CHEYENNE —The stunning opening of the 2026 budget session may portend a different approach of the legislative players.
The defeat of the election reform bills and others supported by the hard-right-wing Freedom Cause was a surprise.
The question is whether this is a single anomaly, a bump, or a genuine pivot involving the Caucus and the status of the Legislature’s committee work.
My focus this session has been primarily on two issues:
— The unnecessary election reform bills.
— More cuts in property taxes which would confuse citizens more than they are already befuddled by this tax issue.
Before the session began observers were predicting the Freedom Caucus, which holds a majority of seats in the House and maybe ten in the Senate, would ram through the election bills.
Those proposals had been bulldozed along by Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a MAGA follower and an announced candidate for Wyoming’s only seat in the U.S. House.
The concern was that the debate over those bills and others would eat up time and possibly clog up the system in the short budget session, with a variety of consequences as a result.
Not now.
The House last week voted against the introduction of five of a bundle of six election reform bills; the senate rejected another proposal.
The only bill surviving requires hand counts on voter challenges. The county clerks say that as written, it will be impossible to enforce.
Also, I received an e-mail from a former election judge who said if hand counting is required, the judges will quit.
Anyway, it has been odd to see a Secretary of State promote bills that could discourage voters from going to the polls.
His predecessors did the opposite. They tried to get more people to the polls to remedy Wyoming’s dismal record in voter participation.
Remember the “Hello America Vote Act,” a federal program supported enthusiastically by former Secretary of State Joe Meyer?
The Freedom Caucus still has its majority in the House. Six House Democrats and moderate Republicans blocked the Caucus from getting the two-thirds majority it needed to get the election bills introduced into the session for discussion.
The defeat may have caused only a dent in the Caucus reputation, but it is a crack.
The lawmakers also killed five property tax bills.
That's a wise decision, as some Natrona County lawmakers concluded, according to internet sources; maintaining the status quo would give everyone a breather and time to study the effects of the current cuts.
They can also take into consideration the 50-percent property tax reduction in a constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in November, and in all likelihood will be passed by voters.
As for the committees and their work, this is the second time that the Legislature, in a budget session, has rejected so many committee bills.
In 2024 it was 13 that were dumped, largely because of the Freedom Caucus.
This year the Legislature rejected 33 committee bills, many of them backed by the Freedom Caucus.
Their failure represents a waste of hours of work, legislative staff time and money.
That trend may require still another study.
Good news last week was that Gov. Mark Gordon is holding press conferences during the session. This is unusual; governors usually keep a low profile during a session, beyond their opening and closing statements.
This activity is unusual for a lame duck governor like Gordon, and feeds talk that he may be eyeing another office; I’m guessing Congress.
In another piece of good news, the Legislature dumped the wacky government conspiracy bill about airplane contrails.
At least now we won’t be ridiculed by other states as a bunch of nut cases.
Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
