All 31 Wyoming state Senators on Friday formally condemned a Teton County GOP leader’s act from earlier this week, of handing out checks on the state House of Representatives floor.
The Senate Rules Committee, meanwhile, worked Thursday and Friday on a new chamber rule to ban senators from from knowingly soliciting legislative campaign contributions or accepting them “by affirmative act” on any day during which the Senate is in session - no matter where that Senator is.
Another section of that rule would ban any person from knowingly soliciting, offering, delivering or accepting by affirmative act any campaign contribution in areas the Senate president controls. Senate rules define those areas as parts of the Capitol “as are or may be set aside for the Senate or its officers.”
The full Senate may have the chance to vote on that rule Friday or Monday, Senate Majority Floor leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily after a Friday meeting of the Senate Rules Committee, which she chairs.
The meeting was a sequel to a Thursday meeting at which Nethercott first read the Senate’s official condemnation of what Capitol regulars in Cheyenne have been calling “CheckGate.”
“The Wyoming Senate unequivocally condemns the practice of distributing campaign contributions to legislators during the legislative session while measures affecting the donor’s clients or interests are actively under consideration,” said Nethercott, reading aloud.
“The integrity of the legislative process depends upon public confidence that policy decisions are made on the merits, based on law, evidence, and the best interests of the people of Wyoming; not influenced by the timing of political contributions.”
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, read the same statement from the Senate floor Friday.
Nethercott confirmed at the time, to the public occupying limited vantage points in the gallery, that all 31 senators had signed the statement - and all 31 applauded it after its reading.
The 59 members of the state House of Representatives who were on the floor Thursday afternoon voted unanimously to have House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, craft a seven-representative committee containing at least one Democrat, to investigate the check incident.
That committee is tasked with investigating whether the check incident involved bribery or misconduct.
Checks On The Floor
On Monday after adjournment, Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, photographed Rebecca Bextel, a Republican activist who was registered to attend the legislative session as a member of the media, handing out checks on the floor of the state House of Representatives.
Provenza told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview that Bextel handed checks to at least three House representatives.
All three of them two days later voted in favor of introducing a bill Bextel has championed.
Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, urged House delegates Wednesday not to vote in favor of introducing the bill, because the “optics” would be bad.
Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, called Yin’s statement defamatory and said it amounted to an allegation of bribery, in a formal protest of his statement.
“(He) alleges that legislators accepted these checks from the floor - which essentially would be bribery and unethical,” Rodriguez-Williams said at the time.
Bextel later confirmed publicly that she had handed out checks on the floor, after adjournment, and said they were from a generous donor in Teton County.
During a Thursday-evening podcast interview with her business partner David Iverson in startup media outlet the Open Range Record, Bextel defended the act.
She said she delivered a check to Rep. Darin McCann, R-Rock Springs, on behalf of the donor because she knew she’d be in Cheyenne.
“There’s nothing to hide we’re very proud of Darin McCann’s voting record,” she said. “I just handed him a check not thinking anything of it.”
She said the people who oppose this act, “I think, are people that would have a problem with any check being written to a Freedom Caucus candidate.”
She also said the outrage has to do with her efforts to end housing mitigation fees - a prevalent affordable-housing device in Teton County and Jackson governments.
Senate Too
Nethercott confirmed Wednesday to Cowboy State Daily that the check passing also involved the Senate, and Senate leadership has at least one of the checks.
“I don’t believe that the Senate’s concerns rise to the level of the House’s concerns, in the same form and fashion, and as you can see the Senate is responding,” she said, pointing to the body’s official condemnation and draft rule; all unfolding during the rushed budget session. “So, (we’re) trying to thoughtfully and deliberatively and not knee-jerk any kind of response or get ahead of ourselves in our ability to manage it within the Senate.”
There is no formal investigation in the Senate as of midday Friday, though further Senate action is possible, said Nethercott.
“We want to kind of preserve the integrity of what we decide to do internally… to allow us to thoughtfully handle additional information as it comes along,” she said. “Understand the scope, understand the depth, and to encourage people to come forward if they were approached.”
On the House side two check recipients, McCann and Rep. Marlene Brady, R-Green River, said they welcome a formal investigation to clear the names of people involved.
How The Sausage Is Made
The rules committee grappled with particulars Thursday and Friday, such as whether the rule should apply just to parts of the Capitol, other Senate committee meeting locations, and be confined to the body’s 20-day or 40-day lawmaking sessions each winter.
As a visiting non-member of the committee and as former Speaker of the House, Sen. Eric Barlow, R-Gillette, encouraged the body to be specific.
For example, Barlow noted, he’d learned of a campaign donation made to his website while sitting in the Senate chamber.
Barlow is running for the Republican nomination to the governor’s seat this year.
“So does this apply to that?” Barlow asked, as the committee was considering a broader, earlier version of the new rule Thursday.
That question prompted the rules committee to remove an earlier ban on senators receiving campaign contributions, while leaving intact the prohibition on accepting them by an affirmative act while in session or in the spaces the Senate president controls.
Biteman said he agreed with Barlow’s concern and recommendations to be specific. He also cast it as an urgent matter to pass a rule “immediately.”
“The appearance of vote-buying on the House floor or the Senate floor is absolutely unconscionable, and we cannot allow that to happen,” he said.
Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, told the public during Friday’s rules committee that the codification of a rule is just to make it “crystal clear” that Senate leadership doesn’t condone such behavior.
Nethercott, Gierau, and Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, voted in favor of adopting the new rule. Sens. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, and Biteman left proxy aye votes as well, making the committee’s approval unanimous.
Affordable Housing
Bextel supports at least two bills in this year's session, both regarding property-related laws.
Senate File 89, which failed its introductory vote in the Senate this week, would remove a property tax exemption for any properties that are part-government, part-privately owned, by stipulating that properties don't enjoy the government property tax exemption unless they're 100% property-owned.
House Bill 141, which remained viable as of Friday, would curb affordable housing mitigation schemes. Those are prevalent in the Teton County and Jackson governments.
Bextel has repeatedly called housing mitigation fees - which are payments governments extract from housing developers to provide affordable housing for workers and low-income people - unconstitutional.
A court has not deemed Jackson or Teton County's housing mitigation schemes unconstitutional, but those are under scrutiny in at least one court case. And the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed in 2024 that those fees must be connected with and proportionate to their stated purpose to be constitutional.
Bextel has also given to candidates, a political action committee, Republican party committees, and candidate committees, according to Wyoming Campaign Finance data. This giving began in 2017 and 2018, with $2,500 to a campaign committee for then-gubernatorial candidate, now U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman.
She’s given a total of $3,400 to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ campaign arm, the WY Freedom PAC, a total of $8,095.46 to various Republican Party central committees, $1,000 to the Committee to Elect (now-Secretary of State) Chuck Gray, and more than $10,000 total to other Freedom Caucus-aligned legislative candidates Wyoming campaign finance reports show.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
