Cooper's Wildlife Fund bill sees success

CHEYENNE – State Sen. Ed Cooper (R-Ten Sleep) was happy to announce that Senate Files 87 and 106, both relating to the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Funding Act, were approved and signed by Governor Mark Gordon on Monday.

Senate File 87, which Cooper sponsored, serves to expand the category of “small projects” up to $400,000 from $200,000, in the interest of saving time that would be spent approving projects in that price range that would previously qualify as “large projects” and require legislative action to proceed. Senate File 106 is a comprehensive list of the large projects to be completed using Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Funding.

In his weekly interview with Northern Wyoming News, Cooper said that although there were good things that that were completed last week at the State of Wyoming Legislative General Session, he couldn’t help but lament the failure to pass of House Bill 121, sponsored by fellow Washakie County legislator Martha Lawley.

He commented, “I was kind of torn on last week. We did a couple good things but one thing I was really disappointed in was that Martha Lawley’s bill died in Senate committee. I sure felt like that was a good bill; I hated to see it go.”

House Bill 121 would have given responsibility for administering the property tax deferral program to the Department of Revenue and strived to make the program more accessible. The bill died in Senate committee on Feb. 24 after stalling out the week prior. Friday was the deadline for bills to pass out of committee.

Also on Feb. 24, House Bill 103 did pass, and was signed by House and Senate Speakers on Feb. 27. This bill will restructure voter party declaration and limit the impact of crossover voting. It has been hotly contested during the General Session, having passed through third reading in the Senate with 19 votes for and 11 against.

Cooper stated, “I ended up voting against it. I really like the principle of the bill, I liked what it was trying to do, but the language in the bill was pretty ambiguous.” He said that he and others in the Senate had argued for the bill to be edited to be clearer to readers, as advocated by county clerks in his district. Cooper said that House Bill 103 was amended 12 times throughout the session, and that he was still not satisfied with its readability.

Of House Bill 103’s impact in his district, he said “it is a poor bill written as a good solution to – probably not — a problem.” During last week’s interview, Cooper said that crossover voting was a non-issue in his district but it possibly was in others across Wyoming, a sentiment that he echoed again this week.

House Bill 190, also discussed last week, was up for consideration by the Senate on Monday of this week but was not considered. Cooper anticipated this when he was interviewed earlier that day, saying that because the bill “didn’t do a whole lot right now, but is more geared towards the future,” it would probably be overlooked. The bill would create a select committee with the goal of maximizing on energy opportunities in the state of Wyoming and allow for the creation of task forces to aid in this goal.

Cooper said that while this forward-looking piece of legislation will not come out of this year’s General Session, other energy solutions are on the way. He assured that “the governor has some discretionary funding he can use for these same things. It’ll be just fine the way it is.”

As for this week, Cooper said that he has to look forward to “concurrence on all the bills going back and forth.” He continues “then it’ll just be getting everything tidied up; we’ll have some long nights as we go back and forth. It should be interesting.”