The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican lawmakers with an emphasis on social issues and slashing government funding, has unveiled its top five priorities going into the legislative session that starts Jan. 14 in Cheyenne.
They’re calling the agenda the Five and Dime Plan, because it consists of five proposed bills the Wyoming House of Representatives hopes to pass within the first 10 days of the session. The Freedom Caucus took control of the House in this year’s election.
The five proposed bills seek to:
• Tighten Wyoming’s election-registration rules.
• Invalidate driver’s licenses other states issue to illegal immigrants.
• Prohibit the University of Wyoming from factoring “immutable characteristics” — such as race — into its hiring and educating processes.
• Ban the state from investing in funds that prioritize environmental, social or governance (ESG) standards.
• Provide a 25% property tax cut to residential property owners, with a backfill to local governments.
The agenda went live on the group's website earlier this month, and a polished video with textual details published Thursday, Freedom Caucus member Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, told Cowboy State Daily.
Wyoming Address, U.S. Citizenship
Requiring proof of Wyoming residency and U.S. citizenship for people registering to vote is the first priority the plan lists on the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ website.
The group proposes to “create clear statutory authority for the Wyoming secretary of state to promulgate rules requiring voters to prove WY residency and ensure that non-citizens cannot register to vote in WY.”
It harkens to Gov. Mark Gordon’s rejection this April of election rules Secretary of State Chuck Gray proposed along those lines.
Gordon said the rules exceeded Gray’s statutory authority and the separation of powers, and that it’s local clerks who run the state’s elections.
In response, Gray claimed Gordon was “enabling (President Joe) Biden and the most radical leftists in America who are trying to help illegal immigrants vote in our elections.”
Bear told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that the bill would not merely hand rulemaking authority to the secretary of state, but would codify in law the requirements for voters to show residency and citizenship.
The part that would be discretionary for the secretary of state, said Bear, is how to enforce that law and manage it with evolving technology.
Gray, who holds that executive position currently, is aligned with the Freedom Caucus.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has recorded more than 10.8 million illegal immigrant encounters since the start of fiscal year 2021.
Invalidating driver’s licenses other states issue to illegal immigrants is the second priority listed. An earlier bill with that mission died in the House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee in March.
‘Woke’ Stuff
Two of the five priorities declare war on “woke,” or socially-liberal causes.
The third priority would prohibit UW and Wyoming’s community colleges from “engaging in discriminatory hiring or continuing education requirements that place moral, historical or other blame on a person or group of people on the basis of immutable characteristics,” says the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ webpage.
The Wyoming Legislature this year stripped $1.7 million from the university in an effort to cut funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs. That budget provision also sought to ban the programming altogether, but Gordon vetoed that portion.
The governor said banning DEI altogether would have put millions of dollars in federal grants to the university at risk; grants that go toward research and other core purposes, but require recipients to offer participation opportunities to “underrepresented and underserved populations.”
Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, told Cowboy State Daily at the time that the governor’s concession “invites abuse” by potentially letting UW relabel its DEI programs and continue them.
The other “anti-woke” agenda item is to ban Wyoming from investing in funds with ESG priorities, says the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ webpage.
Earlier attempts to do this failed, amid concernsfrom detractors that Wyoming would have to renegotiate contracts, some with multiple fund managers, and scare off companies from doing business with the state.
“So many companies have some type of proclaimed social agenda,” Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said during a bill debate in 2023.
Refusing to do business with companies based on their support for one policy position or another would effectively be doing what the bill is trying to oppose, Rothfuss said.
He also pointed out the bills contain language concerning actions that would be considered furthering a political goal, such as access to abortion, sex or gender changes or transgender surgery.
“We’re going to economically boycott any company that economically boycotts other companies,” Rothfuss said. “We seem to be taking sides if someone takes sides.”
While often at odds with the Freedom Caucus, Gordon joined with 10 other states last month in suing massive energy investors that have pronounced an ESG focus. The plaintiffs claim Blackrock Inc., State Street Corp. and Vanguard Group Inc. all have throttled the coal industry by demanding decarbonization goals in their own pursuits and from their fellow investors.
Property Tax Cuts
The Freedom Caucus’ fifth priority is to revive a bill that would give a 25% property tax cut to residential property owners on the first $2 million of their home values.
The 2024 bill with that focus said that if local governments aren’t getting enough money under that tax structure, the Wyoming Department of Revenue should transfer up to $100 million out of the state’s savings account within the budget biennium to fill the local needs.
Gordon vetoed that bill in March, calling it a “socialistic type of wealth transfer” that would have harmed the state’s energy industry, retail and manufacturing sectors.
It was a “feel-good policy that overcomes common sense,” wrote Gordon at the time. “A sober assessment of what is Wyoming's best overall interest is called for, one which recognizes future generations should never have to pay for our own self-indulgence.”
Sex, Masks, Vaccines
Though not listed in the five priorities, the Freedom Caucus’ promotional video on its agenda page touts other goals, like giving more individual autonomy over decisions about masking and taking vaccines, and stopping government from exposing kids to “porn.”
Bear emphasized that the group’s goal is to restrain government employees in public and school libraries, from offering sexually-explicit materials to kids. His wife Sage Bear, a member of the Campbell County Library Board, has been working with obscenity and other definitions around sexually-explicit materials there for months.
Bear told Cowboy State Daily the Freedom Caucus will have a press conference Jan. 7 in Cheyenne with several legislators present so people can ask questions about its goals.
It’s unclear if the Wyoming Senate will approve of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ Five and Dime plan.
The upper chamber’s makeup starting in January is similar to what it’s been the past two years, but the leadership dynamics have changed.
Fewer Freedom Caucus-aligned senators will be chairing committees, but a Freedom-Caucus-aligned senator, Bo Biteman of Ranchester, is set to become Senate President.
Biteman did not immediately respond Friday to a Cowboy State Daily request for comment.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
