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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.
Already behind, Wyoming women hit hard by COVID crisis
Low-wage workers living paycheck-to-paycheck are least prepared to grapple with layoffs and cut hours resulting from the COVID crisis. By far, most low-wage workers in Wyoming are women.
Governor Gordon can and should stop COVID-related evictions in Wyoming
As unemployment spikes during the pandemic, Wyoming workers are increasingly unable to make housing payments. Federal measures and the goodwill of banks and landlords do not offer Wyoming families the housing protections they need.
Legislature passes a bill making it easier for Wyoming communities to tax themselves
The increased ability for towns and counties to raise revenues is a nod toward diversifying Wyoming’s tax structure. But because the new revenues will come from sales tax, they will come at the highest cost to the state’s poorest residents.
Wyoming schools spared deep funding cuts despite the Senate’s best efforts
A veto by Governor Mark Gordon helped House education advocates fend off severe funding cuts pushed by the Senate throughout the Wyoming Legislature’s 2020 session. But they couldn’t stop them all.
Wyoming House advances last surviving abortion bill of the budget session
The bill would criminalize doctors who fail to perform life-saving measures for infants meant to be aborted but that are accidentally “born alive”—a law that would rarely, if ever, be applied in Wyoming, since abortions after 12 weeks are illegal here and fetuses are not viable until at least 20 – 23 weeks. Two other anti-abortion bills have been defeated.
Wyoming Senate President singlehandedly kills two antipoverty bills
A tax rebate program for elderly and disabled poor people and a cost-of-living increase for retired state workers both passed the House. But the bills died in the desk of Senate President Drew Perkins, who refused to introduce them for consideration.
Cranky old guy coalition kills childcare reimbursements for Wyoming legislators
Wyoming’s Legislature is overwhelmingly made up of rich old men who have the time and money to serve as “citizen” lawmakers. The budget measure they defeated would have made the Legislature more accessible to younger working people.