The 68th Wyoming Legislature begins its general session on Jan. 14. The next two months are Wyoming lawmakers' one chance this year to set the policies that govern how our state operates — and the Wyoming Freedom Caucus has ambitious plans. WyoFile's Maggie Mullen and Wyoming Public Radio's Jordan Uplinger review how this fast-paced lawmaking process works.
Maggie Mullen: This the Cheyenne Roundup, a weekly look at Wyoming's session from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile. I'm Maggie Mullen, WyoFile's state government and politics reporter, and with me is Jordan Uplinger, Wyoming Public Radio's new state government reporter.
Jordan Uplinger: Thanks for having me, Maggie. With the Legislature’s general session just days away, we're going to lay out how things work over in Cheyenne. This year is a general session, which means that lawmakers will be looking at a bunch of bills that cover a range of topics, from agriculture to technology, to taxes, to education – policy bills.
It's a 40-day long session, with a flurry of activity about halfway through when bills need to go from one chamber to the other, and we’ll see that flurry again in the final days of the session.
Right now, we're seeing over 200 bill drafts posted to the website. However, Gov. Mark Gordon suggested that there’s more than 600 bill drafts that have been submitted, an increase from what he's seen in his tenure.
MM: And there's the supplemental budget, which the Legislature [works] on during odd numbered years. It's meant to address emergencies and unanticipated needs between budget sessions.
And on top of all that, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus has this ambitious plan to pass what they say are five key bills in the first 10 days of the session. It includes legislation to restrict the voter registration process; to prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion programming in higher education; and a property tax relief bill vetoed by Gov. Gordon last year. They're calling it the Five and Dime Plan.
JU: Right, the Five and Dime Plan: five bills passed in the first 10 days. Additionally, they have something called the 2020 Vision, which is the next 15 bills they want to pass in the first 20 days.
But before we move forward, I think it's important to mention: The last primary saw 27% of [voting-age Wyomingites] turn out. There might be some listeners asking, ‘Who's the Freedom Caucus?’ Can you talk about their significance, Maggie?
MM: Yeah, so the Freedom Caucus is a group of hardline Republicans in the House. They formed the group in 2020 to challenge Republican leadership, and since then, they've acted as the further-right opposition party at the state House. But now they're in the majority, thanks to the 2024 elections, so they'll control the House. And they've also got a lot of allies in the Senate.
JU: So we're likely to see at least some political maneuverings and showdowns this session, but I want to go back to what you said a little earlier that the Five and Dime Plan is ambitious.
MM: Yes, it is. And here's why that is: The simple answer is lawmaking takes time. It just does. Plus, lawmakers already work with a set of formal deadlines. Bills need to be introduced by a certain date to pass, for example. They also need committee approval, just to name a couple of those hoops. So to bring self imposed deadlines into the mix ups the ante for lawmakers.
There is at least one advantage the Five and Dime Plan has, as far as its chances of moving along smoothly: Most of the five bills included in the plan are familiar territory for lawmakers.
JU: They're familiar because not all bills start from scratch. So, for example, one of the bills in the Five and Dime Plan, Senate File 69, which is for a homeowner property tax exemption. That's coming out of the Joint Revenue Committee. It was vetoed by Gov. Gordon last year, but lawmakers still want it and believe they have a chance this time with control of the House.
Here's the significance of bills sponsored by joint committees: At the end of the session, lawmakers can request bill topics. These topics get assigned to joint interim committees. Those joint interim committees meet during the off season.
Committees spend roughly six months researching, gathering opinions from the public and experts, often interviewing people for hours, then workshopping details of these bills. Bills from these committees kind of have a head start coming into the session because they've already been vetted. Usually, they get significant consideration at the very least.
MM: That said, there's 26 brand new lawmakers. There's 23 in the House and three in the Senate, and that will absolutely slow down in the House. There's just no way around that learning curve.
Plus the Freedom Caucus, they've shown us before that they're not always willing to prioritize committee bills in the way the Legislature traditionally has. We saw that in the 2024 session. In fact, committee bills failed on introduction in the 2024 session at higher rates than ever before. And introduction is just the beginning of the process that a bill must go through during session to become a law.
JU: There's a lot of steps. But let's take the ESG bill, or Environmental Social Governance investments bill, as an example. That's a bill that they tried in 2023 that was also vetoed by the governor. Now, with House control, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus says that they have a mandate, so they're trying that again. But it's coming from a group of right-wing lawmakers, not a committee. So, what's that process?
