Wyoming state House leadership is “looking into” whether a Democratic representative may face consequences after complaints of legislative misconduct were filed, House Speaker Chip Neiman said Friday during a press conference in his office.
An attendee asked if anything might “happen” to Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, after she shot a photograph of a conservative activist handing a check to a state representative on the House Floor following the chamber’s adjournment Feb. 9.
“We’re looking into that,” answered Neiman. “There are some complaints (filed).”
Cowboy State Daily asked if the complaints were against both Provenza and a lawmaker who decried the act during floor debate Feb. 11, Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson.
“Maybe,” came Neiman’s answer.
Asked if there was a complaint against Provenza, Neiman answered, “I think, based on 22-1.”
“We’re still compiling those,” he added.
Rule 22-1 is a joint rule of both the state House of Representatives and the Senate, which outlines the process for filing ethics complaints against lawmakers.
Provenza noted that subsection “j” of that rule says complaints are confidential when filed. It reads:
“All records, findings and proceedings including the filing of the initial complaint shall be considered confidential information, but the complaint shall be available for public inspection upon the dismissal of the complaint, a referral of the complaint for formal investigation or other final dispositive action regarding the complaint.”
Provenza wrote: “Based on this rule, I will not comment further at this time.”
Yin similarly declined to comment.
The rule says House leadership can punish those found to have committed misconduct, and no one should advance a complaint for political reasons.
The Photo
Provenza on Feb. 9 gave the photograph to reporters and, she told Cowboy State Daily earlier this month, she did not file an official complaint against the involved lawmakers.
She told the investigative committee on Thursday that she went to the media first so the incident wouldn’t be “swept under the rug.” She also believed the check-passing to be an “egregious use” of the people’s house, she said.
Neiman received a check in his office after discussing the campaign donation with Bextel weeks prior, he told the public earlier this month. He thought little of it, handed it off with his wife and continued with his work, he said.
Provenza has since said this affirms her decision to go to the press, though she didn’t know Neiman was a recipient when she did so.
On Friday, Neiman questioned why, if she didn’t trust him to handle the incident properly, she didn’t go to the no. 2 House leader Speaker Pro Tempore Jeremy Haroldson, R-Wheatland.
Provenza had seen Republican Reps. Joe Webb (Lyman), Darin McCann (Rock Springs) and Marlene Brady (Green River) receive checks from the activist, Rebecca Bextel.
A fourth House member who appears and attests to being severely ill also received a check on the floor. He told the House’s investigative panel on Thursday, “as sick as I was, it could have been an elephant.”
Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, and later other lawmakers and members of the public decried the “optics” of receiving money on the floor from an activist.
Yin discouraged House members from voting to introduce a bill Bextel had championed, House Bill 141, which seeks to block affordable housing mitigation fees.
There was no rule in place against receiving donations on the floor at at the time.
That changed this month, when the Senate, House and governor all reacted by banning the practice of exchanging campaign donations in the Capitol.
All four lawmakers involved in the floor incident demonstrated Thursday they had prior conversations with Bextel, weeks before session, discussing receiving campaign donations from a man in Teton County from whom Bextel was raising money.
All four said they never understood the checks to be a bribe.
Knapp emphasized that campaign donations are a form of First-Amendment-protected speech.
Webb said no one has ever offered him anything in exchange for a vote of any kind, and that neither he nor Bextel even joked about such a thing.
McCann and Brady said they wished to echo his statement.
They Were Already Doing That, Speaker Notes
Neiman in his Friday press conference reiterated a point he’s made before:
The House in 2025 amended a bill from that session, Senate File 40, so that it would ban affordable housing mitigation fees the way HB 141 seeks to do this session.
With that provision in place, every House member now implicated in the checks controversy voted in favor of passing the bill on third reading - one year before the checks controversy unfolded.
“Why would you bribe people that are already there?” asked Neiman on Friday. “What are you gaining?”
Neiman said he believes the donor working through Bextel, Don Grasso, falls in line with his voting record ideologically and supported him for that reason.
“You don’t have to pay me to do the right thing,” said Neiman.
He said people amplified the checks controversy to “throw sand” at conservatives.
“That was disingenuous at best and it was a lie,” said Neiman. “But it took off. It grew legs.”
He called it a “wraparound smear campaign” and described it as a tactic to project some horrible deed, watch people rush to prove their innocence and then trot out the proof of the underlying facts afterward.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus and those in alignment with it gained control of the House after the 2024 election. Neiman said that was new, and in line with a rightward trend from the previous two elections.
He said he’s returned checks to donors with which he disagrees, because he doesn’t want that misalignment to indicate that someone is trying to buy his vote.
Grasso told Cowboy State Daily on Feb. 14 he understood Bextel was to mail rather than hand-deliver the checks. He said he also intended checks for more Republicans: Reps. Tony Locke of Casper and Gary Brown of Cheyenne, Sen. Bob Ide of Casper; and Sheridan-based House candidate Mark Jennings.
The House investigation, prompted via a motion Provenza made, focused on checks handed out on the floor, not elsewhere in the Capitol. The wording of her motion asked the House to determine “whether checks were provided to members of the House of Representatives on the floor of the House” and whether that action was bribery or legislative misconduct.
The investigative committee did not interview lawmakers who weren’t seen with Bextel on the floor at about 5:20 p.m. Monday evening when Provenza shot the photo.
Provenza was the subject of official complaint in 2023 after posting a meme showing an older woman with a firearm, which read “Auntie Fa says protect trans folks against fascists and bigots!”
She later apologized.
Neiman said Friday that he, Yin, and former House Speaker Albert Sommers handled that calmly and without amplifying the controversy, as House leaders at the time.
Neiman was Majority Floor Leader then.
Cowboy State Daily had reported about Provenza’s post ahead of the complaint, as her post was public.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
