AARP Wyoming To Remain Busy During Legislative Interim

AARP Wyoming Photo

By Tom Lacock
AARP Wyoming

The Management Council may be the most powerful legislative committee most have never heard of. Made up of leadership from the House and Senate, this band of nine merry men and Senate Majority Leader Tara Nethercott (R-Laramie County), governs all interim activities and committees of the Legislature. Prior to this week’s meeting, the Management Council had the power to approve or deny the list of topics that legislative subcommittees wanted to study in the interim. The thought was the Management Council could help focus the committees and keep topic areas from being too broad.

The 2026 interim will be a case study to see if that function is still needed as the Management Council told committee chairs to manage their own committees and study whatever they like, so long as they can do it inside of four meeting days (or six, if they come back before the council and make a pitch). That move was a little unexpected and means more autonomy, but perhaps more confusion as to what will be studied by committees this summer.

Skeptics will point out there is a feeling that the two-thirds majority required to introduce a bill during the 2026 Budget Session will be a higher threshold than most bills can achieve in a Legislature that is at war with itself. In other words, is the move to unleash committee chairs to study topics as they please an admission that few bills are likely to gain passage, so why not limit the state spend on costly meetings over the summer?

Here is the list of topics committee chairs brought to the Management Council before learning they will only have four meeting days.

AARP Topics Of Interest
If the Chairmen of the committees have their way, I’ll have at least some windshield time going back and forth to subcommittee meetings. Here’s a few topics we will be following:

EMS/Ambulance - The Joint Labor, Health, and Social Services Committee polled its members regarding interim topics and EMS/Rural Healthcare was the second-most requested topic after maternity desserts, or deserts… I dunno, whichever one you don’t eat. The Department of Health is working on a proposal that could be beneficial to especially smaller ambulance services who don’t always submit run data for reimbursement to insurance companies. In this scenario, the Department of Health could act as the agency that requests reimbursement from insurance for the ambulance services and then keeps a percentage for providing the service. It isn’t the silver bullet that saves ambulance service in Wyoming, but it is a good conversation starter.

Property Tax - The Joint Revenue Committee will be back in the saddle talking about property tax relief and reform once again. Recently, Gillette Representative John Bear told a roomful of constituents that his goal is to eliminate property tax entirely at some point. Perhaps the general plan on how to do that becomes more clear in the interim. It could mean replacing property tax with sales tax, income tax, or just living off our state’s savings. One aspect of the property tax discussion that bears watching is a discussion about making property assessments more accessible and easier for citizens. It’s been a hot button discussion around the state and worthy of discussion.

Elections and Electricity - At its best, the interim is a good time for lawmakers to do a deep dive into a topic they’ve never considered before running for office. Take for example, utility processes and payments. Everyone pays an electric bill, but no one runs for legislature because they want to discuss the process and how it can be improved. Legislative veteran and co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions committee Senator Cale Case (R-Fremont) told the Management Council on Tuesday, he’d like his committee to learn more about why power costs are high and getting higher. The Wyoming Infrastructure Authority has offered to lead a task force examining that issue. AARP Wyoming has asked Director Rob Creager to be a part of those discussions and it sounds like we’ll have a seat at that table. This committee also addresses our state’s voting processes. On Tuesday, Case told the Management Council he would like to do a demonstration on how voting machines and ballots are kept, counted, and reported during the committee’s first meeting, May 8 in Lander as an educational piece. The committee, which is heavily made up of freshmen on the House side, will likely make that step one in their election integrity conversation.

Retail theft - This is a bit new for AARP Wyoming, but we will be watching the Joint Judiciary Committee’s discussion on retail theft. We are seeing more and more fraud being perpetrated by folks who are stealing gift cards, writing down the numbers and then bringing back the gift cards in hopes someone else buys them, and activates them. It’s next-level stuff and we’ve been working as an organization on the issue in several other states. Hopefully, there is a place to do so in Wyoming.

Local Government Funding Streams - Remember when we talked about property tax going away? The Joint Appropriations Committee wants to talk about local government funding streams this interim and is chaired on the House side by John Bear (R-Campbell). This might help explain what was meant by eliminating property tax in Wyoming. The committee intends to look at tax streams and how the local cities, towns, and counties are funded now and how that could change for the better (hopefully).

There’s also a chance we can talk about Crypto-ATMs. Wyoming has 43 ATMs that look like regular ATMs but are used to turn cash into bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. The ATM’s seem to be great money movers for scammers who tell their victims to go to these machines to send them money. Nationally, In 2023, the IC3 received more than 5,500 complaints reporting the use of cryptocurrency kiosks, with losses over $189 million. Nationwide, we are seeing states work to license and put requirements on these machines that help protect folks from getting scammed using crypto ATMs. We think it might be a good idea to see if this is needed in Wyoming and our friends at the Wyoming Bankers Association are also interested in having this conversation.