The Wyoming House and Senate are in a standoff over the legislative session’s last remaining affordable housing bill.

Senate File 40 started as a simple piece of legislation, clocking in at under two pages. The bill would make it a little harder for neighbors to stop a housing development going in next door by raising the bar for protest petitions.

Under current state law, it takes 20% of the adjacent property owners to lodge a protest. The bill raises that requirement to 33%, among some other changes to the same law.

It’s the kind of bill housing advocates have been fighting for.

But when it hit the House, representatives tacked on a major expansion: language forbidding cities from imposing development fees to support affordable housing. Teton County currently does this.

While the House approved the amendment and overwhelmingly supported the bill, voting 51-9 to pass it, the late-stage amendment turned some supporters into opponents, who said the bill was now “poisoned.”

The bill returned to the Senate, where it had originated, to give the upper chamber a chance to endorse the bill with its new amendments or to call for a conference committee to hammer out the differences between the versions passed in the Senate and House.

The Senate has twice refused to concur with the House’s changes. Senators are refusing to work on a compromise until the House drops the amendment.

The first concurrence vote failed on a 1-30 vote; the second concurrence vote, which took place Feb. 28, failed on an 8-23 vote.

Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson) said the amendment was brought to appease one angry landowner in his district, who testified during a House committee hearing just before the amendment was added.

Gierau said adding such a big amendment so late in the process denies the public a chance to comment on it because there are no more committee hearings and only limited time for floor debate between lawmakers.

“What this is, is an attempt to squeeze, shoehorn in something that's not a part of this bill,” Gierau said. “The second amendment is not germane to the bill. It has nothing to do with the bill.”

Article 3, Section 20 of the Wyoming Constitution states, “ … no bill shall be so altered or amended on its passage through either house as to change its original purpose.” This prohibition is reiterated by the Senate Rules.

Gierau added that the House is refusing to budge.

“One of the members of the conference committee from down the hall came to visit me and said, ‘What do you need, Mike, to make this work?’” Gierau recounted on the Senate floor. “And I said, ‘Drop the second amendment, and we'll accede to all of your positions with the original bill.’ [He] came back a few hours later and said, ‘The chairman said no.’ I said, ‘Well, until he's ready to say yes, then there's really not much for us to talk about.’”

Several senators, including Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie), argued the amendment is so removed from the bill’s original purpose that it violates the Senate’s rules.

“I think it is important for us to set an example and to send a clear message down the hall that when you are in violation of Senate rules by disobeying the Wyoming Constitution, that the Senate is not going to stand for it,” Rothfuss said. “And we're going to not even consider the underlying policy considerations. We're going to recognize it as out of order, and we're going to act accordingly.”

Senators said they’re still willing to work the bill if the House agrees to drop the amendment. Lawmakers have until Mar. 5 to come with a compromise.

Wyoming is in the midst of a housing crisis. A statewide report published by the Wyoming Community Development Authority last year found the state will need between 20,000 to 38,000 new homes by the end of the decade to meet its current need and keep up with increasing demand.

In January, just before the session began, another statewide report by the same organization recommended specific policies the Wyoming Legislature could pursue to make building easier or cheaper. It included protest petition reform as one of 27 such recommendations.