Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify that ALEC has not proposed model legislation opposing gun control and that many consider its model bill, Right to Work Act, would weaken labor unions.
Wyoming lawmakers spend the time in between legislative sessions researching, studying and learning about topics they think are important to the state. This interim period usually ends with draft bills that are introduced during the next session. But it’s been questioned quite a bit in the last couple of years. And it just got a pretty big makeover.
Wyoming Public Radio’s two state government reporters, Chris Clements and Jordan Uplinger, talked with Kamila Kudelska about a recent Management Council meeting that led to the changes.
Editor's Note: This story has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamila Kudelska: Thanks for being here you two.
Chris Clements: It’s a beautiful day to be talking politics, y’all.
Jordan Uplinger: We’re in the station but it does look like a nice day outside.
KK: So earlier this week, you both went to Cheyenne for a Management Council meeting. Why was this an important meeting to go to?
CC: Well, our understanding was that in this meeting, the council, which is made up of 10 House and Senate leaders, would approve proposed topics by each legislative committee so we could move forward with the interim process.
JU: Right, and I think most lawmakers thought that was going to happen as well. Before the meeting, Democratic Jackson Representative Mike Yin went on his social media to explain how the day would work, starting with committee chairs listing their priorities for topics and meeting dates.
Mike Yin: Management Council who hears that is in charge of deciding how our nonpartisan Legislative Service Office is managed. So that's why we determine how long we should be meeting, how many days we should meet, be meeting, so we manage that budget appropriately.
CC: Former Freedom Caucus chair, Gillette Representative John Bear, also explained the point of this meeting in a video asking his constituents to weigh in on topics they want committees to consider.
John Bear: We will be selecting the subjects that we will study in our select committees as well as our standard committees. So I'm seeking your input because we really wanna be the representatives of you, the people.
JU: But it turns out that some lawmakers had a different idea. Majority Floor Leader Senator Tara Nethercott of Cheyenne brought a motion in the first 16 minutes of the meeting for cutting the number of days committees meet from six to four, saying it’ll save taxpayers money. She also advocated that committee chairs, not the Management Council, should decide which topics their committee picks up in the interim.
Tara Nethercott: It's about $120,000 to $140,000 that we can save the taxpayers of Wyoming to reduce the amount of interim committee days from six to four.
CC: It’s worth noting the motion said committee chairs can request more than four days from the council if they can justify them.
KK: What was Nethercott’s reasoning to make this pretty big change?
CC: There were a couple. Cost savings, like she said, was a big one. Also, in the past few years, a lot of the work that lawmakers do during the interim hasn’t translated to new policy. Ahe basically said some parts of the interim process amount to wasted time. In some cases, like during the budget session in 2024, a concerted effort was made to kill committee bills by members of the Freedom Caucus.
Tara Nethercott: I, too, am frustrated with this process and find it wildly inefficient, where we’re going to spend about 12 hours today having chairmen read their interim topic letters.
KK: Kind of sounds like she’s saying this meeting could have been an email.
CC: Right. And even with the attempt to make things more efficient, I found it interesting the council meeting ended up lasting 10 and a half hours.
JU: The agenda set us up for a long day for sure. Until recently, bills drafted by interim committees more often than not became law. That’s because they’d been studied, vetted and included testimony from the public and experts that lawmakers heard throughout the summer months. But last year, we saw the highest percent of committee bills fail to be introduced since 2000, and this year the lowest number of committee bills became law, not even half.
CC: So some lawmakers are asking: Is the interim a waste of time and money? Laramie Democratic Senator Chris Rothfuss summed it up pretty well.
Chris Rothfuss: The House basically left 15 committee bills in the drawer, so I do understand the frustration of some members of the Management Council. If we're not actually going to be able to introduce our committee bills, why would we spend so much time during the off season working on the committee bills?
CC: It was actually 14 committee bills, by the way, but still.
KK: So did the motion to shake things up succeed?
Chip Nieman: Question’s been called, all those in favor of the motion signify by saying Aye.
Committee Members: Aye.
Chip Nieman: All those opposed, no.
Committee members: No.
Chip Nieman: Motion has been adopted.
CC: Yes, it did. Most committees will have only four interim days, which will likely mean some will need to cut down the number of topics they tackle. These changes are intended to save money, and that’s having its own effect on the behavior of committee chairs. With frugality in mind, some of them are planning on changing their meeting locations, too, even though that isn’t what the council explicitly required.
JU: Even though it passed, not everyone was happy.
Stephan Pappas: The motion that was made took me by surprise.
JU: That’s Senator Stephan Pappas of Cheyenne. He chairs the Transportation Committee. His committee spends a lot of time during the interim touring transportation and military sites around the state to educate its members and have facetime with citizens.
Stephan Pappas: I think cutting down interim time is gonna make for poorer legislation, not better. And I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to what happened this last year, the drop in number of bills that passed.
JU: Pappas said if committees aren’t going to hear from the public around the state, maybe they shouldn’t meet at all, and task forces should pick up that work. Democratic Senator Chris Rothfuss from Laramie also said he was not at all happy about the loss of facetime with constituents.
Chris Rothfuss: We are directly reducing their access to their legislators in the most meaningful part of the process. Now, if what we're admitting to is that the process itself during the interim through our committee work doesn't work any longer, then maybe we all need to just go freelance a little bit and act as individual legislators.
CC: Freedom Caucus member John Bear wasn’t pleased, either. He suggested this change is a political move, made only after his caucus gained a majority in the House.
John Bear: I find it interesting that when more moderate or progressive legislators are meeting and discussing moderate and progressive subjects, more time is allotted. But then when conservatives have a majority, we want to restrict the opportunity to study conservative issues.
CC: Bear said he was worried that with a reduction in meeting time, his Appropriations Committee now won’t have enough space to tackle fire mitigation programs. And he said the reason so many committee bills died this and last year was because more moderate Republicans were in the drivers’ seat choosing interim topics, which the further-right Freedom Caucus majority then opposed. He doesn’t think that’ll happen moving forward.
John Bear: I would anticipate that through the next interim, you have a conservative group picking the topics and voting on the topics in the next session, I would expect the percentage to return to a higher number
KK: But it did pass, so what were people saying who were in support?
JU: Democratic Representative Ivan Posey of Fort Washakie said the changes probably won’t affect the Tribal Relations committee.
Ivan Posey: We scheduled four days anyway. It really empowers me. Now Chairman Case and I can sit down and say, let’s see what we really want to tackle in this short time that we have.
KK: We headed into this meeting thinking we would know what topics the interim committees would concentrate on. When is that going to happen?
JU: Committee chairs need to send their revised lists of interim topics to the Management Council for a final sign-off sometime before April 22. The council will then resolve any topics that crop up in more than one committee.
CC: Another big change that came out of this meeting that I just want to mention quickly, is lawmakers approved using state funds to send themselves to meetings of a conservative policy group. Usually these trips are for non-partisan conferences, like the Council of State Governments or the National Conference of State Legislators. But now the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, is also approved. That group drafts model bills on subjects like tightening voter ID laws, one that some argue would weaken labor unions and cutting taxes and regulations.
