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Wyoming school districts clap back at proposed education budget cuts
School districts across Wyoming told lawmakers that proposed budget cuts would eliminate hundreds of jobs and prevent them from delivering quality, equitable education as required by law. The Legislature is going forward with the cuts anyway.
A user’s guide to the bizarre, online 2021 Wyoming legislative session
This year’s online legislative session provides unprecedented access for Wyoming residents to watch and participate. Find out what’s going on next week and how you can take part (virtually!) in the legislative process.
NIMBY landowner campaign inflames anti-renewables attitudes to block Wyoming wind development
A proposed wind farm would bring tens of millions of dollars in revenue for Albany County and Wyoming schools, along with good jobs. But hilltop landowners worried about their backyard views have launched a campaign to stop it, trafficking in Wyomingites’ anxieties about the global transition to carbon-free energy.
Healthcare access grows harder for thousands of newly uninsured Wyomingites
Roughly 6,000 people have lost their health insurance in Wyoming during the COVID-19 pandemic. But state lawmakers continue to block federal funds that would cover insurance costs for low-income residents, while they gut state Department of Health funding for community health services.
Screw the schools, screw the youth: Wyoming lawmakers refuse tax proposals to fund education (and everything else)
Wyoming’s population is shrinking and aging, and the Good Ol’ Boys in the Legislature staunchly oppose new taxes. But younger generations who would like to build their lives here are starting to speak up against budget cuts that would cripple the state’s education system and economy.
Wyoming lawmakers’ plan to import drugs from Canada won’t lower prescription costs
Working families and seniors across Wyoming are feeling the pinch of paying for steadily increasing drug costs. But the Legislature’s plan to import drugs from Canada won’t help.
Registering to vote at the polls in Wyoming is great … until it’s not
The main way to register to vote in Wyoming is at the polls. But a huge portion of the state’s electorate is avoiding the polls altogether during COVID-19. As the state’s aggressive voter purge laws disenrolled massive numbers of Wyoming voters, we’re left to wonder whether our registration laws need an update.
Wyoming lawmakers try to “recalibrate” school funding while the whole system collapses around us
The ho-hum, business-as-usual “recalibration” process to determine proper state education funding levels looks absurd in the face of a $500 million budget catastrophe.
FIVE FACTS: Wyoming embraces mail-in voting (sort of)
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Buchanan to send applications for absentee ballots to all registered Wyoming voters. County clerks across the state have received record requests, moving Wyoming in a direction toward mail-in voting that’s already widely embraced across the West.
Wyoming needs a strong healthcare system to help diversify its economy. It doesn’t have one.
Quality hospitals and healthcare will be critical to attracting new businesses and developing new industries in Wyoming, particularly in rural areas. But Wyoming’s healthcare system is struggling, which will make the difficult task of diversifying our economy even harder.
Wyoming takes meek steps to increase mail-in voting in 2020. It should be doing more.
Vote-by-mail has been proven to dramatically increase voter turnout in our neighbors like Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. Wyoming state leaders have hinted at an interest in expanding our mail-in program, but they are mostly dragging their feet.
Wyoming faces the biggest financial crisis in its modern history. Lawmakers respond by doing nothing.
The Legislature’s Revenue Committee has one job: to develop proposals that allow Wyoming to adequately fund its public services and infrastructure. Now that fossil fuel mining taxes are going away, the committee has failed at its single job again and again and again.
COVID-19 prompts Wyoming lawmakers to reconsider Medicaid expansion
Unemployed workers losing their healthcare, rural hospitals losing revenue, and an uncertain future for Wyoming’s economy have the Legislature taking another look at its decision to refuse federal Medicaid funding.
Wyoming Legislature plugs in for an unprecedented “virtual” special session
The Wyoming Legislature is bad at transparency, lacks modern technological infrastructure, and is about to convene an emergency “virtual” session the public can’t attend to appropriate more than $1 billion in federal COVID-19 funding. What could possibly go wrong?
Proposal to help stop COVID-related evictions passes Wyoming legislative committee
The bill would create a program that uses federal emergency funds to reimburse landlords who have experienced rental losses as a result of COVID-19, protecting both landlord and renter. The Legislature will consider the proposal during a special session next week.