No place for mandates in Wyoming’s Legislature

We are less than two weeks away from the 2025 legislative session, and with new leadership, new committee makeups and many new members this go around promises to be different from other recent sessions. Our legislators are going to have to learn how to cooperate to make new laws or risk stalemate and ineffectiveness.  

With that in mind, some communications from the incoming legislative leadership have caused concern. In particular, one recent email claimed that the public had given the Freedom Caucus a “mandate” to institute their policies, followed by a list of five “key bills” that they intended to pass in the first 10 days of the legislative session — an approach they referred to as the “five and dime” plan.

The word “mandate” is a red flag, as it’s most commonly employed a pretext for ignoring input, especially input contrary to the official’s preexisting preferences. It is also concerning because “mandates” do not really exist. Elections, like people, are complicated, and voters may have any number of reasons for their choices. To claim that the public has made a statement on any one piece of policy with the box they checked on the ballot is a dangerous and erroneous oversimplification. In reality, voters weigh many different potential policies — and a host of nonpolicy factors — when they choose their candidates. They often agree with the candidate they vote for on some policies while disagreeing on others. Claiming any particular policy proposal is the cause for victory — especially in an election where candidates’ specific stances weren’t always central to their message — oversimplifies the complicated nature of human choices.  

Instead, newly elected office holders should recognize that voters chose them for their judgment. They must be willing to do the hard work of considering legislation and evaluating whether it addresses the right problem, whether it addresses the problem in a meaningful way and whether it needs to be amended before it is ready to become law. Sometimes, that means voting against legislation that addresses a real problem because the solution falls short or carries too many unintended consequences. That is the business of legislating. Demanding support for a particular policy based on an imagined “mandate” is not.

My concern with the claimed mandate also extends to the “five and dime” approach announced in the same email. Having legislative priorities is a good thing. Announcing what those priorities are to the public is good as well. Rushing the legislation is not. The problem with the “five and dime” plan is that it does not give the Legislature and the public time to participate in the legislative process in the way these issues deserve.

Wyoming already has very short legislative sessions, and this causes challenges. Our Legislature is tasked with considering, voting on and amending hundreds of bills in just 60 legislative days over two years – not counting interim committee work. This means that many bills are debated, amended, and voted on in just days, and before interested or knowledgeable parties can weigh in. It is a structural problem with our Legislature that is not the fault of any of the current legislators, but it is a problem nonetheless. If we want good law, we need to allow our Legislature the time for the kind of consideration and fact-gathering that lead to informed decisions. The “five and dime” plan takes what some legislative leadership believes are the most important issues and undercuts the ability to fairly consider solutions.  

My concern is not about the policies themselves yet, because I do not know whether the policies they will be pushing are good or bad. We need time to consider them and evaluate whether they will have unintended consequences, whether they address a real problem, and whether they can be improved. Insisting that they be passed on the fast track does not allow for that.

We need to remember the purpose of our legislators. A republic, like the United States and the State of Wyoming, requires us to elect representatives to do the work of considering and crafting law. We elect those representatives based on their judgment. A republic recognizes that humans and human problems are complex, so the solutions must be complex as well. Direct democracy is not well suited to nuanced questions, so we elect representatives to study and understand those problems before voting on them. Claims of “mandates” and demands for quick action without affording our representatives the ability to do the work we elect them to do undermines the effective operation of our government.

Wyoming has plenty of capable people to solve our problems if we will let them. Put simply, the Legislature needs to act slowly and carefully when considering their legislation. We will all be better served if they take the time to do their jobs well, not just quickly.