Woodrow Wilson once said, “Government ought to be all outside and no inside . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives is secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety."
Wyoming Republican Party and the Freedom Caucus subset embody Wilson’s warning with their penchant for doing things behind closed doors.
Here are three examples of those bodies skulking around behind closed doors.
The first example is the Freedom Caucus’s daily text messages, telling state representatives how to vote.
Reportedly, every morning, the puppet masters send out a text message, “advising” members of the Freedom Caucus how to vote on bills in front of the legislature that day.
The voters of the are not allowed to know what is contained in those text messages because the Freedom Caucus keeps them secret.
This column has called for disclosure of the secret communications.
The Freedom Caucus’s response was ugly black silence. The Freedom Caucus apparently does not believe the voters of Wyoming should be privileged to know how they instruct people to vote on legislation.
The scheme gets more nefarious, when according to caucus members, if a house member votes as instructed a required percentage of times, they receive campaign support from the Wyoming Freedom PAC.
So, our Freedom Caucus members are instructed by secret puppet masters, covertly on how to vote on bills and their campaigns are getting paid if they vote as instructed enough. Does anyone see any problems with this scheme?
Another example of the secrecy eking its way into the administration of the Republican Party is the top-secret dispute resolution process adopted by the party in its bylaws. In an attempt to avoid judicial scrutiny, the Wyoming GOP created this sneaky dispute resolution process, resembles a stacked deck of cards against anyone who opposes current party leadership.
The hallmark of the policy is Section 2.5 of the Wyoming GOP bylaws which say, and I’m paraphrasing here, all information, documents, proceedings, discussions, and transcripts of the Wyoming GOP dispute resolution committee are confidential.
Anyone who discloses confidential information of the proceedings can be disciplined by the party. (Double secret probation).
To appear in front of the dispute resolution committee, one must sign the Wyoming Republican Party confidentiality agreement, which is confidential.
The process has been used recently, twice we know of, behind closed doors, to decide party elections in Hot Springs County and Park County. In both cases, one of the parties would not sign the confidentiality agreements. So, the non-signing party was not allowed appear.
The Committee met behind closed doors, heard from only one party and, not surprisingly, decided in favor of the only party who agreed to their super-secret club rules.
Another confidential committee operated by the Wyoming Republican Party is the secret Investigations Committee.
This Committee, established under the auspices of Section 63 of Roberts Rules of Order, allows the Wyoming Republican Party to investigate its members for “unrepublican” activities.
Section 63.2 requires all of the investigative and trial proceeding to be conducted in secret.
The party has used this underground process to investigate and publicly censure members of the central committee for doing such egregious things as sponsoring a nonpartisan PAC to encourage women in the political process and for violating the party’s bylaws for telling the media that the party was investigating and censuring someone.
Joseph McCarthy ran the same kind of committee in the United States Senate.
One of the interesting political techniques used by McCarthy was when someone criticized his committee, he would call them names like communist sympathizer or traitor. (I was tempted to add a Gestapo analogy, but to date the Republicans Investigative Committee has not broken into anyone’s homes and kidnapped anyone.)
Expect either silence or name calling from those defending the party’s sneaky secret activities. They will either scurry into the dark, or they’ll come out swinging calling critics the term of Republican disparagement of the day – RINO’s.
Wyoming Republicans, by and large, are hard-working people who believe in limited government, responsible government spending and protection of all constitutional rights.
Those good people deserve Republican leadership that is visionary, transparent, and inspiring. Wyoming does not need Republican leadership that hides like vermin under the refrigerator covered by confidentiality agreements, secret tribunals, and undisclosed puppet masters.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 - 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
