CHEYENNE - Compared to the chaotic blowout in D.C., Wyoming’s general and budget session is a calm and collected operation.
That is not necessarily a good thing.
Legislators on the House side, which is fully under the control of the Freedom Caucus, a religion-based hard right wing faction — The New Right — are easily pushing through a batch of bills, including some that lawyers will tell you are clearly unconstitutional.
But this, we must remember, is what the voters showed that they wanted in the last election.
What is missing from the scene is what we used to call the loyal opposition. In heavily Republican Wyoming this role has always been filled by the Democrats.
But in this session there are way too few Democrats to hold back the tide of New Right bills,
The minority party holds only two of 31 senate seats and six of 62 member house. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered, they are persistent and still make themselves heard as the loyal opposition.
What about the Republicans who are not members of the Frontier Caucus?
In the last session or sessions they had their own organization called “The Wyoming Caucus.” I don’t know how many members joined. The name didn’t help its appeal.
Where is the Wyoming Caucus today?
Its Political Action Committee is still registered with the Secretary of State's office.
It appears to be dormant.
The traditional Republicans may be holding back in hopes that the extremist Freedom Caucus will go too far and will “hoist itself on its own petard” to borrow a very old saying from Shakespeare.
That could very well happen if they kept trying ram through bills like the one pending in the house that require tests of state water for the presences of anti abortion pills and the mandate to bring fetus remains in for testing
That bill is totally ridiculous as other critics have pointed out.
This is the kind of news, like the mean treatment of the injured wolf in a western Wyoming bar, that makes people think Wyoming is populated by a bunch ignorant hillbillies or barbarians.
The publicity is bad for tourism.
We have yet to see how the senate will vote. With no total Freedom Caucus control, the upper chamber has more freedom to vote conscience than the house.
Remember, the Freedom Caucus is supposed to be a populous party but outside of property tax reform they have done nothing to help of the average Wyoming citizens as far as I can see. Correct me if I am wrong.
I don’t think the average family cares what kind of investments the state was making or was worried about immigrants and voter fraud, or for that matter, transgender people using which bathroom.
They do care about keeping their public schools..
The families I know are worried about the cost of groceries and how to pay their bills and raise their families on earnings from jobs that pay only minimum wage or a bit above.
On the brighter side, I monitored a first meeting of the Legislature’s management council with the new members.
Home Speaker Chip Neiman, a Republican from Hulett, is the new chairman.
The council is the administrative arm of the Legislature, comprised of house and senate leaders.
They make all the decisions about decorum, legal conflicts and are responsible for the budgets for the Legislative Service Office and all legislative interim committee studies.
At the conclusion of the session Neiman said he wants unity and to work as a bipartisan group.
He had the same goal the beginning of the session but I’m not sure his followers were also committed.
Still, maybe that was a good start.
Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
