When representatives in the 68th Wyoming Legislature sat at their desks for the first time this January, 23 of them were brand-new to the lower chamber: new to the intricacies of floor debates, rules and procedure, and the daily marathon of policymaking and glad-handing required of any elected official.
Their arrival in Cheyenne coincided with the rise of Pres. Donald Trump’s administration and, not coincidentally, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’s surge to power in the Legislature.
As the newcomers settle into the rhythm of the legislative session, some mainstays of the state House have tried to educate new members on history and procedure. But Wyoming Freedom Caucus leadership, and some freshmen themselves, view the history lessons as a form of filibuster that’s keeping bills from being heard.
“I haven't been here in the past, but I've noticed some very obvious delay tactics, and I think that's disrespectful to the voters,” Rep. Tom Kelly (R-Sheridan) told Wyoming Public Radio in the Historic Supreme Court Room gallery. He’s a first-time lawmaker and professor at American Military University who isn’t planning on joining the caucus.
Kelly isn’t the only representative with a difference of opinion on the extensive floor discussion some legislators have been leading during the current session.
“Time is of the essence,” said House Speaker and Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Neiman (R-Hulett) during a press conference on Jan. 31. “I’ve never seen those gentlemen speak as much as they have in the past few days in my four years of being here.”
House leaders like Neiman say the longer floor debate goes on, the fewer bills will survive as a host of key deadlines near and bills die en masse, including priority legislation for the Freedom Caucus. Feb. 7, for instance, is the deadline for bills to clear committee in their chamber of origin. Next week, bills must clear first, second and third votes in their full chamber of origin in order to stay alive.
But some veteran lawmakers say rushing to consider some 555 drafted bills also doesn’t serve voters.
“I’m not going to sit there and watch all of this go without saying something,” said former House Speaker Rep. Steve Harshman (R-Casper) outside the House lobby. “That’s not what I was elected to do. All these votes have impacts. You don’t just cut $60 million here and cut $60 million there and not say anything.”
Harshman has been a mainstay of the House since 2003. He and other longtime lawmakers like Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander) have been outspoken during floor debates on measures like HB 199, the “Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act,” which Harshman says is “blatantly unconstitutional.”
That bill would divert funds meant for public schools to private and religious charter schools, expanding a voucher program that the state already has.
“The challenge that I’ve had this year is [not many representatives] have over four years’ experience,” Larsen said in the Capitol Extension. “So when we get up and talk and debate a bill, it’s like having your teenager in the car and teaching them to drive. There’s just some experience [issues]: they’re going into the turns too fast, they’re not stopping at the stop signs. There’s an education process that we all have to go through.”
It isn’t Larsen’s intention to “run afoul” of House leadership’s priorities or those of the freshman class, he said, but to educate new members on the history of bills and procedures so that the new members don’t pick a “bad horse,” referring to legislation that previously failed.
But although Neiman agreed the wisdom of more experienced legislators is important and that he respects the unlimited floor debate permitted under Committee of the Whole, what Larsen and others are doing is going beyond that.
“It's called a filibuster, if we want to just get right down to it,” Neiman said, “but that's all part of the process.”
In recent years, an influx of new faces coupled with the retirement of some well-known ones has meant that the process has changed, according to Harshman.
“Usually, the House operates like the Senate: You bring the noncontroversial, the easy fixes, the committee-type bills first,” Harshman said. “Most of these bills are little problems that a constituent has brought to us, and they’re pretty simple fixes. Boy, you can knock out 40 things right away in the first week that benefit the people and solve a problem.”
Harshman said that’s not the strategy being used this year.
“What we've done here is take what I'll say [are the controversial bills we’d usually wait to debate] and throw them out there first.”
That switch in the order of priority has meant more debate is required, Harshman said, to fully vet the policies coming through the House.
In Larsen’s view, the floor debates that he and Harshman are participating in aren’t about slowing the speed at which the House gets through bills.
“In fairness to Speaker Neiman’s comments that maybe we’re filibustering, I think that we all feel that way from time to time, when somebody [gets] up and goes on and on and on about a bill,” he said. “Have things moved slowly? Yes. Is it my intent to make it so miserably slow that we don’t get the work of the people done? No, it’s not.”
More than 340 bills were drafted in the House, and nearly 200 in the Senate, a marked increase compared to general sessions in the past decade.
“While it can be useful for your side to win the game and stop some bills you don't like, you are stopping the bills that the majority of people in Wyoming wanted,” Kelly said. “You're not doing the work of the people at that point. But that's a philosophical difference.”
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.
