Tens of thousands of people depended on the rebates prior to the Legislature’s ending the program in 2016. An effort to bring it back fizzled. Less than 15 percent of its funding will be restored.
The bill squeaked by an initial vote on Friday. But, right now, it lacks enough support to pass its upcoming final vote on Tuesday. Lobbyists and lawmakers are working feverishly to determine its fate.
No one should be shocked if the bill, which would ban political party switching at the polls in Wyoming, rises again.
The bill would impose penalties on doctors who fail to report detailed information about abortions and the women who receive them. The three other anti-choice bills brought this session are dead.
The Senate Appropriations Committee removed necessary funding for the bill that would have made Wyoming’s hemp industry USDA-compliant. Now, the future of a once-promising industry looks bleak.
Three members of the five-person committee spoke positively about the bill. But so much opposition had built up against it in the Senate, the committee chairman decided it wasn’t even worth a vote.
The bill would eliminate roughly $11.2 million in annual public healthcare spending, half of which Wyoming currently receives from the federal government. But without Medicaid, sick people seek healthcare from emergency rooms, which is even more expensive.
Not a single Wyoming lawmaker has, to date, voted against a proposal to legalize and regulate hemp farming and CBD products. But the bill comes with a price tag, which makes its future uncertain as it moves to the notoriously tight-fisted Senate.
The billionaire megadonor’s bill faces stiff opposition from the Wyoming County Commissioners Association. The commissioners argue that it would strip local control from all Wyoming counties in the process of helping Friess’ pet project.
The rebate program had been in effect for 41 years before lawmakers canned it in 2016 in the midst of a mineral bust.
A proposed corporate income tax on “big box” stores like Walmart would not raise prices for consumers, but it would generate tens of millions of dollars per year for Wyoming schools. Is that enough to get it past the radically anti-tax Wyoming State Senate?
A disagreement over whether a man must be convicted of rape—rather than a woman merely presenting “clear and convincing evidence”—in order to lose his parental rights might scuttle efforts once again to ensure rapists don’t get to be daddies in Wyoming.
