant fools. I don’t see any reference to the abominable voter disenfranchisement bills, either, perhaps the most foolish of the bills introduced.

    Again, I contend that Wyoming is incapable of self-government at present, and the state should revert to territorial status until it proves itself capable of self-government.

  6. I really appreciated the recap on what the Legislature did not do, but would love a recap on what they did accomplish. I am a Wyoming native for over 80 years and probably through the years have been the most conservative you could imagine. However I am a bit disturbed and with these national, state and local crises we have all experienced this past year that the great Legislature we have all elected does not take all those issues into consideration and get with the “times”. There should be added taxation on everything we can “dilute” in our daily lives, i.e. gas, cigarettes, alcohol and whatever else you can find. I never thought I would say” let us get marijuana legalized” to some degree, Additionally very few people would notice an additional 1% sales tax on purchases. Please leave the politics alone and continue the tradition of being a rather bipartisan state which I love.