Simply put, you have paperwork first, debate second, the governor's desk third.
The paperwork is drafting a bill with formatting and terminology input from the Legislative Service Office and sending it to the statehouse. The Legislative Service Office, or LSO, is a bunch of lawyers and staff of the Legislature that really keeps the wheels on this bus moving forward.
MM: Plus, the LSO works with state agencies to put together an estimate of how much a bill will cost or how much revenue it'll bring in. And these fiscal notes, they can be really informative. Other times, there are just too many variables, and LSO is unable to come up with an estimate.
JU: Right. So back to a bill making its wayward journey towards becoming law. It's introduced in one chamber, a clerk will read the bill and the presiding officer will refer it to committee.
MM: And just to be clear, these committees split along chamber lines during the session. For example, members the Joint Education Committee, they split into a Senate panel and a House panel. Now, when these committees meet to discuss and take action on a bill, that's the one opportunity for the public to weigh in during the session. That's when folks can testify. They can give lawmakers input. But as far as what action a committee can take, that really varies.
A committee can amend a bill, it can vote to kill a bill, it can table a bill and, of course, a committee can send a bill to its chamber for a full floor debate. That's where first, second and third reading come into play. A lot can happen at that point, too. Lawmakers, again, can amend the bill, or leadership can prioritize that legislation. They can also bury it under a bunch of other bills.
JU: If it passes, the bill goes to the other chamber and the whole process starts over.
MM: And if the second chamber makes changes to a bill that the first chamber just doesn't like, that's when you'll see what's called a joint conference committee. That's a panel of lawmakers who is responsible for negotiating a unified version of the bill that both the House and the Senate will agree to.
If they succeed, the bill then heads to the governor's desk. Depending on the timing of that, the governor has a few choices. He can sign it, he can veto it or he can let it become law without his signature.
JU: And the Legislature can overrule a veto if two thirds of all lawmakers across both chambers vote for it. That back and forth could be interesting to watch this year. But for right now, Maggie, you've been at this for a while. What are you watching for this session?
MM: There's a few things I'm going to be keeping my eye on. For one, it's always an interesting time in the people's House. And that's a good reminder for those listening that while committee meetings are the only time during session where you can formally weigh in on bills to lawmakers, the Capitol is open to the public and folks can come down at any time and speak to lawmakers. I always encourage them to do so.
I'm very interested to see what happens with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. They have always been the opposition party, or the minority party, however you want to call it. But they've now taken control and I think that we'll see some different kind of political maneuvering, some different kind of political branding from them. I mean, they now have to govern, so I'm very eager to see what that looks like. Especially because the Wyoming Statehouse is the first in the country to see a Freedom Caucus takeover, so [I’m] eager to have a front seat to that.
I also follow a lot of election-related matters, so I'm interested to see how a lot of election-related bills do. Secretary of State Chuck Gray has had his eye on a lot of these, such as banning dropboxes and upping the ante for the voter ID requirements, and those bills have a better shot than they have had in quite a while. So I'll be keeping my eye on that. Jordan, this is your first rodeo, so what's catching your attention?
JU: Since it's my first time doing all of this, everything's catching my attention. But I'm also interested in how the Freedom Caucus will govern. And I think that anyone who's optimistic or extremely concerned about this new incoming federal administration, I think they can look to Wyoming as maybe a testbed for some conservative policies that they might try to push on the federal level.
Additionally, I'll also be watching Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies [and] blockchain. Wyoming wants to have its own stable token this year, so that'll be interesting.
There's also a Senate joint resolution to call a convention of states, essentially a constitutional convention, something that Democrats and Republicans [nationally] have both tried to call for different reasons over the past few decades. But this time around, there's a small chance that Wyoming passing this convention could add to a growing movement and we actually see a constitutional convention to amend the [U.S.] Constitution.
But right now, just watching that Five and Dime Plan.
MM: Thanks for that, Jordan.
And thanks for listening to the Cheyenne Roundup for a weekly look at what lawmakers are up to during the 2025 legislative session, from Wyoming Public Radio and WyoFile. New episodes drop every Friday throughout the session. Editing and producing by Tennessee Watson, Kamila Kudelska and Nicky Ouellet. Follow our ongoing legislative coverage at wyomingpublicmedia.org and WyoFile.com. And thanks again for listening.
Still have questions about how the legislative sausage gets made? Tell us what you want to know, or which bills you’ll be watching this session by emailing editor@wyofile.com.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
