Legislature to debate more than just budget bills

The Wyoming Legislature 2024 Budget Session will begin next Monday, Feb. 12, at which time all government representatives in the state will convene at the Capitol in Cheyenne to begin their bi-annual work on Wyoming’s budget and other issues.

District 20 Senator Ed Cooper of Ten Sleep previewed important topics that will appear in session.

Cooper began by introducing key differences between a general session and budget session. A budget session lasts 20 days over a period of four weeks – half the length of a general session.

Cooper said, “At a budget session, any non-budget bills have to go out on the floor and get a two-thirds majority vote to get introduced, whereas in a general session, any bill can be introduced. The focus is mainly on the budget, and there are a lot of specific bills to go with that.”

He added, “It’s a complex issue; we take it a part a piece at a time and we look at every little bit of it. It’s a pretty extensive process.”

Cooper shared his goals as a senator for the outcome of the work on the budget. “Of course, we want to come out of this with a good, solid, conservative budget. We really focus on fiscal responsibility, and try not to grow the budget from where we’re at. Maintaining its current size or even shrinking it should always be the goal,” he said.

SPONSORED BILLS

Cooper will be sponsoring two bills that will appear at the Budget Session.

The first bill is in drafting phase and has not yet been assigned a bill number. It would amend existing legislation to expand property tax exemptions for military veterans. Cooper said, “I would like to at least double the amount of tax value that is exempted from veterans. Ultimately, I’d make it more than that if I could get the support for it. I feel like the sacrifices that our veterans have made over the years are immense, and the little amount that we subtract from their property taxes is not adequate.”

He will also be bringing forward Senate File 0074 – Special Districts-reversal of dissolution for noncompliance. He explained the legislation, saying, “If a special district goes into delinquency while doing their reporting to the Department of Audit, by statute, after a certain point that special district has to be dissolved. The Wyoming County Commissioners Association has come to me and asked me to sponsor a bill to give the commissioners the discretion to cease dissolution. For example, a Fire District in another county in our [Senate] District was four days late getting their reporting done. Well, the law is very strict, and so they had dissolve the Fire District and go through the process to re-establish the district, revote for mill-levies, all of that. This bill will allow for commissioners to halt dissolution and avoid doing all of that if the district can get back in compliance.”

CO-SPONSORED BILLS

Cooper is co-sponsoring seven bills at the Budget Session, including two property tax exemption bills – House Bill 0045 and Senate File 0063 – along with fellow Washakie County resident House Representative (R) Martha Lawley. Lawley and her constituents brought this legislation forth last year in the General Session, but it died in committee.

On the issue of property taxes, Cooper said, “There’s going to be a whole bivy of property tax bills out there, and I’m going to push hard that every one of them gets introduced and makes it into committee.”

Cooper said, “When we argue to introduce a bill here, the person sponsoring the bill gets two minutes to talk about their bill, and their opponent gets one minute to tell everyone why it’s not a good bill, then the sponsor gets another 30 seconds; we can’t even begin to understand an entire bill in that time.”

He continued, “I think every one of these property tax bills deserves consideration. The people in our district and the people of Wyoming deserve to have every one of these bills brought forward and looked at and vetted completely, and the best of them need to be passed. We’ve got a couple of them that give us short term relief, and there’s others that will totally revamp the system for the long term,” Cooper said.

Cooper is also co-sponsoring two education bills: Senate File 0046 – Compulsory school attendance-minimum age, and Senate File 0061 – Education-charter school amendments.

The first would seek to lower the required minimum age of school attendance in Wyoming from seven to six years of age.

Cooper stated there were good arguments both for and against this move, saying, “That’s another one of those bills that I really think needs brought forward so we can analyze what the pros and cons are. Some of these bills are complicated, and when you co-sponsor them, you’re still gaining an understanding of them. It’s just important to bring them forward and make the right decision as a group.”

The second would add this paragraph to existing legislation: “The school district in which a charter school is located and operates shall distribute the amount computed under this section to each charter school in the proportion and schedule of distribution required under [state statute] or in accordance with an alternative schedule agreed to by the school district and charter school.”

Cooper had similar feelings when asked about this bill. He said, “That one’s going to be a tough one to call, I’m just going to have to really understand how we’re protecting public schools going forward. There’s some people that truly think this is the answer, and there’s others who think it’s the worst decision yet, but it’s probably somewhere in the middle.”

He co-sponsored two additional bills that will provide minor amendments to existing legislation, and one bill to introduce a program that will help qualifying Wyomingites obtain hearing aids.

COMMITTEE BILLS

As a senator, Cooper is a member of four committees: Judiciary, Minerals, Business and Economic Development, Natural Resource Funding Committee and the Energy Council.

Cooper is involved in numerous bills between these committees, but spoke about two in particular.

As a member of the Natural Resource Funding Committee, Cooper gets to help decide which large projects (budget greater than $500,000) to fund across the state for a given year.

This year, the committee has selected three large projects:

•Upper Greybull River Passage. Project purpose: removal of barriers to fish passage and migration, irrigation enhancement and stream modification on the Greybull River drainage in Park County. Total project budget: $2,902,000.

•Baggs Valley Headwaters II. Project purpose: restoration of native vegetation through mechanical, chemical and prescribed controlled burns across a varied landscape of approximately one hundred thirty-eight thousand (138,000) acres in Carbon County. Total project budget: $3,550,000.

•Seminoe Shirley Habitat. Project purpose: restoration of native ecosystems through vegetation management, riparian restoration, fence modification and invasive species control in central Wyoming. Total project budget: $4,099,000.

Cooper said that if he had to pick one bill he has worked on to pass this Budget Session, it would be a bill from the Energy Council that is currently in the draft phase — carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery stimulus. Cooper said, “I think it has got a lot of potential to generate more revenue for the State, and I’m looking forward to seeing that one move forward if we can.”

This bill would offer monetary incentives to entities that harvest oil using cutting edge techniques that involve the use of carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere.

Cooper added, “I kind of had mixed emotions on it at first, but after we really discussed it and took it apart in committee last week I think that it’s a good, solid bill … I think it’s going to be a great tool for the State of Wyoming to use for business development in the future. There aren’t a lot of short-term benefits from it but the long-term can be very beneficial for the state.”

Cooper, speaking about heading into the session, said, “My thoughts going into the session are just that I’d like to see us try to work toward a common goal, rather than being splintered like it was in the last session. That’s a goal of mine, to have everyone working in the same direction.”