The Regulatory Reduction Task Force was formed in 2023 to make Wyoming a more business-friendly state, limiting regulations on oil and gas, mining, agriculture and construction. But housing issues quickly rose to the top of its agenda, with special attention on Teton County and the Town of Jackson.

Now, with the new legislative session beginning next month, there’s expected turnover in the group. What’s more, a meeting last month sputtered when not enough legislators showed up. A separate meeting planned for this month was canceled.

Jackson Hole Community Radio's Dante Filpula-Ankney recently caught up with Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson). He's co-chair of the task force, and he says the future of the group's four proposed housing-related bills – and the group as a whole – are unclear

Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Dante Filpula Ankney: Today we're talking about the Regulatory Reduction Task Force, a group formed last year that you co-chair. I wonder if you could tell me what your experience has been on this task force.

Mike Gierau: Great question. I think the governor was very interested in this and trying to just look wherever we could find in state government where regulations were hurting business or slowing or stifling or just getting in the way. But a lot of it is kind of centered around housing and trying to get housing, whether it be affordable housing or quality housing or what have you.

DFA: Why did the group focus in on housing?

MG: Like I said, the rest of the state, depending on where you are in the state of Wyoming, housing is a problem. It's just different problems in different areas. In a lot of communities, it's about quality housing. There might be some housing stock, but it might be old, outdated. And when you're trying to get new businesses to come, you've got to have a certain quality of housing to try to attract businesses and companies. We seem kind of wanting in that area. I'm, of course, in Teton County. It's a little bit different. Some of the challenges there are different.

DFA: I wonder if you feel like the Regulatory Reduction Task Force has taken an unfair look at Teton County?

MG: I'd never say the work of a task force, especially this task force or my co-chair, was unfair. I would say that I think a fundamental misunderstanding and a fundamental lack of understanding are some of the issues that Teton County faces, and the differences between that and the rest of the state, and what may sound onerous in other parts of the state where the land values aren't quite the same – where some of the challenges are not the same - that’s understandable. Take my Senate district. Over 98 percent of my Senate district is owned by the federal government, which means less than 2 percent of my district can be developed.

DFA: Four bills were discussed in your last meeting in November. In that meeting, legislators failed to make a quorum and no official decision was made on those four bills. I wonder, do you think that these four bills should be introduced in the next legislative session?

MG: I have not seen what tweaks my co-chair has in mind. There's some of those bills I don't think are ready. I do think – I'm going to be honest with you and the folks at home – I think they're a little bit focused more in a punitive way against Teton County. That having been said, doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a good robust discussion.

But I also think those robust discussions on what Teton County’s doing are best held in Teton County, by the town and by the county. We’ve got a good set of county commissioners. We got a great out of town council members. And you know what? I have a lot of faith in them. I supported a lot of them, and I still do. And so, I’d like to kind of leave that in their bailiwick because that's where it should reside.

Chairman [Bob] Nicholas (R-Cheyenne) said he might carry them as personal bills. This is something that happens at the end of one session going to another, where the clock's running out. Sometimes the legislators will say, ‘I'm going to take that bill as a personal bill and try to run it,’ because the committee isn't just going to meet in time and have a chance to make it a committee bill. That's important for your listeners because committee bills make it through the legislature at about 70 percent of the time. An individual bill passes about 20 percent of the time. That's just because committee bills are usually worked longer through an interim and we do this back and forth, so by the time it gets out, it's kind of been vetted.

These four bills here at the end haven't had that many opportunities to get vetted. It may be they end up on the personal route anyway. Or we could wait and see, and if the leadership of the incoming 68th Legislature decides to keep the Task Force moving, whether I'm on it or not, or whether Bob's on it or not, keep it moving and keep those bills running forward. It will be their choice to make.

But as far as what happened at the last meeting, we also kind of run into another problem, and that is we're at the end of one session. The 67th Legislature, which is a two year session, is ending. This committee and its work is ending. It'll be up to the 68th Legislature and the leaders, who’ve just been elected, to decide if the Regulatory Reduction Task Force will move forward, and if so, what they're going to discuss and who the membership is going to be.

Those discussions haven't taken place. So here we are in December and we had a meeting, and when we get anywhere near the holidays, it just happens. Folks get busy. So they didn't have a quorum. They talked about some issues. They set a meeting for Dec. 5 – also a terrible time because of holidays and all that. Plus, an extra added issue was we didn't have the money budgeted from the Management Council of the Legislature to have another meeting.

And so now we've got two problems. One, we've got to ask the Management Council for money for another meeting and then try to put it together. My co chair, Bob Nichols from Cheyenne, a gifted legislator, went ahead and set the meeting, but we hadn't done the other two parts yet. Come to find it was very difficult once again to try to get folks there. And then also we would have put ourselves in a position to go have to ask the Management Council to have them have another meeting to appropriate money to us to have another meeting.

All of that together, it just kind of got bogged down by its own weight.

DFA: You know, I wonder, Mike, personally, what do you think the future is of the Task Force at large?

MG: I think the Task Force has some merit. It's not all bad. I think there's some good ideas out there. And we might need more time to explore them. I think one of the things I've learned in the Regulatory Reduction Task Force is Wyoming is pretty good at not over-regulating.